by Lynn Austin
Mrs. Garner glared at Bebe, then turned to Horatio. “Aren’t you going to stop her?”
He shook his head. “They need a place to stay. It isn’t safe downtown. The warning is going out, and we’re evacuating all the people—”
“Good. Then you can change out of those wet clothes right now, and warm up. You look drenched, Horatio.”
“We’re not finished, Mother. It’s a big town, you know. I won’t rest until I’ve made sure everyone has heard the warning.”
Bebe halted halfway up the steps when she heard Horatio’s words. The refugees continued on as she hurried back downstairs to him. “You can’t go out there again! What if something happens? The dam could break any minute. You said yourself how dangerous it was.”
He glanced around at the flurry of activity all around them and reached for Bebe’s hand. “Will you excuse us please, Mother?” He led Bebe into the dining room, where no one could hear them, then took her other hand as he faced her. “I have to do this, Beatrice. I’m tired of being a coward. Why should you be the only brave one in the family?”
“No! I won’t let you go!” Bebe clung to him, weeping, not caring how wet he was. “Please don’t go back out there, Horatio! Please! It’s too dangerous. Stay here with me. I need you! You’re not a coward, I know you aren’t.”
He pried her arms from around his waist and looked down at her, holding her hands in his again. Tears filled his eyes. “I know the truth, and I’m tired of running scared. I want you and Lucy to be proud of me for once. Most of all, I want to be able to face myself in the mirror every morning. I have to do this, Bebe.” He kissed her forehead and turned toward the foyer.
“No!” Bebe clung to his clothing, desperate to hold him back.
“Don’t, my darling,” he said quietly. “Let me go. Let me do this.”
Bebe saw his courage and determination and released her hold. “I love you, Horatio.” For the first time in months, she meant it. He nodded and hurried through the door, closing it behind him. Bebe sank down on the bottom step, covering her face.
“I hope you’re happy now!” Mrs. Garner said before swishing past her up the stairs.
Several minutes passed as Bebe sat on the stairs. She knew she had to pull herself together, but fear for Horatio threatened to overwhelm her. She felt a hand on her shoulder and looked up. It was one of the refugees.
“My husband is helping, too,” she said.
Bebe wiped her eyes and let the woman pull her to her feet.
Peter returned to the house three more times that afternoon, bringing more refugees to safety. Nearly one hundred people crowded into the downstairs hallways and rooms, and Bebe did her best to help them get dried off and settled and fed. During a lull in the activity, she went up to her own bedroom and fell on her knees to pray. Suddenly, above the rumble of voices in the rooms below her, she heard a loud roar outside in the distance.
The dam had burst.
She fell on her face, pleading with God for Horatio.
Bebe had no idea how long she had prayed when she heard hoofbeats and the sound of a carriage rolling to a stop outside. She raced downstairs and threw open the front door, expecting Horatio. Instead, Peter sat on the driver’s seat, badly shaken. His carriage full of refugees appeared dazed; many were weeping. Bebe wanted to weep with them, but she opened the carriage door and offered her hand to help them down.
“Please, come inside where it’s warm. We have coffee and food waiting.” When the last one climbed out, she looked up at the driver. He hadn’t moved. “Where’s Horatio?”
Peter stared into the distance as if he hadn’t heard her. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” he mumbled. “The dam burst. The water was like a wall—”
“Is Horatio with you?”
He slowly shook his head. “The water carried trees and debris, and everything crashed into the railroad bridge north of town . . . a-a huge pile! It got hung up on the railroad trestle, but then that gave way and the bridge collapsed and all the debris thundered into town. I-I saw freight cars carried away like toys!” He paused when his voice broke. Tears overflowed and ran down his face. “The water crushed every building in The Flats into matchsticks. Houses were lifted right off their foundations by the force of the water and carried away downriver. I saw . . . I saw people hanging from their windows, screaming for help. . . . There was nothing we could do. . . .”
Bebe climbed up to his seat and grabbed the front of his jacket, shaking him. “Peter! Where’s Horatio!”
