Home by Nightfall

by Alexis Harrington

  In Flanders fields the poppies blow

  Between the crosses row on row

  She tore open the flap with hands that trembled slightly and unfolded a single sheet of paper.

  Dear Mrs. Braddock…

  Susannah felt her eyes grow wider with every word she read. She sat bolt upright and clapped a hand over her mouth. An inarticulate wail pushed its way up her chest and escaped from between her fingers. It was the only sound her pounding heart would let her voice. The blood pulsing in her head dimmed her hearing. She felt but didn’t hear the pounding of boots across the floor in the house and the slamming open of the screen door. She looked up to find herself surrounded by family, Tanner, Cole, Shaw, the boys. She could only stare at them.

  “Susannah!”

  “What the hell is all the caterwauling about?”

  “What’s in that letter?”

  “Why is she acting that way?”

  She gazed at each face crowded in front of her. Her mouth moved, and at first no words came out. At last she whispered the unthinkable. “It’s about Riley. Oh, dear heaven, it’s about Riley. He’s not dead. He’s coming home.”

  • • •

  Tanner Grenfell stood in the tack room off the stable, inspecting bridles and harnesses for heavily worn spots and cuts in straps that could make them break. The dim room smelled of saddle soap, leather dressing, and horses. He’d done this job scores of times over the years he’d worked for the Braddocks. This afternoon, although he stared at the equipment and ran his callused hands over it, his mind was far from its work.

  In the house, Cole, and most especially Shaw, were whooping it up over the letter that had been delivered earlier in the day. All regular work was at a standstill, and even the stallion had lost his fascination for the time being. The old man said a “bona-fidee miracle” had been dropped in their laps. His eldest son, thought to be dead for the past two years, was alive and coming home—next week! Susannah looked poleaxed, but the celebration was in full swing, spilling out onto the porch. Even Josh and Wade had joined in, and Tanner let them, their punishment not seeming so important anymore.

  As for Tanner, he wanted to be out here by himself, alone with the cold, hollow feeling in his gut. Riley Braddock, the husband who’d marched off to war amid cheers, tears, and fluttering hand-kerchiefs in the spring of 1917, had been declared dead by the War Department on a grim day in October 1918. The news had come during the height of the Spanish influenza epidemic that mowed down Powell Springs and the rest of the world.

  He stared at the curb bit dangling from its peg on the wall, but his thoughts were on his wedding day just a couple of months earlier.

  Susannah had worn a blue dress and tamed her curls beneath a silly-looking new hat she called a cloche. The thing had reminded him of a coal scuttle, but still, she’d never looked more beautiful.

  Hollis Mumford, the minister who replaced Adam Jacobsen after a red-hot town scandal, had grinned at the couple he’d just joined in wedlock, and at the small group of family and friends sitting behind them in the little church. “Well, go on, Tanner, give that girl a kiss.”

  Brilliant sunbeams streamed through the church’s narrow windows and fell over them. Tanner felt himself flush every shade of red, then turned toward Susannah, his new wife, and gave her a modest kiss on the mouth. Light applause broke out.

  After a rootless life of hard fate and knocking around the Northwest, Tanner had finally found joy with the woman he’d loved for years with a hopeless yearning.

  Yessiree, he’d been a happy man, the luckiest in the world.

  Until lunchtime today.

  Now, reaching for a can of leather dressing on the shelf beside him, Tanner felt the underpinnings of his new life begin to shudder and sway.

  Now Riley Braddock—believed to lie in a distant grave all this time—was coming home.

  Now…what?

  • • •

  Each day for the next week life ground on, but Susannah felt as if her nerves were tightening like the strings on a fiddle. Her very existence had been upended again for the third time in three years. The first two disasters, Riley going off to war and then being killed, or supposedly killed, were possibilities she had dreaded but acknowledged. But this—nothing had prepared her for a husband to rise from the dead.

