George shook his head. “Not any—”
“She is family,” he said again, louder. “She stays. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m late for work.”
“See if some of the courage of those wounded soldiers can rub off on you today!” George’s voice chased after Edward as he slammed the door behind him. If only it were as easy to shut out the bitterness taking root in his heart.
“Get me out of here,” George muttered to his manservant. “I’ll breakfast in my chamber.”
“Very good, sir.”
Vivian watched helplessly as her brother, once so tall and strong as an ox, was wheeled away.
She was alone. Again.
Vivian McKae had dreamed of seeing her big brother again. But in her dreams, he had wanted to see her, too. Why had she not imagined it would turn out this way? Why had she not guessed that his home would be a cave, and that he would be a shell of a man himself? It was not his physical injuries that concerned her, but the damage that had clearly been done to his soul.
Still standing, she propped her fists on her slender hips. She had work to do.
Mr. Schaefer passed by in the hall, on his way, she presumed, to the kitchen. By the time he reappeared with a tray of food, she intercepted him.
“I’ll take that to him, thank you.”
He frowned. “Thank you, but I should do it myself. I’ll need to feed him, too, you understand.”
“I can do that, too. We’re family.” She took the tray from the servant before another protest could form on his lips, and favored her sore ankle all the way down the hall to George’s room.
She tapped on the door before pushing it open. His wheelchair was pushed up to a small round table in front of the dormant marble fireplace. His face was drawn, his charcoal hair, peppered with grey, slightly askew. George’s spirit seemed as lifeless as his limbs. But somewhere in there was the brother she had once known.
“Let’s try this again, shall we?” she said as she sat the tray on the table and removed the cover. She pulled a needlepoint chair close to him. “Good morning, George, it’s so good to see you again. How long has it been? Twenty-three years? Twenty-four?”
“Not long enough.” He glared at her, his grey eyes cold and drooping as much as his mustache. “Where’s Schaefer?”
“I told him I could take care of you. Just as you took care of me.”
“Now listen, I told you—”
“Oh hush. I’m not being sarcastic. There was a time when you did care for me, and very faithfully I might add. I would have been lost without you right after Mother and Father died. But you brought me to New York City with you and provided for me out of your own salary. Do you remember that?” Vivian had been fourteen years old at the time, and George twenty. He had managed the sale of their father’s entire estate and the relocation from Buffalo to New York City.
She smiled at the memory, and he frowned in equal proportion. “I adored you, George. Do you hear me? It’s what little sisters do. You were the sun and the moon to me before I married James.”
He grunted and looked away.
Her gaze landed on heavy velvet drapes still encasing the windows. “Let’s let some sunshine in, shall we?” She crossed the room and shoved the curtains apart. Light spilled onto the floor.
“This room will bake like an oven later with the sun coming in like that.”
“Then I’ll draw the curtains later. Hungry?” She returned to her seat and picked up a piece of toast smothered in raspberry jam.
“I seem to have lost my appetite.”
“Are you certain?”
“Terribly.”
“Then do you mind? Thank you.” She took a bite of his toast and relished the jam on her tongue, raspberry seeds and all.
“Congratulations, Vivian. Just look at what’s become of you.”
She swallowed. Tucked a strand of black hair back into its bun. Yes, she was thin. And dressed in a threadbare, patched calico dress. But she was clean since availing herself of George’s water closet.
“You look like dung.”
Vivian dabbed a linen napkin to her lips, hiding the tremble of her chin. “Sticks and stones.”
“No. Truly. You are the very embodiment of the slums. Starving. Sallow. And I dare say you look older than me though I know you are only forty-three.”
Dishes clattered as she slammed her napkin on the table. “I asked you for help!”
“I did help you.”
“Only when it suited.”
“And you didn’t suit yourself?”
Vivian sighed, placed her hands in her lap, and squeezed fistfuls of her thin skirt. “It broke my heart that your Sarah died when Edward was only one. No one could have guessed that she would have contracted yellow fever on her trip to New Orleans with you. I was happy to help raise him. I loved him, I loved you. I still do.”