“I-I don’t know. We split up hours ago. He was driving the other carriage.”
“Driving it where? Did you see where he went?”
“No, ma’am. We went in different directions. I’m sorry. . . .”
Bebe knew better than to direct her anger and fear at Peter. She released her grip on his jacket. It was drenched. She dried her hands on her skirt. “Come inside and get dried off and warmed up,” she told him. “We’ll fix you some food and hot coffee. It was very courageous of you to help Horatio this way. I’m glad you’re safe.”
She kept busy for the rest of the evening, soothing people, making them comfortable, feeding them. Herta, one of the maids, tried to offer Bebe a plate. “Here, Mrs. Garner, sit down and have something to eat. You must be hungry, too.”
“No, thank you. I can’t eat.”
At last she went upstairs to the playroom searching for Lucy, longing to hold her and fill her empty arms. A dozen children were playing quietly with Lucy’s toys, carefully watched by their mothers. “Have you seen my daughter, Lucy?” she asked.
“Her grandmother came for her a few hours ago,” one of the mothers said.
Bebe went down the hall to Mrs. Garner’s bedroom suite and knocked on the door. “Come in,” Mrs. Garner said. Lucy lay asleep on her grandmother’s lap.
“Have you eaten anything, Mother Garner?” Bebe asked.
“Would you like me to bring you something?”
“Where’s Horatio? It’s getting dark outside.”
“He’s still out there, helping people.”
“The fool!”
“He’s not a fool. He’s a very courageous man.” She lifted Lucy from her mother-in-law’s arms, holding her closely for several minutes before laying her on the bed. “I’ll be downstairs if you need anything.” Bebe left, closing the door behind her.
Later that night, the servants brought out every blanket and pillow in the house for the refugees to use, and they bedded down wherever they could find space, sleeping on the parlor floor and in the dining room and even in the front hallway. Everywhere Bebe looked she saw bedraggled people, some sleeping, some talking quietly, others holding children in their arms, soothing them to sleep.
She finally went upstairs to her bedroom—Horatio’s bedroom— but she didn’t undress. She would never be able to sleep. She found her Bible and opened it to her mother’s favorite psalm: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; though the waters thereof roar and be troubled . . .”
At dawn Bebe went downstairs. Peter was gathering all of the able-bodied men to go downtown to help. “I want to go with you and look for Horatio,” she told him. “Show me where you last saw him, please.”
He shook his head. “You’ll only be in the way, ma’am. There’s work to do, and they’ll need the carriage and horses.”
“I can help—”
“No, ma’am. People are buried under all that mud and debris. It’s not something a woman should see. Mr. Garner would never forgive me if I let you go down there.”
Three days passed before it was safe enough for the women and children to leave Bebe’s house. When the ordeal ended and the last refugee had moved out of the mansion, Bebe finally walked down the hill alone. Some areas of town were still under water. Others had mud and wreckage piled as high as the windowsills. Most of the downtown area had f
looded, and many buildings had sustained damage. Debris floated everywhere in the hip-deep water, pieces of people’s lives and possessions—a chair, pots and pans, an oil lantern. Bebe saw the bloated bodies of rats and dogs and horses. Trees that had avalanched down the mountain in the flood lay piled everywhere, along with ragged planks of wood from houses, shards of window glass, bricks, and shingles.
There was nothing left of The Flats. Not a single house remained standing along either side of the river. Bebe never could have imagined that the once-placid river could cause so much destruction. It had destroyed her town, her life.
Fifty-six people perished in the flood along with her husband. According to the newspapers, the death toll would have been much, much worse if not for the heroism of Horatio T. Garner.
CHAPTER
20
Bebe barely coped with her sorrow. Horatio’s funeral was one of many, many others in town, yet she felt utterly alone in her grief. She walked through the motions of laying her husband to rest as if walking in her sleep. The nanny took little Lucy home after she threw a tantrum during the church service, and Bebe longed to throw herself on the floor, too, and weep like a child. If she could just get through the burial, she told herself, then she could break down.
