The Memory House
Opal, now seated across from him in a green lift-recliner, leaned forward, her fingers curled around the cane like bird claws. “You knew about the boy?”
“Mindy wrote to me.”
“You didn’t write back.”
“I thought it was for the best.” He lifted his palms in a helpless gesture. “Under the circumstances.”
“She said he’s your son.”
“He could be.” The news of Mindy’s pregnancy, received in a letter not long after his incarceration, had hit him like a ton of bricks. He’d felt like the lowlife he’d become. He and Mindy had only been together one long, hot summer before the trial that changed everything, and he’d always been cautious about relationships. But nothing was foolproof.
“Mindy wouldn’t lie. She was dying.”
Eli closed his eyes for a second. How could lively Mindy be dead? “I didn’t know until yesterday. She was too young.”
“Cancer knows no age, young man.” Opal raised her coffee and sipped, watching him with hawk eyes. After a few uncomfortable seconds, she went on. “When she knew the end was coming, she brought him to me, her only living relative. I love the child as I loved his mama. I want what’s best for him.”
Eli breathed a sigh of relief. She loved the boy. She’d take good care of him. “I’ll send money when I can.”
“Money?” Her tone sharpened.
“Child support.”
She tilted closer until he thought she’d tumble from her chair. “Child support?”
Was the woman hard of hearing? “I’m…not working much yet—” A painful admission though he’d long ago lost his pride. “When I do, I’ll send all I can.”
“I’m not asking for your money, Eli Donovan.”
“Isn’t that why you wanted to see me? Child support?”
With a shove of her cane, Opal pushed to a stand and tottered toward him, a dangerous expression on her wrinkled face. “Look at me. I’m eighty-four years old. I have congestive heart failure and diabetes. I can barely toddle around with this stupid cane.”
Dread started at the bottom of Eli’s feet and worked up through his chest and into his brain. Like a wild stallion, his flight instinct kicked in. He knew what was coming. Knew and couldn’t stop her.
“Mindy wanted you to take the boy. You’re his father.” Opal stuck a bony finger in his face. “She expected you to raise him.”
Eli bolted from the chair. “Are you nuts? Do you know where I’ve been all of his life?”
She pointed the cane at his chest. “You’re out now. And you have a son to care for.”
“I don’t belong around kids. I’m not even sure it’s legal.”
“Don’t be stupid. He’s your blood.”
“You don’t understand. I can’t take care of a child.”
A flash of Jessica’s face, bloated and white, floated through his head. Floated the way she had, facedown in the water, while he’d rocked to Michael Jackson through his Sony Walkman headphones.
“I don’t have a home or a steady job and no one wants to hire an ex-con. I’m at the beck and call of a parole officer who doesn’t like me much.” He rammed splayed fingers through his hair, panicked. “I can’t even take a leak without checking in first!”
“Stop raising your voice in my house. Do you want him to hear?”
His heart pounded as if he’d been the one under water too long. “Look, Opal, let’s be reasonable. What you’re asking is impossible. You don’t know me. I’m an ex-con. I am not father material. I wouldn’t know what to do with a kid.”
“Do you think any parent knows anything when their child is born? You’ll learn like everybody else.”
“Impossible.” He couldn’t take responsibility for anyone, especially a child. Dear God, she didn’t know what she was asking!
“Do you know what will become of the boy when I die?”
He shook his head. “Another relative, I suppose.”
“You got family that will take him? Love him?”
The ball of ice in Eli’s chest became an iceberg. “No.”
“All right, then. You’re his only other relative. He’ll go into foster care, into the system.” She spit the last word like profanity.
“Anywhere is better than with me. There are plenty of good foster parents who care for kids.”
“Mindy never wanted that for her baby.”
“I’m sorry, Opal. I can’t do this.” He stalked to the door, torn asunder but certain he was not a fit man to father a child. Ever. “I’ll send money as soon as I can.”
“Mindy defended you. She said you were a good man.” Opal’s thin lips curled. “She was wrong.”
“Yes. She was.” Tormented by the truth, Eli stormed out of the house, across the overgrown yard and into the safe confines of his car. Breathless, his chest aching, he cranked the Dodge, and was out on the streets of Honey Ridge in seconds.
