Today We Go Home

by Kelli Estes

  “We’d best be going,” Pa said. He tipped his hat to his sister and brother-in-law and turned toward the road, David at his side.

  Emily followed them to Aunt Harriet’s garden gate but stayed on the inside when Pa and David stepped onto the road heading north. She dug her fingers into the top rail to stop herself from running after them. Pa didn’t look back at her. He turned his boots north toward Indianapolis where the Indiana regiments were to be formed and mustered into service, and he didn’t look back once. Every few yards, David cast a regretful grin back to her. Emily squeezed harder on the gate and silently willed Pa to turn back and call for her to join them.

  But he didn’t. Nor did he turn to wave before he disappeared around the copse of trees marking the edge of their farm. Emily remained at the gate, barely breathing, waiting to see if they’d come back. Every muscle in her body strained to run after her father and older brother because they were her family and they all needed to be together. Even in war.

  She had been irrational about losing one of them, or so Pa told her, ever since Mama died along with the baby she was trying to bring into the world. That was eleven years ago, and to this day, Emily could remember every horrible cry and scream, and the even more horrible silence that followed. She had been seven at the time, and it had been her job to keep Ben, only a year younger, occupied and out of the house. He had gone off fishing with David so she’d crept back into the kitchen to be the first person to hold their new sibling.

  Instead of a new sibling, she’d gotten a fear so strong and deep that it still controlled her in most decisions regarding her family. She worked hard every day to keep them healthy and together, and now two of them were walking away and she might never see them again.

  “Emily!” Uncle Samuel’s demanding voice ripped her from her thoughts. “Stop wasting daylight and do your chores. Your aunt is waiting for you to construct the beanpoles.”

  She looked toward her uncle and found that everyone, even Ben, had drifted away. Uncle Samuel pointed toward the garden and then, knowing she’d obey, turned and limped into the barn. Samuel had served in the Army during the Mexican War, where he’d met Pa. The story went that Pa had saved Samuel’s life when an enemy musket ripped off a chunk of his leg and Pa pulled him to safety before Santa Anna’s man could finish the job. After the war Samuel had accompanied Pa home, and that’s where he met Harriet and decided to stay.

  Samuel walked with a limp now and had to stop and rest often, which is why he wasn’t marching off with Pa to join up. Emily secretly wondered which side of this war Samuel would join up with if he were able. He’d been raised in Virginia and still had kinfolk down there. Emily and her brothers knew not to talk to him about states’ rights or abolition, and not to even mention the name Lincoln because that would set Samuel off on a tirade none of them wanted to hear.

  Emily searched the road one last time for any sign of Pa coming back for her, but the only thing moving was a cottontail hopping across to nibble young grass on the other side. She finally turned away and saw Ben leading the mule out of the barn to begin the day’s plowing. He was as upset as she about being left behind, she knew, but he hid his emotions better than she did.

  “Come on, Emily,” a little voice said, interrupting her train of thought. “I’ll help you.”

  Emily looked down at her six-year-old cousin just as Ada slipped her tiny hand into hers. Big blue eyes full of sympathy looked up at her. The little girl was the best thing about being left on the farm, Emily decided. She was like a little sister, and Emily had always felt protective of her, what with an angry father and a mother who worked herself to the bone. “Thank you, Ada. I’d like that.”

  Hand in hand, she and Ada walked to the vegetable garden and set to work constructing beanpoles and sowing seeds in the rows Aunt Harriet dug with her hoe. By the end of the day, they’d have spinach, peas, carrots, cabbage, beans, and onions tucked snug in the ground and covered with a thick layer of straw to ward off frost.

  It was one of the longest days of Emily’s life. Despite her aunt’s and uncle’s efforts, she could not stay focused on the tasks at hand, and she found herself constantly shifting her gaze between the close-up work of gardening and the long-distance work of watching the road for Pa and David.

  With each passing hour, she grew more despondent. They were gone.

