Linda Goodnight - The Memory House

“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.”