The boy disentangled himself from Ginny’s neck and squatted beside her. He stared up at his mother, who was peeking ’round at him from behind this man. She winked at the child, waving and crooking her finger. Dodging Lambert’s outstretched arm, Lonso ran to her. Emily wound her fingers into his soft curls, holding him close. From her vantage point on Lambert’s shoulder, Rosa Claire dissolved into laughter and twisted back and forth, her hands over his forehead. Lonso let go of Emily’s skirt and stood in front of Lambert, solemnly studying him.
“Well, Lonso, what do you think now?” Lambert studied the boy in return. Giggling, Rosa Claire hid her face behind Lambert’s head and Lonso slipped into his embrace.
Lambert pulled Rosa Claire’s hands from over his eye and spotted Aimee watching at the edge of the little gathering. “You, too, honey,” he said, and she came and stood beside Emily, still just watching. Rosa Claire jumped down from his shoulder and the two girls ran off, hand in hand, whispering and giggling.
On the sideboard, a wedding supper awaited the new family. Ginny and Jessie had spent the afternoon making it something festive. The meal was not lavish, given the war and the blockades, but generous and homey: a slow-cooked stew of beef and onions; green tomato pie with potato crust, minus the called-for lemon zest; layers of sliced turnips and potatoes baked with cheese; Indian bread; and rice pudding with molasses, flavored with a bit of brandy and the carefully hoarded nutmeg. Amidst repeated compliments to the cooks, who smiled as they had not done of late, Lambert did most of the talking. Emily concentrated on the children’s manners. Asa, a naturally quiet man, had a gentle way with children, and Emily noted them looking to him often for approval. He was aware of their curiosity and smiled at them, or winked and made little faces. Asa would make a fine uncle.
After supper, Ginny took the children to wash up and ready themselves for bed. The three adults sat by the fire. When the children came down for good-night hugs, neither was shy with Lambert or Asa. The adults rose to watch the children back up the stairs, catching blown kisses from the landing. No one sat again. Asa wished them well and said good night, going home to live, for the first time, alone.
“You got anything else for me, Miss Emily?” Ginny said, descending the stairs. “Jessie done cleaned the table.”
“No, Ginny. You go on home and get some rest. Jessie, too. Anything still to do tonight will be still to do in the morning. Not a single dirty pan has ever run away from home that I know of.”
Like sisters, the two women embraced, holding each other. Ginny stroked Emily’s back, then pushed away and ducked her head. Emily watched her go. When she turned to Lambert, he folded her in his arms. They stood beside the fire, rocking slightly, both of them soaking in the presence of the other.
“Lambert, I—” Emily spoke into the fabric of his shirt.
“Shh, now, love.” He stroked the back of her head and spoke into the air above her netted hair. “I have something to tell you.”
How kind and knowing his face is, Emily thought. Reaching up, she cupped his cheek in the palms of her hands. In the firelight, his eyes were dark pools, moist and vulnerable. Vulnerability stirred her always, beyond the scope of language. She trailed her fingers over his lips, across his undefended lids. She embraced the square turn of his bearded jaw in her hand and he pressed his lips into her palm.
“Emily, I—” Lambert paused. “I have loved you for a long time. Seems like I’ve been loving you all my life. I hardly remember not loving you. But by the time you were grown, I was already old. You were so young. I watched you from a ways off. At church. In town sometimes. At gatherings. I saw how sad you were. And shy. I saw you on the edges of a dance one night. I had it in my mind to speak to you when I saw Charles come sit beside you.”
Emily felt the memory, the strangeness to think that Lambert had been aware, had seen. She remembered his solemn face in the crowd.
“I knew you would be his. And I loved you without any hope you would ever be mine. I made up my mind I would stay ’round the edges of your life. I vowed never to interfere. And someday when I was truly old and you had aged yourself, when we both got so old it wouldn’t matter anymore, I told myself that I would find a way before I died to tell you, to make you know how dear you were to me. I’m not so good with words, but this love in me for you has held my life together, rooted me, made my life have meaning, even in your absence.”