The ground at the cemetery felt wet and spongy beneath her feet as she climbed from the carriage. The air smelled of damp earth and rotting wood. The graveyard sat high on the ridge above the city, but Bebe couldn’t bring herself to look down at the flooding and destruction in the town below. The river had become her enemy, snatching Horatio from her arms and turning her world upside down. The future seemed hidden from her sight, as completely as Roseton’s once-familiar streets lay hidden from view. God seemed very far away.
“Whatever will I do?” she asked herself again and again. “Whatever will I do?”
She didn’t hear a word the minister said as they prepared to bury Horatio. She was aware of Mother Garner sitting stiffly by her side, but a vast ocean could have filled the space between them. Neither of them could offer comfort to the other. Horatio’s mother never shed a tear throughout the ordeal, while Bebe’s tears never stopped flowing.
At last the burial service came to an end and a line of mourners walked past, offering Bebe their condolences. Among the strangers was a familiar face: Neal MacLeod’s. He removed his hat to bow slightly, and his golden hair—so like Horatio’s—shone in the pale spring sunlight.
“Mrs. Garner . . . Beatrice . . .” he began. “I’m so sorry for your loss—”
“You!” They had been sitting in chairs beside the grave, but Mrs. Garner stood suddenly, toppling hers. “How dare you come here?” Her face shook with fury beneath her black net veil.
Bebe sprang to her feet, too. “Mr. MacLeod manages our tannery, Mother Garner—”
“I know exactly who he is!” she said in a harsh whisper. “And who his sister is!”
Neal ducked his head, his face bright with shame. “I’m very sorry for upsetting you. Please excuse me.” He turned and hurried away, just as he had run from Bebe on her last day at the tannery. Her tears started again as she remembered how Horatio also had turned away from her on their last day. “Let me go, Bebe. Let me do this.” He had received what he’d wanted most in life—a chance to redeem his past. But he was never coming home to her.
Home. Bebe returned to the huge, gaudy house that had never been a home to her, hating it more than ever before. The servants tiptoed from room to room, staring at their shoes. Lucy was inconsolable, crying for her father, unable to understand his death, and blaming Bebe for it, for some unfathomable reason. Mrs. Garner never left her room or her bed, numbing her grief with laudanum. And as badly as Bebe longed to lie down in a fog of sleep, as well, she knew it was up to her to keep the household moving forward. Each day felt longer and darker than the previous one.
“A Mr. William Harris is here to see you, ma’am,” the maid told Bebe one afternoon. She had been dozing in a chair in the bedroom she had once shared with Horatio when the knock on her door awakened her. It took her a moment to recall that Mr. Harris was the family’s attorney.
“Show him into the parlor, please. Tell him I’ll be right down.” Bebe stood to straighten the wrinkles from her black crepe mourning dress and tidy her hair. When she gazed at her reflection in the mirror she hardly recognized herself.
“I’ve come to talk about your husband’s will,” Mr. Harris began after offering his condolences once again. “I know that you and your family are still grieving, but I believe that your husband would want his estate to be settled quickly, and for you to know how things stand financially.”
“Yes,” she murmured. “Thank you.” She heard the lawyer speaking, but she was still groggy with sleep and grief and had trouble comprehending him. The word will reminded her of a verse of Scripture—“Not my will, but thine, be done.” Jesus’ words echoed through her mind as Mr. Harris continued.
“Horatio made provisions in his will for his mother and daughter, of course, but you have inherited the bulk of your husband’s estate: this home, the tannery, his real estate holdings, bank accounts, and shares of stocks and bonds. I will be happy to provide the details, if you wish—perhaps at a better time. But for now, I want to assure you that the business is doing very well, thanks to Neal MacLeod, and to let you know that your life can continue as before. Nothing will need to change.”
She looked up at him, certain he had missed something very important. “But everything will change, Mr. Harris. Horatio is gone.”
“I know, I know. And again, I’m very sorry for your loss. But I want you to know that you have been very well provided for, Mrs. Garner—and for many of my clients that isn’t always the case. Too often, I’m afraid, widows are forced to change their entire way of life after such a loss. Their lives are never the same.”
