“It’s me.” He loosened his hold on Alaina and gazed to where Mama and Papa McKenna and Zeke had gathered on the porch.
“My son … my son is home.”
“Glory be!” Papa McKenna shouted the words.
“I knowed you’d come home.” The happiness in Zeke’s voice was unmistakable.
Braeden greeted his parents with hugs and kisses then turned to Zeke. “My faithful, valiant friend.”
The men clasped hands and gave each other a light embrace.
“I tole ever’one you’d be back fer Christmas.”
Braeden chuckled. “You were right.” He turned to his parents. “Where’s Kirk?”
Papa McKenna dropped his gaze and shook his head sadly.
“No … no, not Kirk …”
“It’s true, son.” Mama McKenna’s voice shook.
Braeden’s did as well. “Michael?”
“Lost an arm, but he’s alive. He left for Texas just this morning.”
“I’m disappointed.”
“He got discouraged, son … like us all, I’m afraid. The Wheeler place is in sorry shape, and … well, you’ll soon see. Our farm was nearly destroyed, too.”
“Things are going to change now.” Braeden spoke with a manner of confidence. “We’ll build this place back up. I’ve got the funds.” He put an arm around each of his parents. “Mama, Papa, I’m going to build you a nice house of your own.” He grinned sheepishly. “See, Laina and I are going to fill this one up with children.”
Alaina blushed, grateful no one could see it.
“And, Zeke, you’re a free man now. You need your own home, and you’re due a plot of land. I’m thinking it’s high time you found a pretty woman and settled down. Seems only fitting that you take a share of the McKenna property. You love it as much as we all do.”
“Yessuh!” Zeke’s wide, toothy smile shone like moonlight.
“You have … funds?” Papa McKenna asked. “Braeden, where have you been?”
He took Alaina’s hand. “I’ll tell you all about it if Mama will make some good, strong coffee to warm my insides.”
“There’s no coffee, Braeden,” Mama McKenna told him.
“Then it’s a good thing I brought some. I brought a sack of flour too. And sugar, butter, and—”
“How on earth did you do that?” His mother’s shaking hand hovered over her heart.
“Bought it, Mama.” Braeden laughed. “It’s part of a long story.”
“Well, first things first.” Papa McKenna coaxed him into the house. “You need dry clothes. Go on and change. Zeke and I will unpack for you.”
“All right. Thanks.” He shook the moisture from his hat. “There’s a lot to get put away, Mama.”
“Alaina will help me.”
She almost groaned aloud. She’d much rather run up the stairs after Braeden, although they had the rest of their lives to spend together.
As they unpacked Braeden’s saddlebags, both she and Mama McKenna marveled at the extraordinary bounty.
“We can have biscuits tomorrow with our Christmas dinner.” Papa McKenna licked his lips in anticipation.
“I can bake a blackberry pie.” Mama McKenna shook her head. “This truly is amazing.”
Zeke made a fire in the hearth. “I jus’ wish Mistah Braedn would’ve brung that pretty woman for me to settle down with.”
They all shared a laugh. Good humor didn’t seem so out of place anymore.
Finally, dried off and changed, Braeden reentered the room. Alaina’s pulse quickened when he neared.
“I can’t believe that I’m looking at you. It’s like a dream.”
“And I can hardly believe you’re really home.” She remembered what he said earlier. “Why did you think I’d passed on?”
He led her to a chair near the fire, sat, and pulled her onto his lap. Under the circumstances, she didn’t care that her in-laws glimpsed such a bold display of affection.
She touched his beard, afraid to take her eyes off him lest he disappear like one of her visions of happier times. He looked different … older, and his reddish-blond whiskers certainly added distinction. But he appeared healthy too. His shoulders were just as broad as she remembered, his forearms strong and powerful. He hadn’t come home half-starved as most Confederate soldiers, and he certainly hadn’t lost his zest for life.
“I got wounded in Virginia,” he began. “I took a bullet in my right side, but it went clean through and out my back without hitting any major organs. Then I got captured. The Federal commander, however, was a Christian man and took pity on us wounded Rebels. He ordered his doctor to tend to our injuries and allowed us to rest two days before we made the march north to the prison in Maryland. Prison camp.” Braeden gave a wag of his blond head and stared into his coffee. “It was an unspeakable horror, but I survived.”
Inhaling deeply, he continued. “We’d all read about Sherman’s march through the South, the burning of Columbia. I worried about you all.” He looked pointedly at Alaina. “Shortly after my arrival at the prison camp, Ambrose Powell, a good friend of Jennifer Marie’s aunt in Charleston, got captured and ended up there too. He told me that Jennifer Marie died of the smallpox, and that—” Braeden paused to choke down the obvious emotion. He stared into Alain’s eyes. “He told me he heard you’d died too.” He glanced across the way. “And, you, Mama … Papa.”
“Oh, Braeden—” Alaina rested her forehead against his temple. “How awful for you.”
For several moments, a heavy silence hung in the air.
“When the war ended,” Braeden continued, “and I got released with all the others, I was as skinny as a reed and weak as a kitten. I knew I’d never make it back to South Carolina alive. From the information I’d been given, I figured there was nothing to come home to. I managed to straggle into the nearest town, and as I was sitting on a bench, despairing about my situation, the Union commander who’d apprehended me on the battlefield crossed the street to shake my hand like we were old friends. I hated him for a good long minute, until he said we were brothers—brothers in Christ. We were brothers against brothers in this awful war, but now, he told me, it was time to reconcile. I ended up forgiving him, and he offered me a job. Working on the railroad, repairing track.”
“The railroad!” Alaina wanted to smack him. She hugged him instead. “I should have known.”
Braeden chuckled. “I got two hundred dollars in gold just for signing on. I accepted a six-month term and earned one hundred dollars a month. I was fed three hearty meals a day and soon got my strength back. At first I wondered if my position was traitorous but soon decided quite the opposite, since the railroads will eventually help the South get back on its feet.”
“That’s true, son.” Papa McKenna kneaded his jaw.
“Then at last my contract was up. I prayed about what to do, and the Lord prompted me to head home. I couldn’t guess why, because I expected nothing to be left, no family, no house, no farm. But God wouldn’t allow me to do anything else. I felt no peace until I decided to make the trek back here. I purchased a couple of horses and supplies along the way. As I got closer to Columbia, the devastation made me sick. These last few miles were the worst. I mourned all over again the loss of the love of my life.” His arm tightened around Alaina.
Hot tears filled her eyes.
“And I mourned my parents, whom I thought were dead too. I had hoped maybe I’d find Kirk, Michael, or Zeke. But then, as I came around the bend, I saw the house all lit up.” Braeden chuckled, although emotion pooled in his amber-brown eyes. “I gaped for a full minute. The lighted windows shone right into my soul.”
“Lighted windows?” A frown creased Mama McKenna’s brow. “So that’s what those candles were all about. I’d wondered, but in all the commotion, I haven’t had a chance to ask.”
“I put the tapers there.” She clung to Braeden. “It was my prayer that their special light would guide my husband home.”
He kissed her. “They d
id. They surely did.” He smiled. “Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas.” Like an added blessing from Heaven, Alaina recalled a passage of scripture from the Book of Isaiah, and it sent her heart soaring. For the Lord shall be thine everlasting light and the days of thy mourning shall be ended. She stared deeply into his eyes. “Apart from our Savior’s birth, this is the best Christmas ever!”
Everlasting Light - A Civil War Romance Novella Page 8