Raising herself to meet him, Emily pulled his lips down to meet her own. She lay her cheek against his chest, where she could feel his heart.
“I never did let myself think on a night like this,” he said. “I’m so sorry for your pain, Emily. Terribly so. I would give you up all over again if I could spare you that. I reckon your suffering has broken all through me, and I hate to think that it is how you finally came to me. But, God forgive me, I’m grateful to have you mine.” As Lambert rocked her, his tears fell warm on her forehead. Emily rose on her toes and kissed the dampness of his cheeks.
“Oh, Lambert,” she said, “I never suspected.”
“And you never would have, apart from—” He paused. “I’m sorry.”
“I am sorry, too, Lambert, for everything that has come and gone. I’m glad I never knew and grateful that you spared me. But I am with you now, whatever the case, and that is all I need.”
They stood in the firelight, neither knowing more to say. Lambert bent and without releasing her hand, shoveled the ashes to bank the fire. Still holding hands, together they slid the fire screen into place. Lambert led her toward the stair.
* * *
Emily woke early. The air was clear and fresh. She stretched. Her body felt alive, fulfilled. Lambert had already risen, dressed, and was standing next to the bed, adjusting his suspenders.
“Good morning.” He leaned in and kissed her forehead. “Go back to sleep, Emme.” He had given her this endearment, along with his name. Emme Lambert. She rolled the easy sound of it in the roof of her mouth.
“I’ll get up and start the fire,” she said.
“Ginny’s way ahead of you, Mrs. Lambert. She’s bustling around down there already. I saw the light from her lamp as she came across the yard earlier.”
“How long have you been up?”
“Not long—but long enough. I’ve been watching you sleep.”
Emily smiled, stretched again.
“You are beautiful, Emme. I don’t know how to speak of how I feel. To know that you are here beside me.” He stroked the curve of her cheek, where a slight scar remained. “I love you, Emme. I will never harm you if I know.”
As he slipped his arms under her, she covered his mouth with her fingertips.
“Go on now,” she said, kicking at the covers. Then aware of her nakedness, she recovered herself, fumbling for her nightdress.
Lambert watched, his face tender. He laughed and retrieved it from the floor, tossing it lightly over her face.
“I’ll see you at breakfast,” he said.
Emily listened to his lopsided steps descending the stair, one boot on, the other still dangling by the laces in his hand. She burrowed back into the covers, hugging the nightdress against her. She dared not think in comparisons.
CHAPTER 37
Lucian bent over the nest boxes in the chicken coop, gathering fresh eggs. His long fingers moved knowingly under the red hen, catching the warm egg almost before she knew she had laid it. When he had five in the basket, he pulled his shoulders back and walked toward the cabin, where his father would be boiling water for coffee. Lucian had always been quiet, but of recent, he’d closed off inside himself. He couldn’t even talk about the weather, only brief muddled words necessary to some task at hand. He and Nathan had exchanged only rudimentary greetings since their night of digging at the trench. He knew his father was waiting for him to speak, waiting to know what ailed his son. He knew this barrier between them was an agony for Benjamin, and he shared it.
He laid the basket on the table in Benjamin’s cabin and watched his f
ather’s hands: the way they handled the fragile eggs, the way they washed the thin shells clean, the way everything was sterling in his father’s fingers. Lucian deliberated how to speak. In the end there was no way except to say it plain.
“Daddy,” he said.
Benjamin looked up. He heard the reluctant determination of his son’s voice. He dreaded what would come, but felt a deep relief that it would. “What you got to say, boy? It’s time.”
“Daddy, I done killed a man.”
Benjamin moved the eggs aside. One rolled from the tabletop onto the floor. He ignored the broken yolk spreading across the planks. He shifted his weight to his uninjured leg and wiped his hands over his eyes. “I been waiting, son, but not for this.” He reached for the cane chair, steadied himself, and lowered himself into it. Lucian grasped at his father’s arm to help him settle, but Benjamin shrugged away. “How you come to kill a man, Lucian? Who you kill?”
Lucian pulled his hand back. He shook his head, took a deep breath, and spoke into the brittle air that filled the room now. “It was the night of the soldiers, Daddy. I didn’t go to do it. It just happened.”