At the corner, Eli stopped at the stop sign and leaned his head on the steering wheel. He was shaking worse than he had on his first day in prison.
He was the worst possible parent for a little boy, a man who had nothing to offer, a man with no future and an ugly past.
Responsibility tightened around his neck like a noose. He had a son. A son who needed him.
And he didn’t even know his name.
5
Peach Orchard Farm
1864
“Lizzy, help me.” The stench of blood and gunpowder strong in her nostrils, Charlotte called to her maid above the unholy clamor echoing through the farmhouse.
The groans and cries of distressed men tore at her compassion and frightened the children into hiding, a mercy, Charlotte thought, to spare them this horror.
Chaos reigned over Peach Orchard Farm while Captain Gadsden shouted orders and men dragged themselves and each other into her house.
With the wounded sprawled on the bare floors of her parlor and dining room, Charlotte pulled sheets from storage and ripped them into long strips. She’d been dismayed at the lack of medical supplies carried by a warring army. Indeed, the bulk of bandages and medicine came from the Portlands’ belongings, not the military.
Lizzy, her dark, deft fingers quick and strong, took up a sheet. “You tend that one. I’ll make the bandages.”
Grateful for her maid’s able assistance, Charlotte poured a basin half-full of water Cook had heated on the stove and knelt beside one of the many men lying on the dining room floor. He wasn’t the first she’d tended during the long wait to see the single, harried surgeon.
“What’s your name?” she said, as she slid scissors under his fragmented shirtsleeve.
Through gritted teeth, the man managed, “Joshua Bates. Will I die?”
Charlotte’s hand paused as she gazed down at the ghastly wound laying bare the bone. The wound alone wouldn’t kill him, but infection was the enemy, as she well knew from her mother’s missions of mercy in the slums of London.
“Only a flesh wound.” At the masculine voice, Charlotte gazed up at Captain Gadsden as he dropped to one knee beside his fallen soldier. They exchanged looks and she saw that he no more believed his words than she did. He placed a hand across the man’s sweaty brow. “You fought bravely today, Private.”
Bates, his face as bleached as new muslin, hissed when Charlotte carefully dabbed at the jagged flesh. A river of blood flowed out. “Would you give him a drink of whiskey, please?”
The captain didn’t hesitate. He held the other man’s head and slowly poured in the numbing liquor while she pressed a bandage into the bullet hole and wrapped a strip of sheet round and round the arm, tying it off with a knot.
“That should stop the bleeding.” She prayed it would, for prayer was the only other help she could give him.
“Have you nursing experience, ma’am?” the captain asked, recapping the bottle of whiskey. Edgar would not be pleased at the loss of his liquor cabinet, the medicine he took for his crippled foot and other ailments.
“My mother cared for the sick. She taught me.” Though nothing of this grisly nature.
Satisfied that she’d done all she could for Bates until the surgeon had more time, she rinsed her hands in the basin and moved on to the next soldier. The captain remained for another moment at Bates’s side. She heard snippets of their soft conversation and from the corner of her eye saw the officer remove a paper from the soldier’s breast pocket, read it and put it back. With another murmured word, he moved to the next man.
From the far side of the room, a man screamed. Charlotte jerked and sloshed water before spinning toward the cry. In three strides Captain Gadsden was there. Together with the help of Lizzy and a soldier with a bloody ear, they pressed the hysterical man back to the floor.
“He ain’t bleeding nowhere,” Lizzy said.
The man’s head thrashed from side to side, his shaggy ginger beard making a swish-swish against his blue shirt. He mumbled disconnected sentences, random words. “Get the bucket. They’re coming. Donald! Donald!”
At the last, he began to keen in a high-pitched wail.
“Is he blind?” Captain Gadsden passed a hand over the staring eyes. No reaction.
Charlotte knelt beside the man, full of pity. “Shh. Shh. You’re safe.”
The young soldier grappled for Charlotte’s hand and bore down hard enough to cause pain. She flinched but didn’t pull away.
“Sally? Sally?”
Dismayed, Charlotte looked to the captain, kneeling on the opposite side. A dozen men in different degrees of distress watched the painful episode.
“Is Sally his wife?”
“Yes.”