  She moved through her days and her chores, distracted and apprehensive. Sometimes she caught herself repeating a job that she’d finished earlier and forgotten. The kitchen floor had been swept twice in the same evening, she’d dusted the parlor furniture three times in a row, and boiled a second pot of potatoes for supper before realizing that the first was already growing cold in a flowered bowl on the table.

  A telegram followed shortly after the first letter, telling her precisely what day and time Riley’s train would arrive in Powell Springs. But this message, like the letter, gave her little hint of what to expect. And she had plenty of questions. They buzzed around in her mind like bees trapped in a jar.

  Amnesia…What exactly did Riley remember and what had he forgotten? She’d talked to a few people who had nearly died during the influenza epidemic and couldn’t remember anything about their illness. They barely had a memory of being sick. The time lost was just a blank. Was Riley like that? Of course, he’d remember his family, but maybe he’d forgotten his childhood, or being a soldier.

  The letter indicated that his physical wounds still troubled him, but didn’t reveal what had happened to him or how serious they were. Lots of men had been maimed or disfigured in battle. She’d heard gruesome, hair-raising stories that could have come straight from someone’s nightmares. Some were so fantastic, they were impossible to believe—a man had lost his face. How could a man lose his face and survive?

  How would Riley react to the news that she had remarried? She didn’t really know what Tanner thought. Every time she’d tried to bring up the subject, he had managed to steer her away from it.

  Oh, she had lots of questions. But she knew she was still married to Tanner—she had to be.

  The day before Riley’s train was to arrive, she pushed her Bissell sweeper over the parlor carpet and heard Shaw’s stumping gait coming down the hall.

  “Haven’t you finished mowing that rug yet?” he demanded from the doorway. His baggy dungarees were held up by one suspender strap, and stiff, silvery bristles frosted his jaw. Tough old geezer that he was, she’d sometimes thought she could probably grate nutmeg on those whiskers. “I’ve been trying to take a nap upstairs, and all I can hear is that infernal contraption.”

  “Oh, dear, I’m sorry,” she said, and looked at the sweeper. Glancing up at the mantel clock, she realized she’d done it again—she’d been working at this task for forty-five minutes and hadn’t noticed. “I guess I lost track of the time. I’d better get supper started.”

  He limped into the room and dropped heavily into his rocker. “Aw, that’s all right,” he conceded, waving a gnarled hand in her direction. “I imagine you’re all in a dither about your husband coming home tomorrow.”

  “My husband is home. He’s out in the paddock with the boys.”

  “I don’t think so, sister. You’re married to Riley till death parts you. He ain’t dead no more, so your marriage is back on. That hired hand will just have to move along. Your deal with him is over.” He rocked his chair back and forth, the cane seat creaking like his joints.

  Susannah stared at the old man. She knew his resentment about her remarriage had been simmering since the day they announced their engagement. “It is not—”

  “Well, it is, and if you keep carrying on with Grenfell, you’re committing adultery.” He spoke with such obstinate authority and satisfaction, her heart began pounding against its cage of ribs.

  She dropped the handle of the carpet sweeper and it hit the floor with a dull thud. “You don’t know that!”

  He speeded up the pace of his rocker. “I know plenty. Only a fool lives more than seventy years without learning a thing or two
.”

  She wasn’t so sure about that. He seemed to have lived a long time without learning much at all, especially when it came to his dealings with people. “Don’t you think Mr. Mumford would have said something before agreeing to perform the ceremony if it wasn’t legal?”

  “Bah, Mumford. He’s an idiot. God is his trade, not the law.”

  “It’s not yours, either, Shaw. I know you didn’t like me marrying Tanner—”

  He nailed her with those little eyes again. “I sure as hell didn’t, sister. Riley wasn’t in his grave but two years before you took up with Grenfell. No decent woman marries again so soon—if ever.”

  “So you think I should have crawled into a grave myself?” she asked, her anger rising at the self-righteous hypocrite.

