© 2012 by Diana Lesire Brandmeyer
Print ISBN 978-1-61626-571-7
eBook Editions:
Adobe Digital Edition (.epub) 978-1-60742-838-1
Kindle and MobiPocket Edition (.prc) 978-1-60742-839-8
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted for commercial purposes, except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without written permission of the publisher.
All scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental.
Cover design: Faceout Studio, www.faceoutstudio.com
Published by Barbour Publishing, Inc., P.O. Box 719, Uhrichsville, Ohio 44683, www.barbourbooks.com
Our mission is to publish and distribute inspirational products offering exceptional value and biblical encouragement to the masses.
Printed in the United States of America.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Discussion Questions
Author Bio
Dedication
God has placed amazing women in my life to help me on my journey.
Barbara Schlapkohl, Barb Friederich, Luanne Burkholder, Brenda Singleton, Terry Stretch, Debbie Wright, Patty Wiesner, and Marty Lintvedt—thank you for carrying me in prayer. Jennifer Tiszai, without you this book wouldn’t be.
Prologue
Travis Logan leaned over the deck railing and watched the river swirl and froth as the steamboat shoved its way through the muddy Mississippi. An older gentleman stood next to him. Travis hadn’t seen him on board before. “Nice out here on the water.”
“Better than down below.” The man swayed. “Are you feeling okay, sir?” Travis reached over and steadied him while he grasped the railing.
“Must be the motion. It’s the first trip I’ve taken on a big ship.” The man’s knuckles were white.
The man did look a bit green. Some people couldn’t handle the rhythm of the ship. “The fresh air should help.” Travis relaxed. Other than suggesting a piece of ginger to settle the man’s stomach, there was little he could do for seasickness as a doctor. And he’d left that life behind. Now a horse claimed his thoughts and his future. He walked a few paces away and then stopped. He should offer the man some assistance, maybe collect a family member? He turned back to ask, “Can I get someone for you?”
The man released the rail and dropped to the steamboat deck with a thud.
Travis’s physician training kicked his future out of the way. He automatically knelt and felt for a pulse. It was there. Weak, but there.
“Sir, can you hear me?”
No response came from the man. Sweat beads swelled on his forehead and dripped down his neck. Either the man had succumbed to heatstroke, or worse, had some kind of fever. Pricks of fear stabbed Travis’s neck. He’d been at the bedside of too many men who succumbed to a fever during the War Between the States. And he couldn’t prevent their deaths.
Feet shuffled around him as a small crowd of passengers gathered in a half circle to gawk and whisper.
“Someone go after the ship’s doctor.” He didn’t mind giving that order. It would be best for the man and Travis.
“Doctor got off at the last stop in Cairo, Illinois. We’re picking up the new one in St. Louis,” a deckhand propping himself up with a mop called from behind the crowd.
Travis’s jaw tightened. “Anyone know this man’s name? Where his cabin is?” He searched faces for some indication of recognition and saw none.
There were mumbles as the man’s identity was discussed, but no clear response came other than he’d been seen boarding the ship in Memphis alone.
A flock of seagulls squawked as they flew overhead, casting shadows that flittered across the unconscious man’s face.
“Is there an infirmary at least? Perhaps the captain can look in on him.” Travis didn’t want to announce he was a doctor. If he did, he’d likely be pressed into service until St. Louis.
“There’s a room he used a few floors below deck.”
“Let’s take him there then. I’ll help you get him there.” He hoped the captain would take charge of the patient, leaving Travis to go back to planning his life as a horse breeder.
The deckhand propped his mop between a brass spittoon and the rail. The wooden handle clunked against the brass.
Travis draped the older man’s arm around his shoulder and waited for the deckhand to do the same. Then they lifted him.
“Where we going?” The man rallied for a moment. “I don’t feel so good.”
“We’re taking you to the infirmary, sir. What’s your name?” Travis hoped for details, but none came.
After a while, the man woke. During his short lucid periods, Travis learned his name was Caleb Wharton from Friendship, Tennessee. More importantly, before dying, Caleb Wharton had given Travis the deed to his land and offered him heaven.
Chapter 1
With a short piece of cinder, eighteen-year-old Heaven Wharton scratched another vertical line between the logs across the rough chinking. According to the marks, Pa had been gone now for almost ninety days. She set the cinder on the protruding edge of the log just over the marks and out of reach of her little sister, Angel’s, hands.
“Angel, it’s time to get up.” Quiet from her parents’ bedroom seeped into the kitchen.
Gathering the hem of her work apron, she wiped the cinder from her fingertips. She let the smudged fabric fall and settle against her black skirt. She hadn’t heard from Pa since he left. Their supplies were running low, and it was four weeks until Christmas. If he didn’t send for them soon, she’d have to go into town. She hated going there without Pa. She didn’t have his friendly way about her when it came to Angel. He could make a stranger change his tune about treating Angel like a broken doll. And the stranger would be friends with Pa before he moved on. Heaven just got mad, and angry words sparked from her tongue in defense of her sister. No, she didn’t look forward to going into town without Pa.
