“This is what you have prepared for!” the captain bellowed. “Go get ’em, boys!”
Once again patting his breast pocket, Mason reassured himself that his wife’s letter was with him. Though he knew that Alice was safe in their home in Minnesota, he believed that some small part of her was beside him; regardless of whether they were simply words written on paper, the feelings and emotions they shared with each other were real enough to pierce the darkness of war.
I will be true to you, my beloved! I will return!
The near-silence of the trench was broken by the shrill sound of the captain’s whistle as he gave his men the order to engage the enemy. As one, they began to clamber up the ramparts, their hands and feet struggling to find any purchase in the muddy earth. One after the other, they disappeared over the lip of the trench, moving forward to fight for their country.
Mason Tucker crested the trench and trudged forward, his rifle at the ready.
Chapter Fourteen
CHARLOTTE SAT IN A CHAIR in the bedroom at the head of the stairs, watching the man sleep. Brilliant rays of afternoon sun streamed through the curtains, holding out the promise of an October afternoon of fun, but she wasn’t about to spend her day outside, even if it were one of the last nice days she might see before spending the winter cooped up indoors. She had run home from school as fast as she could, all so that she could sit and stare.
The stranger lay perfectly still, his eyes closed and his chest gently rising and falling with every breath. Rachel had washed his face and hands with a washcloth, removing the dirt and grime, and Otis had stripped him of his tattered clothing, dressing him in a nightshirt a former boarder had left behind. Though he seemed awfully thin of face, even with his unruly mess of a beard, Charlotte thought that he looked somewhat peaceful, at rest even though he hadn’t awakened even once.
Two long days had passed since they brought the stranger to the room in the boardinghouse, and the secret of his existence was burning a hole in Charlotte’s proverbial pocket. Never in her life had she wanted to talk about something more, to run screaming through the streets of town, shouting her news to anyone who would listen. Even though she knew that this was the last thing she should do—Rachel had warned her against it more times than she could count—her silence was no easier to bear.
“We can’t tell anyone he’s here, can we, Jasper?” she said to the dog.
Jasper raised his head from his paws in answer, staring at her from his resting place next to the door. His ears rose expectantly, betraying a wishful hope that they were finally going to end their self-imposed exile indoors and resume their normal routine of exploring and playing, but when Charlotte remained in her seat, he dropped his head with a sigh, defeated.
When she was alone in the room with the stranger, Charlotte sometimes found herself talking to him, telling him about her day at school or about some ordinary goings-on around the boardinghouse. She wasn’t sure why she did it; she supposed that it was either because she detested the silence of the room, or maybe that she would have wanted someone to talk to her if she were in his position. Either way, he never answered.
But she kept on talking anyway.
Lazily, Charlotte moved one of the checker pieces across the board she’d just been given for her birthday. She had promised the first game to Uncle Otis. He had taught her how to play last winter as they sat next to the wood-burning stove and the board had been his gift, but she had brought it into the room in the hope that the man might want to play if he ever woke. So far, the game remained untouched. Frustrated, she took one of the pieces and flung it hard against the wall, where it fell with a clatter to the floor.
Waiting for anything, whether it was a sunny day after a week of rain or Christmas morning, was every bit as painful to her as the time she had fallen and chipped a tooth. Her grandmother and Rachel always preached the benefits of being patient, that all things would arrive in good time, but Charlotte couldn’t bear it. Passing the time until the man woke up, as well as keeping the secret of his existence, made her want to shake him and try to wake him up.
What’s the point of having a secret if you can’t tell anyone about it?
Keeping silent about what she knew wasn’t the only thing weighing heavily on Charlotte’s mind; it was only two weeks until the performance of the school’s annual play. Every fall, all of the citizens of Carlson jammed themselves into the school’s tiny auditorium to watch the children sing songs, act out comedy skits, and even shed an unintentional tear or two. This year’s theme was in honor of the recently finished harvest. While this would be the first time she had been forced to participate and had a small part as an orange leaf being blown across the stage, it didn’t make it any less traumatic.