“Brain fever, Miss Charlotte,” Lizzy said. “His mind is gone.”
“Captain!” someone called from the doorway. “Come quickly, sir.”
The poor captain appeared torn. So many needs. So many voices calling for him.
There were too many strangers in her house.
“I’ll tend to this man, Captain. Lizzy, is there a potion that would soothe him?”
In caution, Lizzy’s dark eyes cut between her and the captain and the other listeners in the room. Not everyone approved of the maid’s medicines. “I’ll see what I got.”
She scurried from the room just as Charlotte’s husband burst in from outside. He gazed around the scene, bewildered, but quickly settled on Charlotte. In a cold, irate voice, he demanded, “Mrs. Portland!”
Charlotte rose to her knees. “Edgar, please. This man is—”
“In my study. Now!” And he stormed through the parlor with little regard to the sick and injured beneath his feet.
* * *
Charlotte jumped as her husband slammed the study door and strode to his desk. Hands on the wood, he leaned toward her. His face was florid, his mouth tight with anger.
“Have you no decency?”
Charlotte waited with her hands in the folds of her dress. She knew better than to argue.
Edgar slammed his fist onto the desk. In spite of her efforts not to, Charlotte jumped again.
“Speak when I speak to you!”
Her chin came up. “There are wounded men in our house, Edgar, whether we want them or not. It seems indecent not to help them.”
“I don’t want them here.”
“Nor do I, but there is little we can do to stop them. Isn’t cooperating better than being shot?”
“Cooperating? Is that what you call wallowing on the floor with a Yankee?”
“The soldier was out of his head. He didn’t know what he was doing.” She took a step toward him, one hand outstretched in a plea. Edgar always responded better when she asked. “Please allow me this ministry. Tending the sick is the Christian thing to do.”
His face worked for several tense seconds before he cursed and spun toward the narrow window, showing her his back. “Go on, then. Go coddle your Yankees.”
Charlotte waited two beats of time, her knees shaking and her stomach twisted in knots. “Thank you.”
Edgar whirled and shouted, “I said go, woman!”
With what dignity she could muster, Charlotte slipped out the door and was shocked to see the young captain in the hallway.
“Are you all right, ma’am?” he asked quietly.
Heat burned her cheeks. Humiliated but grateful for the kindness, Charlotte nodded.
Moving closer, the captain murmured, “We’ve put you in a difficult situation. I apologize.”
Charlotte glanced toward the closed study, fearful that Edgar would exit the room and cause another scene.
Captain Gadsden took her arm and led her a few feet down the hall. “Could I fetch you a glass of water?”
Her cheeks burned hotter. “I’m fine.”
With a tilt of his head, he released her and started to walk away.
“Captain.”
He turned, holding her with gentle eyes, his head tilted to one side.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
The moment stood still while she and the handsome captain stared at each other in the dim hallway. The floor seemed to shift beneath Charlotte’s feet. Her ears buzzed and she had the strongest urge to reach out to him, this complete stranger who’d offered her more kindness than her own husband.
She sucked in a quick breath, shocked at her thoughts, and hurried back to the groaning soldiers.
6
Peach Orchard Inn Present Day
Valery was late coming down to work, which could mean two things, neither of them good, both of them probable.
Julia served breakfast by herself, relieved they had only four guests this morning. Mr. Oliver came back from his Good Samaritan trip about the time the first couple was leaving the dining room. He slid into place next to a window overlooking the back lawn. Someday she’d have a garden there, and the old carriage house would be a pretty sight instead of a reminder of all that remained unfinished at Peach Orchard Inn. Unfinished. Incomplete. Like her life.
“Did you get the man’s car started?” She delivered Bob’s breakfast plate and a fresh carafe of coffee.
“Fixed him right up. Brought back your cup. I’m afraid the other fellow must have forgotten about his.”
Julia made a face. That’s what she got for noticing the man’s good looks instead of remembering he was a stranger. “I wonder where he was headed. He seemed sort of lost.”
“Said he was going in to Honey Ridge.”
“Really? Does he have family here?”
“I wouldn’t know. He was polite enough and grateful as a pup but tight-lipped and watchful, too, as though he couldn’t believe I was lending a hand.”