After Mr. Harris left, Bebe sat in the parlor, unmoving. The attorney had done his best to reassure her that her life wouldn’t change, but she knew that it wasn’t true. Once again, she would have to start all over again. How many times had she been in this place? Three weeks ago she had been ready for a new start as she’d packed Horatio’s bags to go to the fishing cabin. Would it have worked this time? Would he have remained sober? And if so, for how long?
“Nothing will need to change,” Mr. Harris had said, but the truth was, nothing would ever be the same. “Remember how life changed when the war started and the boys left home?” Mama had once told her. “And how it changed again when Franklin had to leave? Life is like that, Beatrice—always changing, always flowing forward like a stream. Things never stay the same. And we have to move on and change, too.”
“What if I don’t want things to change?” Bebe had asked her mother.
“You can’t fight against the current. You need to trust God and be prepared for wherever the river of life will take you next.”
Trust God. Was she angry with God? How could Bebe be angry when He had answered her prayers? She had prayed that Horatio would return to the cabin and sober up, and he had. God had answered Horatio’s prayers, too, finally granting him the courage and redemption he had long sought. “Not my will, but thine, be done.” Bebe repeated the verse over and over, praying that she could mean it.
For the next few weeks, Bebe watched from her bedroom window as the floodwaters receded and the townspeople prepared to rebuild Roseton. In most ways her life hadn’t changed, just as Mr. Harris had promised. She had lived without Horatio’s companionship for a very long time, even though they’d shared the same house, the same bedroom. But as she thought about the provisions of Horatio’s will—and about God’s will—she became increasingly aware that a great injustice had been done. When she finally made up her mind what should be done about it, Bebe made an appointment with Mr. Harris, then sent Neal MacLeod a note, asking him to meet her at the lawyer’s office.
Bebe hadn’t been to the downtown area in weeks, and as her carriage drove through the streets she saw the last remn
ants of the floodwaters and piles of debris still waiting to be burned. A muddy watermark stained many of the surviving buildings, showing how high the water level had reached. Mr. Harris’s office on Central Avenue stood high enough above the river to be spared, for the most part.
Neal was already waiting in the outer office when Bebe arrived. He looked unchanged to her, as sturdy and strong and capable as ever. He stood up the moment she entered. “Listen, Beatrice, I want to apologize again for upsetting Mrs. Garner at the funeral. I didn’t know that she would recognize me. I wasn’t aware that she knew about . . . about Mary and me.”
“It’s not your fault, Neal. I didn’t know, either. She never said a word to me about you and Mary in all the years I’ve lived with her.” She was about to ask Neal how he was doing when Mr. Harris emerged from his office.
“Please come in, Mrs. Garner, and have a seat.” He waited until Bebe and Neal were seated in front of his desk and then said, “Once again, I want to say how sorry I am for your loss. Your husband will be remembered as a very great man in this town.”
“Thank you, Mr. Harris. You know our foreman, Neal MacLeod, don’t you?”
“Yes, of course.” The two men shook hands. “What can I do for you, Mrs. Garner?”
Bebe lifted her chin. “You told me that according to Horatio’s will, I have inherited all of his property, including the tannery. But now that I’ve had time to think about it, I don’t believe this arrangement is entirely fair. Mr. Garner had two sons—Horatio and Neal. I believe that, by rights, half of the tannery belongs to Neal.”
Neal shifted in his chair, suddenly uncomfortable. “What? Wait a minute. . . . You can’t be serious.”
“Yes, I’m quite serious.”
“But . . . I mean . . . that’s obviously not what my father wanted or he would have—”
“I disagree. Your father thought very highly of you and wanted you to run the tannery, not Horatio. The reason he didn’t acknowledge you publicly was to spare his wife’s feelings. But since Mrs. Garner is aware of the truth, I believe that his two sons should each inherit half of his business.” She turned to face the lawyer. “I would like you to transfer half ownership to Neal, Mr. Harris.”