“The devil you did. You left us.”
“Not for three years.”
“You left us!” he shouted, eyes blazing, jowls quivering. “You left me. After Mother and Father died, after Sarah died, you left me.”
“I was nineteen!”
“I was your brother! I was your family!”
“You still are.”
He shook his head. “No. No. You chose poverty over provision, an immigrant laborer over me and Edward. I’ll never understand you.”
“I chose love, George. Surely you can understand that.” And heaven help me, I choose to love you again, too.
“Love. What do you have to show for it?”
“Enough happy memories to live on for the rest of my life. A son and a daughter.” She would not let her mind wander past James’s death.
“Yes? And what has become of the children of a poor immigrant who feeds his family love instead of food?”
“Jack is a soldier. Like you were, George. He is brave and courageous, and has served his country honorably.”
An eyebrow jutted into his forehead. He sniffed. “And the girl?”
“Caitlin—” she broke off. Her mind whirred with possibilities until she clamped down on them. “She is strong and smart.” Her throat closed around unshed tears.
“And?”
“And she will be fine.” Please God … “Are you sure you don’t want any toast? Eggs?”
“I told you no. You might as well eat it yourself; you look as if you hadn’t eaten since before the war started.”
She shook her head. Suddenly, she wasn’t hungry either.
Outside Atlanta, Georgia
Saturday, July 18, 1863
Out here, away from a city swollen with war and throbbing with nationalism, away from rutted roads that pulsed with people, away from fevered factories and screaming trains, Noah Becker could remember what he had loved most about America.
Closing his eyes, he inhaled the pine scent carried by wind that hushed through the trees like a mother to her child. Sugar Creek gurgled and glittered in the sun, hugging banks unsullied by man’s progress. The clink of his horse’s bridle, the drone of cicadas, the drilling of a peckerwood from some unseen branch—it all harmonized in one resounding theme: possibility.
“It’s beautiful here.” Caitlin’s soft voice drew him from his reverie, but did not jar him. She seemed to belong here as much as the dogwood and viburnum did.
“Yes, it is.” He indulged in her velvety brown eyes. The breeze tugged a strand of cinnamon hair from beneath her straw hat, and he fought the urge to brush it from her cheek. She hooked it behind her ear and popped a freshly picked blueberry in her mouth. Her gaze drifted toward Ana and Saul, who stooped to help the girl find sweet gum globes despite his arthritic joints.
“I’m afraid we didn’t come here just to gather.” He pulled his derringer pistol from one pocket, along with a lacquered wooden box. “You need to learn to be the predator or else I fear you may be easy prey. While I’m gone.” He added the last phrase more as a reminder to himself than to clarify what he meant. I’m leaving, he often found himself mutt
ering. I’m leaving. In truth, he may never come back.
All the more reason to equip Caitlin for her task.
“The lawyer is telling me to shoot someone?”
Noah smiled at the irony. And at the freckles dusting her nose. They made her look so innocent, he almost felt guilty placing a gun in her hand. Unfortunately, it was for the best. George Washington Lee’s gang of ruffians patrolled the street with roving eyes and twitching clubs, hunting for anyone without a pass, and anyone who could be considered disloyal to the Confederacy.
“Just showing that you’re armed can dissuade most to leave you alone. I hope you never have to use it.” Noah turned the walnut-handled pistol over in his hand, his thumb grazing the intricate pattern in the metal. Sunlight sparked in Caitlin’s eyes as she watched.
“Now,” Noah continued. “If you do need to pull the trigger in self-defense, calculate your timing carefully. The derringer is for close-up shooting so I’m afraid you will have to let the threat get close before you shoot.”
“How close?”