Benjamin lowered his head and wiped the heel of his hand over his brow.
“I couldn’t sleep, Daddy. All them strange men out there. I just wandered around. Keeping watch, I guess you’d say. Along ’fore daylight I heard a commotion amongst the cows and went toward the barn. Couple of them stomping and snorting. Thought Ginny must have started the milking early. I heard a muffled kind of scream and when I got in the barn, I seen one of them scouts, one of the three that come here first, his hand over Ginny’s mouth—couldn’t mistake it was Ginny, that long body, taller than him—and her struggling against him and him struggling to get his pants down. She was fighting. Seen me coming and her eyes got wide, but nothing else to give me away. Man’s pants half down and his pistol tangled in the leg. Wasn’t hard to snatch it. And I killed him.”
Benjamin looked his son in the face. Then he lay his forehead on the table. His hands folded in his lap.
Presently, he raised himself.
“She told me she holds the blame. Ain’t no blame but mine, Daddy. And I reckon I’d do it again. He’d have killed us both if he saw he was caught.”
“But you saved her.”
“Yes, sir. I reckon I did.”
“Don’t nobody know you did this?”
“Nathan knows. He helped me bury him in the latrine. Pistol, too. Now, I’m telling you. Don’t know as I’ll ever be the same again, Daddy. Doing evil to ward off evil. Don’t know who that makes me now.”
“You my son. That’s who you is. No way you could be other.”
“Yes, sir.”
“He in the latrine?”
“Yes, sir.”
“So stench just mingled and wasn’t nobody looking under their nose for that deserter.”
“No, sir.”
“What you planning on, son?”
“I don’t know, Daddy. Maybe go North. Get away from this.”
“You think you be any safer that away. Killing a Union man?”
“Don’t know as I can tell that, Daddy.”
“No, son, life ain’t laid out so one can tell the next curve one way or the other.”
Lucian knelt beside his father. “You gone be able to love a killer, Daddy?”
Benjamin took Lucian’s wide jaw in both his hands, fingered the high bones of his cheeks. Benjamin raised Lucian’s chin, locking his gaze, knowing he looked into the dark eyes of a man who no longer knew himself.
“Who I love,” Benjamin said, “is my son.”
CHAPTER 38
Adeline loved the dark of the early morning, rising from the warmth of her covers to reignite the embers of the banked fire. The chill of the room energized her while she watched the wakening flame. She lit a straw from the hearth broom and guarded the tiny flame as she crossed the room to light the lantern. She’d had this lantern most all her married life, and it comforted her now on her way across the yard to the kitchen. She set the lamp aside and bent to light the kindling. It caught and the stove readied itself for her eggs. Her ham was long gone, but the scent of yesterday’s cornbread warmed the room.
Lifting her lantern, Adeline stepped down from the kitchen and crossed to the shed, where Thomas would be sprawled, cradling a bottle, or curled round it like a baby. On the floor lay other bottles from other nights. She was never sure how he managed to get them, though egg money was often missing. She studied him, this husband of hers, this man she no longer knew as a man. He is gone, she thought. His children are gone. Perhaps I am gone. She extinguished the lantern and returned to her kitchen. The almost light of early dawn guided her feet. She could have walked this worn pathway blind.
Settled in the light of the stove, Adeline rested her hand on the journal. Benjamin had found it in Charles’s office and brought it to her after the confrontation with Emily. Without the courage to open it, Adeline had dropped the slim volume into a drawer. The book had remained in its hiding place all this time, until last week when, imprisoned in the house by the rains, she had resolved to read it. And she had. Now she struggled with what to do. She ruffled the pages and pushed the book aside.
Adeline sipped her coffee, played at the eggs with her fork, lifted them butter-soft to her tongue. She swallowed. Grief flooded her, penetrated her bones. She lay her head on her folded arms and let it come.
From a great distance, the low mooing of a cow penetrated the vast pain of her awareness. Daylight had slipped into the room. Adeline stirred. She raised her head. The coffee was cold. She rose and threw the dregs out the door. She would not die. She would live her life alone.