Soft footsteps shuffled behind her. She felt her face tighten. This wasn’t the life she’d been brought up to live. “Go back and put on your shoes, please.” Her sister’s stockings would be filthy.
“I’m sorry. I forgot.” Footsteps thudded against the plank floor as Angel went back for her shoes.
Heaven’s fingers gripped into fists. That was Angel’s last clean pair of socks. They’d have to wash this morning, even though it wasn’t wash day, so she would have dry ones by tonight.
Angel returned with her feet covered. “Do you think we’ll hear from Pa today?” Her eleven-year-old sister had asked that question every
day since their father had left.
“I hope so, Angel. We’ll keep praying for him, just like we do every night before bedtime.” Pa had left them behind in Tennessee and gone to look for work at the new Union Stock Yard and Transit Company in Chicago. He promised to send money so they could join him. So far he hadn’t even sent a letter.
“I wish Ma were still alive. Then we wouldn’t be by ourselves.” Angel’s blond curls were a tangled mess, and her unfocused blue eyes still held the sleepy morning look.
Heaven stooped and gathered the small girl into her arms, attempting to hug her own sadness away with Angel’s. “Me, too. But she’s not, so we’re going to be strong, right? The Wharton women are capable, that’s what Pa says, and that’s what we are—Wharton women.” Heaven wished for the same confidence she’d used in her tone. Instead, her stomach looped into a knot and pulled tight. If Pa didn’t come home soon, she wasn’t quite sure what she would do. Thankfully, it wasn’t spring, so she didn’t have to worry about plowing, and her great-uncle seemed to have had an affinity for green beans. There had to be a hundred jars of them in the cellar, but without Pa around, they hadn’t been able to get fresh meat. She’d tried shooting rabbits, but she always missed. There were a few pieces of smoked beef and ham in the spring cellar that would take them through another month. After that, Heaven realized she’d have to leave Angel in the cabin while she went out to hunt something bigger and slower.
And what will I do when I kill it?
Her parents had sold their beautiful home and moved into this little two-room cabin in Friendship because Pa had been fearful the battle might reach Nashville. At least that was the story they told their daughters, but Heaven found out it was because her pa had lost the house in a game of cards. Turned out moving from Nashville kept them from being killed in the war. And Heaven and Angel were safe, but not her mother. Her parents should have taken the offer of Heaven’s friend, Annabelle. Annabelle’s father offered to let them live in their carriage house. Her father was too proud to do that, Ma said. At least there she knew what to do and suspected she would still have her ma.
Now Heaven had been left in charge without the knowledge she needed to run a home without help. They had been to the only church in town a few times, not often enough to make any friends, at least not any close friends like she had in Nashville.
In Nashville they had floors that gleamed from wax. Here the floor was made of rough wood planks, and crawling creatures had made their way into the cabin all summer. Now that it was cold, it was the mice they had to worry about.
In Nashville, before the war, she only had to worry about small things. Would she be able to get to the Sunday social if it rained? Would Jake like her new hair ribbon?
At the thought of Jake, molasses-thick sadness filled her soul. Things would have been different if he’d returned from the war. But that was before. She had to remember that life was over because of that awful war, and she had to set it behind her.
Now they were farmers. “We are starting a new life,” Ma had said as they packed a wagon a year ago with the belongings they hadn’t sold. “Be thankful your great-uncle Neal left us his farm when he died, and we have a place to live.”
“If Wharton women are strong, how come Ma died from typhoid last spring?” Angel tugged her fingers through her tangled curls.
“Sometimes things don’t make sense.” Like now. Heaven, at eighteen, should be married to Jake and living in her own home, maybe with a baby on the way and one on her knee. Instead, the war had taken her intended, the fever had taken her ma, and now it looked like Chicago had taken her pa. Her hand fluttered to her neck and she caressed the lorgnette her mother used to wear. “Did you fold up your nightdress and put it under the pillow?”
Angel shook her head no.
“Please see to it then.”
While Angel did as asked, Heaven stood in front of the cookstove, thankful to her great-uncle that she didn’t have to cook over an open fire, and gave their breakfast a quick stir. It would be ready soon. She gave the spoon a sharp tap on the edge of the pan to clean it and then set it to the side on a small plate that rested on the warming shelf.
“All done. I don’t know why we have to be so neat about things.” Angel plopped her hands on her hips. “We don’t have any visitors.”
“It wouldn’t do to have a messy house. Proper ladies keep their houses in order in case someone should drop by for a visit.” She plucked Angel’s cap off the branch their mother had hung on the wall next to the stove to hold their hats and wet things. “We need to gather the eggs, and when we come back in, the porridge will be ready.” She placed the scratchy, black wool cap in her sister’s hand.
With a sigh, Angel set it on top of her head and yanked on the sides. “I could do the chickens myself, you know.”