“Between three and twelve feet.” He nearly cringed even as he said it. If a perpetrator was that close, he could reach her in a fraction of a second. “It fires just once and takes two minutes to reload. So make your shot count.” Noah caught her gaze in his. “If anyone threatens your safety, or Ana’s, you defend yourself. I don’t care what color the uniform. I don’t care if he’s wearing a gunnysack. You stay in control of the situation with a steady hand. Understand?”
She nodded.
“Don’t invite trouble. Don’t go out after dark, don’t go anywhere near the Athenaeum Theater, or the Car Shed. If you catch the scent of whiskey, you turn tail and go the other direction …” He took a breath. “Just use common sense. Stay safe. I’m counting on you.”
“I understand.”
I hope you do … Noah did not tell her about the spike in criminal activity he and the mayor had discussed. The court docket more than doubled in the last year with disorderly conduct, illegal liquor sales, prostitution, larceny, and food theft, even out of the commissary. Attempted murders doubled this year, arson tripled. Fornication, bigamy, and adultery cases were all on the rise. Atlanta was slipping back into its frontier ways of unpunished crime and vigilante justice.
“Now to load the pistol. It will be better if you do it yourself. I’ll walk you through it.”
Caitlin took the derringer from him, hefted the weight of it in her small palm.
“Make sure the hammer is in the down position, resting on the nipple.” He pointed to each part of the gun as he named it. “Next, the gunpowder. That goes in the barrel first, about a teaspoon.” He took a metal flask of powder from the lacquered box and handed it to her.
Caitlin measured out the gunpowder and carefully poured it down the barrel, threads from her frayed sleeves fluttering against her slender wrists. “Like that?” She handed the flask back to Noah, and he replaced the lid and set it back in the box.
“Good.” Reaching back into the box, he retrieved a tiny cloth patch and a round lead ball. “Keep the pistol pointed in a safe direction. Now put the patch over the muzzle of the barrel and then seat the ball over it.”
She did so.
Then, before he could do it himself, Caitlin plucked a small ramrod from the box. He arched his eyebrows.
“Isn’t that next?”
“Indeed. We use the ramrod to tamp down the patch and ball so it sits on top of the powder at the base of the barrel.”
Caitlin had finished that task by the time he finished his explanation. She placed the ramrod back in the box, then half-cocked the hammer. Noah sat back and watched as she reached back in the box for a percussion cap and fit it on the nipple.
“Have you done this before?”
Color leeched from her complexion. “This is the first time I’ve seen a derringer.”
She certainly seemed to be catching on quickly. “Fine. Why don’t you practice firing it?”
Caitlin screwed her mouth to one side, but nodded.
Noah climbed out of the buggy, then helped Caitlin down. With the horse tied to a young hickory tree, Noah and Caitlin swished through bluestem and switchgrass until they were a safe distance away.
“What’s my target?” she asked.
“That dead tree over there.” He pointed in the opposite direction of his horse and buggy. “Do you see the knot on its trunk? See if you can hit that.” It wasn’t far—maybe ten feet away, at the most.
He stood beside her, breathing in the faint, sweet scent of china-berry soap. Strands of her shoulder-length hair tugged free from their pins and reveled in the wind, curling around the scar on her jawline. The thin white ribbon troubled him. She already knew what it was to be in danger. She had escaped it—at least once—but barely. What would happen if Caitlin met a threat again?
With a deep breath, she raised her arm, aimed, and fully cocked the hammer. She squeezed the trigger and the pistol bucked in her hand as a loud crack announced her mark.
Noah stared through the vanishing smoke at the tree for a moment before striding over to inspect her work. His fingers raked the shaggy bark until one of them sunk into her bullet hole. Bull’s-eye. “How did you do that?”
Caitlin dropped the pistol into her pocket. “You are a capital instructor.” Plucking her hat off her head, she twisted her rebellious locks back up beneath their pins, and smashed the hat back down on them.
Suspicion jarred Noah. She taught literature. She should have been far more tentative with a weapon. “Is there anything else you’d like to tell me?”