  Later that night, after she’d helped Aunt Harriet wash the supper dishes, she and Ben walked the path through the potato field to their own house in the light of the quarter moon. “Do you really think the war will take the entire three months of their enlistment?” Emily asked her brother as she clenched her fingers into fists inside her pockets to make them warmer. The temperature had dropped with the sun, and she wore her father’s old work coat buttoned tight to her chin. Her back ached from stooping to plant seeds, but she dared not complain because Ben had struggled all day with the mule and plow. They’d both appreciate their beds this night.

  “Nah. Folks say the secesh aren’t serious. Once their men start dying on the battlefield, they’ll rejoin the Union like that.” He snapped his fingers.

  “Do you think there will be a lot of battles?”

  “There will be some, yes. But don’t you worry. They’ll keep each other safe.”

  They continued walking in silence until they reached their yard, where the house stood completely dark. It was a stark reminder that no one else was inside with a warm fire and welcoming drink. It was just the two of them now.

  In unspoken agreement, they delayed going into the empty house and sat on the porch steps together. “Do you think you’ll settle here when you find a wife someday?” Emily finally asked, more to break the silence than because she wanted to know.

  “Oh, unquestionably,” Ben answered, warming to the subject. “David and I talked about this. Pa says we’ll inherit his half of the farm, and we can split it between us unless one of us moves away. David says he’ll stay, and I want to as well.” Ben snatched a long blade of grass from beside the porch steps and set to work shredding it with his thumbnail.

  Emily sighed and looked out across their fields. “I can’t imagine leaving here, yet it’s all I think about some days.”

  “I don’t know why you turned down Teddy Hobson when he asked you to marry him. You could have your own farm on the other side of town right now and a baby on the way.”

  Emily’s face grew hot at the embarrassing reminder. She hadn’t even known Teddy was interested in her that way until he started coming around last summer, offering her pa help with the chores and lingering until she was forced to invite him to supper. After two weeks of this, he’d asked her one night to walk him to the road, and she’d obliged. It was there that he’d asked her to be his bride. She had been so surprised that she’d failed to take his feelings into account and blurted out, “No!”

  Poor Teddy. He’d started stammering and shuffling his feet, and she’d realized her mistake. “I’m sorry,” she’d tried to explain. “It isn’t that I don’t want to marry you. I can’t right now. My family needs me.” When he still refused to look at anything but his worn boots, she tried again. “I’m all they have as far as cooking and cleaning and mending. They need me. Maybe once David brings a bride home, I can think about it. But not right now.”

  After that, Teddy had not returned to their farm, and whenever she saw him in town, he turned his back to her. Lately, he had Betsy Clayton hanging on his arm.

  Emily tucked her skirts tighter under her legs to avoid the cold seeping from the steps. “I don’t want to marry someone just so I can have my own farm,” she finally said to Ben. “When I marry, it will be because I love him and he loves me.”

  “It sounds to me like you’re going to be hanging around here for a good spell,” Ben teased her. “That’s fine by me. You can be a doting aunt to my children someday and teach them how to climb trees while their mother and I pretend not to see
.”

  Emily burst out laughing, remembering when she’d taught Ben to climb and they’d taken turns dropping from the highest branch of the chestnut tree into the swimming hole. Mama had been furious with her, but that didn’t keep them from repeating the adventure often.

  Across the fields, down by the creek, a lone prairie wolf let out a howl. They fell silent as they waited to see if his pack would respond. Only the sound of a bullfrog answered. A feeling of intense loneliness came over Emily, so strong she had to move to keep it from overwhelming her.

  She pushed to her feet. “Come on, little brother. I’m sure Uncle Samuel has a long list of chores for us tomorrow. We need our rest.”

  “You go on in. I’ll just be a moment.”

  Emily knew Ben was as bothered as she was by being left at home. Maybe even more so, being a man and all. She laid her hand on his shoulder. “Thanks for watching out for me,” she told him. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  “I’ll always watch out for you.” Ben put his hand over hers and gave it a tender squeeze. “Good night, Sister. See you in the morning.”