Dancing across the stage and making a general fool of herself would have been just fine for Charlotte if it wasn’t for the preening of Catherine Nichols. Three years older than she, Catherine had the lead part in the play, the farmer’s wife preparing the bountiful dinner to be attended by the whole town. She had been crowing as loudly as any rooster about how she was the star of the show and how everyone in town was coming to watch her.
Charlotte knew that all the girl wanted was attention, but she couldn’t stand her just the same. She desperately wished she could tell everyone about what happened in the woods, about finding the stranger, just so that no one would pay any attention to Catherine anymore; she would gain a lot of satisfaction from knocking the girl down a peg or two.
But all that would really do is upset Rachel!
Ever since Rachel had followed Charlotte out to the shack in the woods, she had taken a particularly strong interest in the stranger, going often to the bedroom and looking at the man with a curious as well as impatient eye. Once, Charlotte had crept up the staircase in the middle of the night, to find Rachel already inside the darkened room!
“Have you been talking to her?” Charlotte asked aloud.
“No… I’ve been sleeping…” a voice answered.
Charlotte’s eyes flew to the bed, where the stranger’s eyes fluttered, one hand rising weakly from the sheets to rub at the sleep in his eyes. After days of uninterrupted rest, he was awake.
The stranger was finally awake!
Mason’s eyes fluttered as sleep finally released its grip on him. Slowly, he came out of a foggy dream of riding on the gently rocking rails of a train as a cool wind rushed through the open door, ruffling his hair and carrying with it the scent of freshly cut pine. For a moment, as the vision retreated from his mind, he had no idea where he was.
When he was finally able to see clearly, Mason’s gaze wandered over the tiny room in which he lay. The furnishings were meager: a nightstand with an oil lantern stood next to the bed, there was a chipped dresser topped with a washbasin in the far corner, and a coat tree leaned awkwardly just inside the door. Sunlight poured through the thin curtains of two windows, falling on the golden hair of a little girl sitting in a chair at the foot of the bed.
Even as he struggled to awaken from his stupor, Mason found that there was something familiar about the girl. Much of the child’s face was in the shadows, and most of what he could see was fixed in a frown of concentration, but there was something there he knew that remained just out of reach. Absently, the girl pushed a checker piece across the black-and-red surface of its board.
Suddenly, the memory of what he had been doing before he collapsed into a black darkness came back to Mason. He remembered jumping off the speeding train outside Carlson, making his way to the house that he had shared with Alice and finding another man and woman living there, running into Samuel Guthrie, and the illness that had nearly felled him where he stood. He recalled making his way into the woods on the far side of Lake Carlson, finding the shack he had played in as a boy, and then… nothing.
I went out to the woods to be alone… What happened?
“Have you been talking to her?” the girl suddenly said, looking in his direction.
He wasn’t
sure what she was talking about, but the simple sound of her voice was as welcome to his ears as the first birdcall of spring. “No… I’ve been sleeping…” he managed.
The girl’s face rose in surprise to the sudden sound, her eyes lighting up with delight, and she rushed from her chair over to the side of the bed. She was so excited that her small hands grabbed up fistfuls of blanket, clenching and unclenching without pause. Her mouth opened and words poured out so rapidly that Mason couldn’t understand a single one of them.
“I need… I need some water,” he rasped.
The girl obliged, fetching him a glass from a pitcher next to his bed. She had to help him bring the tin cup to his mouth, and water dribbled down his beard, but he drank greedily, doubting that he had ever been as thirsty in his life.
Up close, he was struck by just how much the girl resembled Alice. It wasn’t just the blonde hair, but also the sparkling blueness of her eyes, the slightly upturned nose, and the way her smile curled a bit at the edges. Even her excitement at his waking was similar; Alice had an infectiously optimistic way of seeing the best in everything and everyone. Once again, he wondered where his wife was.