He had not intended to growl, but her darkening eyes showed him that he had. Her eyebrows plunged downward.
“No.” She spun away from him and stalked off.
Just as Susan had, every time they had an argument. Or a secret. It drove Noah mad then, and it drove him mad now. A nest of hornets swarmed his belly.
“Where are you going?” he bellowed. “The buggy is that way. Unless you’d rather walk the two miles home.”
She froze, lifted her face to the sun and shook her head. When she turned back around to face him, the anger in her eyes seemed to match his own.
“Leave the barking to Rascal, would you please?” She strode past him.
“What did you do, where did you live, before moving to Atlanta?” He bridged the distance between them, the tall grass tugging at his trousers. A fight he could handle. An utter withdrawal, he could not abide. “I would beg you not to walk away from me when we’re having a conversation.”
“We aren’t.”
Fire smoldered in his veins. He wanted to grab her hands, forcing her to stand still and talk this out like a grown-up. “You have secrets,” he said, at length. “Too many secrets. You are a suspicious character in Atlanta, and you had best be more careful!”
“Are you still vexed that I forgot my pass on Monday?” She crossed her arms. “That was an honest mistake, and it ended just fine.”
“Because I was there. Don’t you realize what I’m saying? I’m not going to be here anymore to watch out for you! You with your Northern accent, and your short hair—”
Caitlin let it whip defiantly about her face, the pins guiltless of doing their job. “I don’t have slaves to spend hours pinning up my long hair.”
“And your obvious hatred of slavery in a state that relies upon it, and your unladylike marksmanship … you will land yourself in prison, and for Ana’s sake, I simply must beg you to watch yourself.”
She looked again toward Ana, whose falsetto giggles mingled with Saul’s baritone chuckle over some secret joke thay shared. “I would never do anything to put her in harm’s way. I promise you that.”
“Just—please. Learn to be a little more responsible.”
Her features turned to stone. The light in her eyes snuffed out. “I freely admit I could use lessons in many things, Mr. Becker. Responsibility is not one of them.”
Noah sighed. It was not how he had wanted their outin
g to end. When he offered his hand to help her over the wheel and into her seat, she turned away from him.
Just as Susan had.
New York City
Sunday, July 19, 1863
With the scent of lemon oil still lingering in the parlor, Ruby glanced at the clock and swiped a white-gloved finger over the mantel, checking one last time for dust. Six o’clock. The guests should be arriving soon.
Caroline had arrived home on Friday, all but overflowing with stories from her time nursing with Charlotte and the Sanitary Commission at Gettysburg. Ruby, in turn, had shared tales of their living through the draft riots. When she mentioned that Edward had discovered a long-lost aunt, Caroline had insisted on them both coming for dinner. Edward’s father declined to join them.
Ruby’s heart thudded against her corset as she checked her appearance in the hall mirror. Why should she be so agitated? ’Tis only Edward, she told herself. And his aunt. She straightened her maid’s cap over her dark red hair before smoothing her apron over her skirt. This would be the first time in weeks Edward would see her as a maid. A reminder to both of them that they were not equals, as perhaps she had pretended while Caroline was away. When he came to dine, she would eat in the kitchen with the cook.
For shame. She scolded her reflection, green eyes snapping. The arrangement had never bothered her before. Had she grown ungrateful for the bounty of Caroline’s generosity? May it never be.
Knock knock knock.
Ruby drew a deep breath, then opened the door. A smile bloomed on her face as she noticed Edward’s aunt wore the dress Ruby had made and sent over for her, free of charge, as soon as she heard she was in need of clothing. Her gaze scanned from the hem up, satisfied that the sage-green belted poplin dinner dress fit her frame so well.
And then she gasped.
“Vivian? Vivian McKae?”
Vivian covered her mouth with her hand.
“’Tis me, Ruby!”
“Is it really you?”
“Aye! But what—you canna be—” Ruby frowned, looking from Vivian’s face to Edward’s, and could not decide which of them looked more surprised.
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