  “You should have just taken what fate handed you and been a proud war widow. You were obliged to honor his memory. Instead you let Grenfell start sniffing around. Then the next thing I knowed, you was getting married. I couldn’t do a thing about it. But Riley has fixed that, and you too. You go ask that highfalutin’ lawyer in town—what’s his name—” He drummed his fingers on the chair arm. “Parmenter, that’s it. D. Parmenter, A-ttorney at Law. You talk to him if you don’t believe me. He’ll set you straight, and I’ll even give you good odds if you want to put money on it.”

  His resentment, voiced at last, settled on Susannah like a boulder. A suffocating feeling seemed to compress her chest.

  Obliged. Obligated.

  Susannah had been responsible, obligated for most of her life. First, to raise herself when her father and brother were killed in a logging accident and left her to care for her mother, who turned mourning into a full-time occupation. Then, after she married Riley, she came here to help run the horse farm and look after Shaw, too. She stayed on after receiving notice of her husband’s death because she still felt responsible to his family and its welfare.

  But Riley wasn’t dead.

  How could this have happened? How could the War Department have made such a horrible mistake? She would talk to Daniel Parmenter. But she wouldn’t have time to do that before tomorrow.

  Before Riley Braddock came back to Powell Springs on the train.

  • • •

  That night, Tanner lay in bed with his hands linked beneath his head, every muscle tight, every sound and smell keen to his senses. Susannah, wearing a summer nightgown, sat on the edge of the mattress with her back to him as she braided her hair. The bed frame creaked with her movements, and the ticking alarm clock on the bureau sounded as loud as if it were strapped to his ear. The scent of her Jergens lotion, almonds and cherries, wafted to him. Outside, crickets called to each other on the breeze, and frogs croaked along the edge of Powell Creek where it crossed the pasture. Somewhere up on the butte, a coyote howled.

  On the night table, the bedside lamp glowed softly, its creamy globe painted with pink and yellow roses. He’d ordered it out of the Sears Roebuck catalog and given it to her on her last birthday. She’d made a great to-do over it, telling him how beautiful and romantic it was. He’d only been able to stutter like a balky tractor and had felt his face get hot with her praise. But he’d been so pleased.

  He shifted his weight and tried to relax, but it was impossible. A hundred questions raced through his mind, and he dared not ask a single one. As it was, Tanner knew he wasn’t good at putting words to his feelings.

  Tentatively, he reached for the curve of Susannah’s hip, if for no other reason than to feel the warmth of her, to reassure himself that she was still real, still his. But he wasn’t sure of that. Not anymore. At the last moment, though, he tucked his hand back under his head.

  “Did—um—what did that letter say again?” There was no need to elaborate about which letter it would be. Once she’d made the announcement about Riley a week ago, everyone had grabbed for the single page to look at its details.

  Tanner had not. And he hadn’t asked any questions about the details of its contents. Every day he’d hoped another letter would come, one saying that the whole thing had been a mistake. But that hadn’t happened, and he’d withdrawn into the safety of his own reticence.

  Susannah’s hands paused for a moment, then continued. “The Red Cross found Riley living in the French countryside and reported his whereabouts to the army. He was wounded toward the end of the war, and the ambulance taking him to a field hospital was shelled. He has amnesia and they sent him to a hospital for a couple of months.” She didn’t turn to look at him. “The doctors think his injuries will improve over time. But they weren’t able to help him recover his memory so they’re sending him home. They think he’ll do better here, with people he knows.”

  He glanced at Susannah’s straight back and then turned his gaze to the ceiling. “When? When is he coming?”

  “Tomorrow afternoon. I got his room ready for him earlier.”

  She leaned over and blew out the lamp, then climbed beneath the coverlet. Until last week, most nights she’d lie with her head on his shoulder for a few moments, even when they didn’t make love. It always gave him a sense of contentment and peace that he’d never imagined possible before he married her. Since then, she left a gap between them that felt as wide as a river valley. He looked toward her side of the bed and saw her profile in the thin gray moonlight that filtered through the lace curtains at the window. She looked as rigid as he felt.

  “You know,” she said, “there’s a possibility that we’re not even married now. Have you thought about that?”