“Are you a hobo?” the girl asked when he had finished drinking.
“Sort of,” he lied gently. It wasn’t that he wanted to deceive the girl, but more that the answer was too complex, far too difficult for him to explain, including to himself.
“You were awfully sick.”
“I was,” Mason admitted.
“Jasper and I took care of you,” she said proudly.
“Who’s Jasper?”
His nails scratching against the wooden floor, a large black dog padded over to the bed and jumped up, placing his front paws on the edge of the mattress. He barked once, as if he were saying hello, and the girl gave his thick neck a scratching as he panted, his pink tongue lolling out of his mouth.
“I suppose… I should… thank you both.” Mason smiled. He raised a fragile hand to the dog, and Jasper gave it a gentle lick, his wet tongue darting over outstretched fingers.
“That means he likes you,” the girl observed.
Suddenly, Mason was aware that he was wearing a nightshirt instead of his familiar clothing. A tremor of panic raced across his heart, a fear that he had somehow misplaced his belongings, but most important, that he had lost his picture of Alice.
“I had some things… with me when… I got sick…”
“Don’t worry none about your stuff, it’s all there,” the girl said as she pointed at another chair Mason had not originally seen. There, draped across his satchel, was his worn overcoat. Though he hadn’t laid eyes on it, he felt certain that the photograph was safely inside.
“My uncle and Aunt Rachel brought you back,” the girl continued.
The mention of the name Rachel sent Mason’s mind to racing. That’s the name of Alice’s sister! Was it possible that the woman the little girl was talking about was the same person? If so, was he in Eliza Watkins’s house? The room didn’t strike him as particularly familiar, but it had been so many long years since he had been there, it was possible that he didn’t remember.
“Who’s Alice?” the girl asked, breaking his frantic thoughts.
“What?” he asked quickly.
“You called me Alice,” the girl explained.
Mason realized that the first thought he’d had upon looking at the girl, that she closely resembled Alice, must have been the same reaction he’d had when encountering her in the woods. He must have been delirious, half out of his mind with fever, and had imagined that he was being cared for by his loving wife, not some small girl.
“What is your name?” he asked, ignoring the girl’s question.
“Charlotte,” she replied.
“It’s nice to meet you, Charlotte,” Mason said warmly. “My name is…” he began before hesitating. With Rachel’s name having been mentioned, he’d absolutely no choice but to think that he had been taken in by Alice’s sibling, his own sister-in-law. Was this girl Rachel’s daughter? Since Charlotte had mentioned an uncle having been involved in taking him from the secluded shack, he had to wonder if it was Otis Simmons, or…
Or was it Alice’s new husband…
Before Mason could give Charlotte any kind of answer, the door to the room opened and he found himself staring at Rachel Watkins. As she strode inside, he tried desperately to hide his surprise; with his worries about her identity now confirmed, he felt filled with a mixture of happiness at seeing her again after so many long years away and an impending dread at finally being discovered.
Rachel had changed during the eight long years he had been gone. She was far more beautiful than he remembered; gone was the attractive yet awkward younger girl. In her place was a woman with striking coal-black hair, piercing greenish-brown eyes, and luxuriously full lips. Even though she had only been in the room for a moment, he also noticed that she carried herself proudly. Forgotten was the bashful girl he remembered as Alice’s younger sister. Rachel appeared more confident, more certain in her bearing than he remembered.
“I heard voices when I was passing by and I hoped that our guest might be awake,” she said with a smile that was more curious than inviting. “It seems I was right.”
“I wasn’t bothering him!” Charlotte said defensively. “Honest!”
“She wasn’t,” Mason added, unsure of how he should mask his voice.
“Charlotte, will you leave us for a moment?” Rachel said, her eyes never leaving Mason. Even as he tried to remain calm, to not betray his ever-growing anxiety, his heart thundered loudly in his chest. Even when he had been a soldier on the battlefield or when he had escaped from a trainyard boss by the skin of his teeth, he had never felt so ill at ease.