  “Good night, Ben.” With one last look up the darkened road for any signs of Pa, she finally turned and went into the empty house. In the distance, the prairie wolf howled again. Almost immediately it was joined by several others, all yapping together and setting Uncle Samuel’s coonhound to barking.

  Emily changed into her nightgown and settled at Pa’s desk to write in the diary he had given her, relieved that the prairie wolf wasn’t all alone.

  Chapter Three

  Present day: Lakewood, Washington State

  Larkin read several entries in the diary, until fatigue forced her to set it aside. The handwriting was difficult to decipher at times, and it forced her to go slowly. Plus, there was only so much a person could find interesting in the daily reports of a nineteenth-century farm woman. Sarah had said the diary had inspired her to join the military, but so far, the woman hadn’t stepped foot off her farm.

  The next morning, Larkin woke late to an overcast, drizzly day, which suited her mood perfectly. The storage unit awaited her, as did a dinner with her parents and the final drive to Grams’s house. The only appealing part of any of that would be the very end, when she would see Grams and she would be home.

  She didn’t have to move in with anybody. She had enough savings stashed away to rent an apartment and support herself for a year or so before she had to worry about an income. With her disability rating, it might take that long to find a suitable job. But she wasn’t ready to even think about a job yet, and she wasn’t ready to live alone yet either. She needed safety, love, and, most of all, peace. She needed Grams.

  Like a carrot at the end of a stick, the promised reward of home pulled her through the emotional chore of loading her car with all of Sarah’s belongings. All of Larkin’s stuff had already been shipped to Grams’s, so all she had with her was an overnight bag. There was plenty of room for Sarah’s boxes and bags. When the car was full, Larkin stood beside it with the two lamps in her arms, trying to figure out where they might fit.

  The only available space was on the passenger seat with the urn, but that felt wrong. Disrespectful. As though the urn were just another object and not holding the remnants of her best friend.

  There simply wasn’t room, she decided. The lamps most likely had held no sentimental value for Sarah anyway. And Larkin couldn’t possibly hold on to everything, could she?

  She left them next to the dumpster by the front office. If someone wanted them, they could help themselves.

  With the sun already setting, Larkin steered out of the storage facility’s gates and turned north on Interstate 5. She welcomed all the childhood memories that came to mind as she drove through Tacoma and into Seattle because they kept her from thinking about Sarah and Afghanistan.

  As she drove past Boeing Field, she watched a small jet land in front of the Museum of Flight, where she’d gone on a field trip in fifth grade. All the other girls had been bored, but Larkin had been fascinated. She’d studied every inch of every fighter jet, military helicopter, and bomber there and was the last to board the bus back to the school. In one of her own storage boxes somewhere was a picture of her ten-year-old self smiling from the pilot seat of a McDonnell Douglas F/A-18A Hornet.

  She’d spent eight years in the Army and the four years before that at college in Vermont, which meant she hadn’t spent much time in Seattle in over a dozen years. As she drove through downtown, it seemed like a new city with all the new skyscrapers and dozens of lit-up cranes constructing even more.

  By the time she pulled into her parents’ driveway, she was tired of reminiscing and wanted only to eat and go to bed. Unfortunately, she still had to spend a couple of hours talking and making her parents believe she was fine.

  “Here I go,” she said to Sarah, even though she still had her hands wrapped around her steering wheel. “Wish me luck.”

  She moved to open her door but paused as guilt nagged at her. Sarah had died estranged from her family. Maybe Larkin should try harder with her own mother. The curtains on the front window twitched, and she knew she’d been spotted. No backing out now. No doubt Mom was winding up for a scolding about Larkin taking too long. “She really brings out the worst in me. Always has,” Larkin muttered aloud, reaching again for her door handle.

  The front door opened, spilling light onto the wet flagstone steps winding through the professionally landscaped yard. Larkin’s mom stood in the doorway, wearing slacks and a blue sweater, looking as if she’d spent the day at her office rather than at home like everyone else on a Sunday. Sighing, Larkin pushed open her car door and got out. A blast of cold air hit her, carrying raindrops that pelted her skin. She should have put on her coat, but figuring she was already wet and cold, she decided to run to the front door, ignoring the pain in her bad knee.