“I’ll have to ask Mama. She knows everything that happens in Honey Ridge, usually before it happens.” She smiled at her own joke. “She and the good old boys at the miniature-golf club.”
“You keep telling me about that place. I’m going to have to stop in there sometime.” He dipped a fork into his casserole. “My wife made an appearance yet?”
“Not yet.”
He shook his head and chuckled. “Save her some of this casserole, will you?”
“Like always, I’ll leave a plate in the warmer.” She bussed the other couple’s table while they talked, all the while casting a worried eye toward the entrance. Where was Valery? “Is there anything else I can get for you?”
“No, no. You go on and do what you need to. I know my way around if I want something.”
Julia carried the used dishes into the kitchen and set about putting things in order. Once done, she went back for Bob’s plate and found the dining room empty. Still, Valery hadn’t made an appearance. With a beleaguered sigh, Julia gathered fresh linens for a vacated room and stopped by Valery’s room in the private area of the house.
“Valery.” She tapped at the door. “Valery, wake up.”
She heard a grumble and the thump of feet hitting the floor before the door cracked open. “What?”
Her sister’s brown hair was wild and her eyes bloodshot. Julia’s heart sank. “Oh, Val, not again.”
Valery shut the door in her face. Julia pecked with a little more force, though not enough to disturb their guests upstairs. “I’ll bring coffee. Be out of that bed when I get back.”
Without waiting for a reply, she went for the promised coffee, the only way to flush out the booze Valery must have consumed last night. No wonder she’d forgotten to bring in the flag.
When she returned with the carafe, Julia let herself in with the master key. Valery sat on the side of the bed, holding her head.
“You look like something the cat vomited. Did you see Jed last night?”
“Don’t be grouchy, Julia. We were celebrating our reunion.”
“I thought the two of you were finished.”
“He loves me.”
“He’s not good enough for you.”
“You never liked him. Give me that coffee. I’m croaking of thirst.”
“I don’t like him because he’s not a nice man.” The creep knew Valery had trouble stopping at a couple of drinks. “Here. Take this. I’ve got work to do.”
She softened a bit when Valery’s hands shook, reminding her of the dark stranger—Eli—whose hands had also trembled. Had he been on a binge last night, too? “The guests in the Blueberry Room checked out right after breakfast—which is already over, by the way.”
Valery groaned and pushed up from the bedside. “I’ll get showered and be right up.”
Julia had started toward the door when Valery said, “Julia.”
“What?”
“I only had a couple of drinks.”
Right. “I’ll be in the Blueberry Room.”
7
Peach Orchard Farm
1864
Charlotte closed her Bible and looked out at a morning sky as blue as the robin’s-egg walls of her bedroom.
The ugly incident with Edgar and the subsequent kindness of Captain Gadsden troubled her greatly. She could get neither off her mind.
From this upper-story room she could see the trembling limbs of the orchard with a few rosy peaches still clinging to the branches. Portlands had planted those trees so very long ago, long before she’d come to Tennessee. Long before bloodied strangers invaded the quiet country life.
Directly below the window a tattered score of soldiers milled about the grounds in the gauzy morning, some limping, some bandaged. Four stood guard with rifles to their shoulders. Others lay on the porch where they’d camped since their arrival four days ago. Campfires burned in spots around the summer-green lawn.
An invasion. One that had relegated the Portland family to the second story while the floor below became a hospital for the wounded and quarters for the officers. Inconvenient, and yet the farm had not been completely stripped of supplies; nor had they been driven from their home. And not one resident of Peach Orchard had been molested, a blessed circumstance she credited to Captain Gadsden. He’d kept his promise. He was, she was quite convinced, a good man, perhaps even a godly man, and his soldiers listened to him with respect. Not that they were in any condition to do much else.
She saw him now straight and lean, striding in his long steps, across the lawn, his red trouser stripe a bright flash. Barely daylight, and yet he was up and about and would spend hours in the makeshift hospital ward encouraging his men. She knew because she and the other women of the farm, both white and black, had been pressed into service for the sick. Theirs was a horrifying, heartbreaking task, but how could they do less for men whose mortal souls hung in the balance?
The smell of blood and ether clung to her hands and clothes. During that first long day and night, she’d witnessed grisly, obscene damage that no human form should endure. A merciful God must surely close his eyes in anguish against the barbaric will of man to maim and butcher one another.