Alone is not lost, she thought. Alone is still alive, and I am alive. She poured another cup of coffee, dipped the remaining cornbread into it, and held the bitter crumbs against her tongue. Yes, alone would have to do. There was no remedy for alone.
* * *
The egg was still warm from the nest, straw stuck to its side as Lambert placed it in Emily’s hand. It was neither brown nor white, but a luminous blue, and clear as the morning sky. She held it as if a jewel had materialized in her palm.
“See that nothing-looking hen over there with the bluish feet?” Lambert said. “Looks like she forgot to come in out of the cold. It’s from her. She’ll give you a fresh one every day near about. They’re not blue inside, of course. Looks just like any other old egg. But you can have blue eggs for breakfast, a blue egg for a new day, like Easter all year long.”
The chickens became Emily’s calling, as they had been in her childhood. She delighted in them—how they squawked and scratched around the gate, their heads bobbing, eyeing her sideways as she tossed out corn she brought bundled in her apron. Emily knew each one and named them—Lucy, Juliana, Sylvie, Greta—the way her father had named his cows. She loved their gawky feet, the array of colors to those skinny, scary feet: yellow, brownish, almost white, and the blues from that one strange hen Lambert had made considerable effort to find for her. With those wintry-looking feet came the gift of spring-hued eggs, which he presented to her fresh boiled and warm every morning for breakfast, a daily reminder that life goes on.
* * *
Wood sizzled in the firebox, and bright coals flickered in its dark interior. With a scrap of blue quilt, Emily lifted the coffeepot and poured. Outside on the step, she studied Lambert’s profile against the emerging light. He had the plow on its side, filing at the back edge. As she approached, Lambert rose without turning. She stood beside him, her feet bare against the chill earth. The steaming cup warmed her palms. Emily handed it to him; his fingers were chilled from filing the plow. They stood in the cool air, looking out over the land as the horizon cleared with the rising sun.
“I love this time of day,” Lambert said as he sipped the coffee. “Something about the light. And the smell of the earth. Like everything comes around new.”
Emily smiled and touched his bare forearm, tucked up the fold of his shi
rtsleeve.
“Having the plow in my hand settles me inside,” he said, rolling the cup in his hands. “Something about the sound of the file shushing away the dull edge. I know it just goes back in the dirt, but it has a rhythm, like life, the plow does. It keeps you walking slow enough to see the world.”
Emily held out her hands for the empty cup. She saw he was studying her.
“I am with child,” she said.
“Ah,” he said, and she felt his coffee-warmed hand on her belly.
Emily leaned her head into his shoulder, letting her belly slide into the assurance and comfort of his palm. With her arm around his neck, the still-warm cup dangled against his spine. This man, she thought. This man will be a father, this man who thought to live out his life alone, this man who has loved me from afar in all these years of grief and sorrow, longer even, through my girlhood. Had I known, she thought, would I have chosen differently? Would this have been my life instead of that? No use to go there. None at all. It had been what it had been. Now she was here with Lambert beside the plow with its gleaming edge, his arm around her, his hand on her belly where their child together waited. She was not afraid.
CHAPTER 39
Lambert relished the sight of Emily holding their son. He was charmed at every new aspect of his wife: the way she dug worms, played with the children, chased lightning bugs, and handled a plow. He experienced joy just watching her. Joy in the life that had become his, and the baby she placed in his arms when the time arrived. They agreed to name him Will, after the brother for whom she still grieved. Rosa Claire wanted to know how the baby had told them his name.
The farm went on as always. Lambert rested his saw on the ground and looked up. Emily stood at the edge of the yard, an old blue-checked dress hanging loosely about her. Without petticoats, she appeared insubstantial, even in the leftover swelling of her pregnancy. Lambert removed his hat, brushed his brow with his forearm, and started toward her. Sweat trickled from his temples into the corners of his eyes. There was sawdust in his eyelashes. Emily raised her hand. Overhead, a breeze unsettled the leaves of the sapling Lambert was cutting. Both of them shaded their eyes from a glint of sun on the saw blade. Lambert reached for her.
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