  He swallowed, feeling as if a mule had kicked him in the chest. She’d tried to talk about this before but he’d always managed to squirm away from the topic. Now he couldn’t. “Maybe.”

  “I might still be married to Riley. Now that he’s alive, I mean. I—we’ll have to find out.”

  He tried to think of something positive to offer, a damn near impossible task, considering. At last he said softly, “I suppose it’s a good thing we took Cole’s old room, here, instead of the one you used before, when Riley—well, before.”

  “Oh, God,” she uttered, and rolled to face the wall.

  Tanner sighed in the darkness.

  Christophe did his best to flex his bad leg beneath the seat ahead of him on the train. Sitting for long periods made it ache more than usual, and the trip to Oregon had been nothing but a long ride. He watched from the window as trees and ferns that grew close to the railroad tracks gave way to broad pastureland and berry fields cradled by tall buttes and cool, dark stands of timber. Herds of fat, sleek dairy cows that grazed in meadows lifted curious heads to look at his train pass, grinding their cuds with jaws that moved from side to side. In the distance, a V formation of geese crossed the blue sky, directed by instinct to a warmer southern climate. Late afternoon sunlight, rich and mellow as butter, gilded everything in his view.

  The pastoral scene bore no resemblance to the village near Véronique’s farm. Nothing he had seen in America looked like the scarred French countryside he was used to. He was from this place, he’d been told. He had grown up here, had married the pretty woman in the photograph Véronique had given him, and as far as anyone knew, he’d never lived anywhere else until he’d joined the army.

  But Christophe, uneasy in the stiff collar and ill-fitting suit he’d been given, found nothing comforting about it. It was as alien as his real name—Riley John Braddock. The meaningless identity had been forced upon him in General Hospital No. 3, a military hospital in Plattsville, New York. When he’d asked a nurse to call him Christophe, she had pursed her lips so hard they had turned white and she’d told him that he must stop that nonsense immediately. There was no such person as Christophe. He was Riley Braddock. Her brittle, righteous attitude, as starched as her uniform, had infuriated him, and he’d lashed out in French with the first phrase that had come to him.

  “Chèvre têtue! Je m’appelle Christophe!”

  The nurse’s lips had disappeared completely by then, rolled inward to leave a tight, bloodless crease
across her face. She’d spun on her heel and marched away, apparently to find out exactly what he had said.

  Learning that he’d declared her a stubborn goat, she returned with an officer who forbade Christophe from speaking French. He was not French, goddamn it, the strident, mustachioed captain had barked, looming over his hospital bed, and this was America. His name was Riley Braddock, he was an American, and Americans spoke English.

  Not Chinese, not Icelandic, not French.

  English.

  As the train rounded a bend, a small town appeared in the distance and the conductor announced their approach to Powell Creek. Chugging and squealing along rails that gleamed silver-blue, the train slowed to deliver him to a family of strangers, and Christophe again wished to God that John Bennett and Poppy Weidler, those meddling Red Cross workers, had never found him. He cursed the day he’d spoken with them—they’d told the army he was there, and now he was here. Although his injuries still ached, especially when the weather changed, he’d had a measure of peace on Véronique’s small plot on the other side of the Atlantic. There, it had not mattered that his memory had abandoned him.

  Since leaving her, he was reminded of it every day, and he felt lost, inadequate. L’étrangeté had become a malevolent shadow that followed him, ready to jump out and overtake him at any moment, inopportune or private. He glanced down and saw that his hand clenched and opened, clenched and opened on his knee. Glancing around to see if anyone had noticed the gesture, he made a conscious effort to open his fist and relax the muscles.

  “Powell Creek! Powell Creek Station!” the conductor blared again.

  A few of the passengers in his car began gathering their belongings and brushing at the wrinkles in their clothes. The sum of Christophe’s worldly goods was packed in a small suitcase that he kept at his feet. He turned to grab the cane hooked over the back of his seat, a practical piece of oak that had also been issued at the hospital, along with his suit, two changes of underwear, and a few other utilitarian items.