  “Hi, Mom,” she said, reaching for a hug.

  Kat Bennett took a step back. “You’re all wet! Come in. I’ll get you a towel.”

  Larkin’s arms dropped to her sides, and she followed her mom into the grand entry hall where a curving staircase led to the bedrooms upstairs. Larkin remembered feeling like a princess floating down those stairs on prom night as her date gaped from where she stood now.

  “Here.” Her mom shoved a fluffy bath towel into her hands. “You can leave your shoes on the tile in the powder room. I don’t want water staining the hardwoods.”

  Larkin did as she was told, taking a moment to rub the towel over her wet hair and arms before leaving it folded on the powder-room sink. When she emerged, she followed the sound of instrumental music into the kitchen, where her mother poured a glass of wine and her father sat at the granite island in front of his laptop. When he saw her, he closed it, slid off his barstool, and came to her with open arms that he wrapped around her in a hug that took her back to her childhood and all the nights when he’d gotten home from work at his brokerage office. “How’s my girl?” he asked, giving her a squeeze.

  Larkin smiled as the hug ended and she got a good look at her father. His hair had turned whiter over the last year. She hadn’t noticed during their Skype video chats. “I’m good,” she answered. “How are you? Work keeping you busy?”

  “You know it.” He motioned toward the couches in the adjoining great room. “Here, come sit. Want a glass of wine? Dinner should arrive any minute.”

  Larkin took the glass and settled cross-legged into the corner of the couch where she’d always sat as a teenager. This spot on the leather sectional had the best view of the TV, and she’d spent countless hours stretched out here with her friends and cousins. On the side wall hung an unfamiliar painting with demure splashes of pale color. “Is that new?” she asked, searching for something to talk about.

  “It is,” Mom answered as she took the armchair by the fireplace and primly crossed her legs. She was stil
l wearing heels. She went on to tell Larkin everything she knew about the artist and the gallery where she’d bought the painting. It was all Larkin could do to feign interest.

  The doorbell rang, and Kat gracefully got to her feet to answer it. She returned carrying a huge paper shopping bag full of boxes emitting a delicious aroma. “I hope you like dumplings. This place makes the best outside of Taiwan.”

  Larkin didn’t care what she ate, so she agreed that she did, even though she doubted she’d ever eaten dumplings. The three of them sat at the dining room table, where candles had already been lit and linen napkins waited at each place setting, making Larkin mentally roll her eyes. Would it kill her mother to eat straight from a cardboard box for once?

  “Try this one first,” her dad said, pointing with his chopsticks to a white pocket of dough on her plate that was artfully crimped along one side. “It’s pork and vegetable. My favorite.” He expertly picked the dumpling up and placed it on a spoon he held in his left hand and then poked it open with his chopstick so the juices spilled out onto the spoon. After carefully blowing on it, he popped the dumpling and juice into his mouth and moaned in delight.

  Larkin copied him, realizing as she did that if she’d stuck the dumpling straight into her mouth, the hot juices inside would have burned her. She, too, moaned in appreciation. Dad had not been exaggerating. It was delicious.

  “I’m glad you were able to stop by today, Larkin,” her mother said as she used a knife to cut her dumpling in half on her plate rather than follow the messy process her husband had performed. “I know you wanted to go straight to Grams’s house, but what would people think if they knew my daughter drove right past without stopping to see us after all she’s been through this year? It’s bad enough that you don’t want to live here.” She placed a bite in her mouth and chewed.

  Larkin had to force her own bite down her throat, which had threatened to close up at her mother’s words. What would people think? That was the problem. That was always the problem with her mother. What would people think of her? Larkin knew her mother didn’t really care about Larkin herself. She only cared about how she looked to anyone who might be watching and judging, and a daughter who came home from war and didn’t stop to do the whole my-daughter-is-finally-home routine was asking for criticism.