Her father, the gentle vicar with too many daughters and too little money, would scarce believe the savagery to which he’d sent his eldest daughter.
Yet, late into the night and against her husband’s wishes, Charlotte made coffee for the surgeon and the sleepless wounded and carried water to groaning souls. During the day, she ripped rags and the few remaining sheets into bandages and wrote letters to wives, mothers and sweethearts in faraway places she’d only seen on Benjamin’s schoolroom maps.
The worst of the ugliness was over for now. Thank the Almighty.
From somewhere inside the house, a hoarse scream shattered the morning and gave the lie to her thoughts. Charlotte squeezed her eyes shut. Such suffering as she’d never witnessed, not even in the slums of London, as the surgeon went about the ghastly chore of removing limbs that showed signs of infection. Twice already, a body had been carted to the family cemetery, northern boys laid to rest in foreign soil next to her premature babies. She’d watched Will Gadsden mourn each soldier and later sit at Edgar’s desk and write a letter to the family. An honorable man, indeed.
A tap sounded on Charlotte’s bedroom door. She turned from her desk with a smile, expecting her only son, the joy of her days. But her eldest sister-in-law charged inside, distraught.
“I can’t stand this anymore, Charlotte. We’re prisoners in our own home. Prisoners and slaves to that bunch of Yankees.”
“Captain Gadsden made it very clear that we are not prisoners of war. We are free to leave.” She was pleased, if surprised, that most of the slaves hadn’t taken the captain at his word but only two, Edgar’s most recent purchases, had disappeared.
“Where would we go? This is our home, not theirs, and I am sick of them infesting every fiber of our lives. Yankees everywhere, groaning and crying. Leaving a mess. Devouring every bite to eat. They’re like a plague of locusts.”
“They’re mere men, Josie, far from home, scared and suffering. There’s little we can do but endure.”
Josie tossed her head. As fiery red as Charlotte was blonde, the twenty-two-year-old wore her cascade of curls in a tight bun, but ringlets slipped out around her face. She was a comely young woman, though her ways were not always gracious. The Portland girls had grown up motherless with only their father and brother as examples, something Charlotte tried to remember when anger flared.
“I suppose you’re going down there again today to play nursemaid like a slave girl.” Josie paced the room. “Well, I tell you, I am not. No matter what that captain says, I refuse to help another Yankee. I don’t know why Edgar stands for this treatment or allows his wife to commiserate with the enemy!”
Charlotte folded her hands against her skirt, refusing to be baited by Josie’s sour mood. She was trying to survive, trying to keep her family together and her home intact in the absence of her husband. Lord above, how could she not show compassion to those damaged souls below?
Edgar, in a helpless fury over the invasion, had departed for the mill on the second day of occupation and had not returned. His anger was directed at her, not unusual but difficult because she had no control over the situation. She wasn’t quite sure what to make of his abandonment but consoled the other women with assurances that Edgar was protecting the gristmill that housed their corn and grain supply. She did not know, however, if that was true. She prayed it was. They could ill afford to lose much more.
“I don’t like this, either, but these injured men are God’s children, too.”
“Let them die, I say. They’re not ours.”
“They’re all ours, Josie,” she said softly. “What if it was your Tom?”
Josie sucked in a gasp, green eyes filled with worry. “We’ve heard nothing in so long. Do you suppose—”
Charlotte touched her shoulder in compassion. “Think the best, and pray that if your Tom should be wounded, someone would show him kindness.”
“I know what you’re saying, but I can’t. And how you can gives question to your loyalty. These horrible, smelly men have taken over our home, raided our smokehouse, and still you shower them with compassion—you wash their fevered faces and wrap their bloody wounds. I don’t understand you.”
Of that, Charlotte was quite aware and full of remorse that she had not become what the Portlands needed. Not Edgar. Not Josie. Only sweet and simple Patience seemed to genuinely care for her. Yet, she would not give up trying. They were her family now.
“Did you not sleep well?” she asked, hoping to mollify her stormy sister-in-law. Josie had suffered insomnia from childhood, a malady that worsened after her fiancé marched away with the Confederacy two years ago.