“But he just woke up,” Charlotte whined.
“You’ll have plenty of time to talk his ear off later. Right now, I want to check his temperature.”
The young girl groaned but nonetheless stomped out of the room, Jasper in tow. When the door had clicked shut behind her, Mason said, “I want to thank you for all you’ve done for—”
“All I want out of you is the truth,” she said, silencing him.
“I don’t… think I understand…” Mason offered as a feeble answer, but he did understand. The time had come. He owed her an explanation.
Rachel stepped forward. “I think you do.” She gripped the oaken foot of the bed, her eyes full of determination. “It’s really you, isn’t it?” she said softly. “Mason Tucker has come back from the dead. But eight years too late.”
Chapter Fifteen
MASON, IT’S YOU, isn’t it?” Rachel asked, her voice nearly as soft as a whisper. Has Mason Tucker come back from the dead?
Rachel’s gaze held the man where he lay in the bed in the tiny room at the head of the stairs. Intently, she watched for some reaction, anything that might betray his response to her accusation, but he only looked back at her curiously. With his unruly mop of dark hair, equally unkempt beard, and penetrating eyes, he had the appearance of a vagrant, a hobo, whose life was spent aimlessly traveling the rails. But she felt certain that it was only a façade, a curtain hiding who he really was.
During the two days that he had spent in their care, Rachel had taken great pains to nurse him back to health. After making sure that he was finally resting comfortably, she’d washed the rest of the dirt and grime from his body. Though he wasn’t alert enough to eat, she had managed to coax him to take some water she squeezed from a cloth into his mouth.
While the stranger’s well-being was important, she tended to him not entirely from the goodness of her heart; what she really wanted was the truth. From the moment he had spoken to her in the darkness of the cabin, calling her by her name, Rachel had longed to know his true identity. Even as she cared for him, she found her curiosity often getting the better of her. In the middle of the night, while everyone else in the boardinghouse slept, she had come into his room to silently watch him. Her eyes had raced over his
features again and again, hoping to find something that would convince her that she wasn’t imagining things, that he was who she believed him to be.
But she could never be certain. Either too much time had passed since she had watched him leave on the train for France, clouding her memories beyond recovery, or Mason had physically changed and no longer resembled the man that she had known, her sister’s husband. Still, the thought that she was right incessantly nagged her, refusing to let go.
And that’s why I’m here… to finally learn the truth!
“I’m… afraid that I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the man finally answered.
Refusing to allow him a chance to so much as catch his breath, Rachel rushed from the foot of the bed to the man’s side, her fists balled tightly in a growing sense of frustration. When she spoke, the words flew from her mouth like arrows.
“What about what happened out in the cabin?” she prodded, her voice rising with every word. “Why did you call Charlotte by Alice’s name? How do you know me? How did you know my name?”
Her sudden barrage of questions seemed to utterly unsettle the stranger. His eyes darted quickly from Rachel to the open window, then to the door, and finally back to the window before settling upon a spot at the base of the bed. Clearing his throat, he hemmed and hawed, started and stopped, all without giving any sort of meaningful reply.
Rachel knew she was being unfair; accosting this man while he was still recovering from a severe illness was almost certainly treatment that he didn’t deserve. But she also knew that she didn’t have much of a choice. She needed answers, answers to the questions she’d been asking herself over the last two days, the very same questions she’d been tortured by for the last eight years.
And by God, I will have them!
“How did you know my name?” she prodded again.
While he still seemed unsettled, the stranger sighed and said, “I’m not… not entirely sure, the sickness has muddled my head so that I can’t think straight, although I seem to remember meeting a man when I was in the army, when I was a soldier in France, who said he was from a town in eastern Minnesota named Carlson. He often talked about two women he cared for, two sisters named Alice and Rachel.
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