“Soon.”
“You say that every day.” Angel’s lips drew into a pout.
“And I mean it.” Heaven helped her sister with her coat and wrapped a black knitted scarf around her throat. She wouldn’t take a chance that Angel would get ill. Then she slipped on her own coat and looped the egg basket over her arm.
The cold end-of-November rain that threatened earlier when Heaven went to milk their cow made good on its promise. Big plops of water pelted them as the girls stepped off the porch.
Angel stretched out her hand and waited for Heaven to grasp it.
The chicken coop wasn’t far, but there was still enough distance for the rain to trickle down Heaven’s neck and make a trail between her shoulder blades. She shivered and wished she’d wound a scarf around her own neck even if it was that awful black. She loved her ma, but she was tired of wearing mourning clothes.
Reaching the slanted door of the chicken coop, Heaven let go of Angel’s hand to yank the metal handle on the ill-fitting door. The wood, swollen from the rain, held tight to its frame. It took several strong pulls before it gave way. Inside, the small structure held little heat, and the missing chinking between some of the logs let in the only light. The wind blew rain through the doorway. A few of the chickens were on their nests clucking, still getting ready to lay eggs.
The rain intensified, pinging against the tin roof. The chickens that weren’t laying scurried around Heaven’s feet, pecking at her ankles, reminding her they wanted to be fed.
Angel felt along the side walls where the chickens roosted on shelves. As her hand touched fluffed feathers, a loud squawk sounded.
“I’d say she has an egg for us today. Be quick or she’ll peck you.” Heaven tossed dried corn kernels onto the straw-covered floor. The chickens pecked and bickered with each other as they searched for the grain. The black rooster flapped his wings and crowed and pushed aside a hen to collect his breakfast.
Her sister slid her hand under a speckled hen, pulled out an egg without getting pecked, and held it up. “Is it a golden egg?”
“Not on the outside. It’s a brown one.”
“Do you think we’ll ever find a golden egg?”
Heaven winced. If only it were possible for that to happen. “I don’t think so, Angel. Our riches come from God, remember?” Heaven nudged the handwoven gathering basket into Angel’s arm.
“Then I’m going to ask him to send us a golden egg so we can get our steamboat tickets and go where Pa is.” Angel’s mouth twisted while she worked her free hand through the air, finding the rim of the basket. She traced the edge then nestled the egg inside before turning back to search for more eggs.
“I don’t like November. Do you, Heaven?”
“Hadn’t thought about it much. I guess it’s not my favorite month since the sky always seems gray and the leaves have dropped to the ground. I like October when the sun hits the leaves and they look like they’re on fire.”
“Ouch!” Angel’s hand came away from the hen with the egg. “Got it anyway, you old meanie. Jake said your hair looks like that when the sunshine sometimes lands on it.”
“You remember that?” Heaven touched
her strawberry blond waves, remembering how, when the sun brought out the red, Jake would call it his special fire that warmed his heart.
“I remember lots of things.”
Heaven knew her sister would soon want to talk about memories too painful to discuss if she didn’t change the direction of the conversation. “What’s your favorite month, Angel? I bet it’s a summer one, because you like to get in the creek with a bar of fancy soap.”
“No, it’s not. It’s December. I know that’s when baby Jesus was born, but I like it ‘cause we always get a stick of candy and a little gift.” Angel’s brow furrowed. “Is that bad, Heaven? Would Ma be mad at me for saying that?”
Heaven bent over and kissed the top of her sister’s head, inhaling the scent of the woodstove that snuggled in her hair. “No, I think Ma would understand.” She handed the egg basket to Angel to carry back. “This is your chore, remember?” “I know.”
The wind whistled through the cracks in the coop. Heaven shivered. Winter was pressing down on them. “I think we should go to town today. It’s only going to get colder, and we need to stock up on a few things just in case Pa isn’t able to send for us before Christmas.”
“I like going into Friendship. Are we going to take the wagon?”
Heaven laughed. “No, I don’t think we will be purchasing that much today. We’ll take our basket and walk.”
“We can’t even ride Charlie into town? Even though it’s raining?” Angel begged. “Please?”
Heaven sucked in a breath. What had she been thinking? It was raining, and Angel could catch a cold, which could lead to something more serious. “Maybe we should wait until tomorrow when the sun might be out, and it would be a more pleasant journey.”
“No! Let’s go today. We can take Charlie, and it’s not raining that hard. We can drape Great-Uncle Neal’s old overcoat on top of us to stay dry. Please, Heaven.” Angel folded her hands into prayer hands, her fingertips touching her chin. “It’s been forever since we’ve seen a single person besides ourselves.”
“What if we stayed home and baked a cake instead?” Heaven was sure that bribe would work. They hadn’t made a cake in a long time, and now that she’d offered to do it, she regretted it. There probably wasn’t enough flour to make one since the mice had discovered it.
Bride's Dilemma in Friendship, Tennessee Page 1
