Surrender at Orchard Rest (39 page)

“Yes, I took several of our things out of there.”

Joseph began to cry.

“I always knew it, but this proves it. Sawyer didn’t kill Eric. Teddie did and he did it on purpose.”

The brass bedframe shook with great sobs so that Ivy had to hold on to the mattress to stay put.

“Teddie shot him. Teddie murdered Eric.”

“Nonononono,” Blanche said. She wrapped her arms around herself.

“He did, Momma. I know he did.”

“What?” asked Somerset. She felt as though the room was collapsing on itself. She slid off the nightstand and went to stand by Kirk. “What did you say?”

“No,” said Blanche. “I will accept any story you tell but that one.”

She gripped the dresser for support. No one moved.

“I believe you, Joseph.” Ivy’s voice rose above all the rest. “I’m your wife, and I believe you.”

“This rock proves it,” said Joseph. “Eric carried it everywhere. He took it to war. He had it on him the day he died. I remember him pulling it out of his pocket to look at it as we rode through the foothills along the Chickamauga.”

“He’s alive!” cried Somerset. “He survived. He put it in the house.”

Kirk tilted her chin up so that she looked at him. He shook his head.

“No, dear,” he whispered and gave her a handkerchief.

“Sawyer said he shot Eric,” protested Blanche. “I’d rather Sawyer killed Eric.”

Joseph rolled his eyes. The movement hurt his head and he grimaced.

“Sawyer is a martyr, and if I’d known that was why he and Somerset were ending things and he was leaving, I would have confessed sooner,” he said. “Sawyer hit his head when he fell from the tree. He doesn’t know what happened.”

“You’ve been hit hard plenty of times—”

“I know what happened,” said Joseph. “Ivy, go get the Whitfield that Amelia gave me.”

Ivy returned bearing the gun that Amelia insisted Joseph take.

“This proves it, too,” wept Joseph. He turned it on end so that they looked at the back of the wooden butt.

A tiny but clear ER was scratched into the wood. It looked as though it was done with the arrowhead.

“I always thought he did it, but these things prove it,” sobbed Joseph. “Theodore and Eric were the closest two members of the Brotherhood. It began changing on Teddie’s end when Eric became more successful than Teddie. Eric started outshooting Teddie in distance and accuracy. Eric had an easier way with the men. He was building more respect among the ranks. It got under Teddie’s skin when they started discussing giving Eric his own men to lead. They were ready to promote him and make a name for him in the army.

“I don’t know how Teddie did it. That whole escapade on the Chickamauga where we chased the scouts might have been Teddie’s plan to get rid of Eric. He determined where we positioned ourselves. He might have made Eric a sitting duck by planning it the way he did. He was a crack shot and in the perfect position to take Eric out, I know that. I think he shot Eric in the neck for fun and to make Sawyer think he did it since Sawyer was a lousy shot. Or maybe so he could accuse Sawyer of the murder if he ever became suspicious. Teddie knew Sawyer loved Somerset and would have used it as leverage.

“I think he eased up behind me and bludgeoned me with the rifle butt. I don’t think he meant for me to live, but I guess with Sawyer waking up, he wasn’t confident about finishing the job and burying both of us. I know he never let anyone handle his gun again after that day. Probably because his own was such a mess that he had to bury it along with Eric and take his rifle. He didn’t want anyone to see the initials. At any rate, Amelia giving me the gun confirmed what I already knew and Somerset’s arrowhead does, too.”

“You’re asking me to discard everything that I believe about everyone,” said Somerset. “I’m not ready to do that. He was perfection, Joseph. I once saw Teddie take off a jacket and give it to a slave in need. I’ve watched him empty his pockets for beggars in Baton Rouge and carry medicine on foot to someone in need.”

Kirk rubbed her shoulders.

“I can’t go on living with all this inside me,” said Joseph. “I have to get it out. He was the devil.”

Blanche keened from her position at the dresser.

“I’m listening.” Ivy kissed him on the forehead.

“The first time I suspected was when I looked at Teddie’s boots as he dropped me off at the field hospital. He’d been wanting new boots for a while. His were in a pitiful state. Eric’s were newer. I thought he was wearing new boots when he left me, and I asked him if he was. He said no but they looked new to me.

He was like a ghost the way he could walk through the mist making no noise. I’d turn around and there he’d be, smiling at me with that gun pointed at me like he could blow me away without a second thought. He had a way of saying he nearly got me that made the marrow leech from my bones. He wanted me to be scared to death of him. I was.”

Somerset snuggled closer to Kirk and looked up at him. His chin was in her hair but his face was a study as he listened to Joseph, mesmerized by his tale.

It wasn’t Teddie. It was someone else, she thought. Out of all the people we know, it can’t be Teddie. I’d almost rather it be Sawyer than Teddie. I thought Theodore was the last vestige of goodness on this earth.

Joseph’s shoulders trembled and he ducked his head. They all struggled to hear him.

“I turned myself in to Elmira,” he confessed. “I hoped cholera or plain deprivation would kill me. I thought I deserved that for not being man enough to confront Theodore. Didn’t it strike any of you as odd that I wound up in Elmira? I ran away. I deserted. I turned myself in at Elmira in New York. It was my death sentence to myself, and I thought it might be adequate payback for my cowardice. With the war over, Theodore waited around New York with Sawyer to claim me when I was released. His face waiting outside my cell was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen. I was frightened the entire trip home.”

“You are the bravest, kindest, strongest man I have ever known,” said Ivy. “There is a reason why I love you, hundreds of them.”

“It didn’t end there though,” said Joseph. “I wish it did, but I think more happened after that. He didn’t care for Amelia though I don’t think she knew it. He once made a joke that at bedtime he had to think of his wallet and not look at her directly. The business with Winfree Indigo was seedy. Mr. Winfree started getting sick as soon as Teddie got home. He was a strapping, healthy man, too. I think Theodore killed him to get the foundry. I do.

“I went and visited Charleston to see little Theodore and Elizabeth not long before Theodore died. I told myself I would redeem myself for being lily-livered and talk to him. I made a remark about people being in business with him not making it long. He looked like a man without a soul and asked me what I meant. He knew that I suspected. It wasn’t long after that he died. There’s the part where I don’t know what to believe. Was there an explosion or did he cause an explosion? I’ll never know what to think. Was it an accident or not? Did his conscience reawaken in the end so that he had to kill himself?”

Joseph stopped and stared into space.

Ivy curled up beside him on the bed and threw her arms around him.

“You’re going to get through this,” she said. “You only have to live minute by minute and there will come a day where you wonder how you ever let yourself be punished for someone else’s misdeeds. We all punish ourselves for the wrongdoings of those around us. It’s time to stop. It’s a new day.”

Joseph raked his hands through his hair.

“I don’t know how to live anymore. I don’t know that I want to.”

Dr. Harlow stepped forward with a drink offered to Joseph. He pulled a seat close to the bed.

“Son, you’ve been through the worst thing a man can go through, and now that I’ve heard the words out of your mouth, I understand you better than I ever thought possible. It’s a cold comfort to try to work to hold a family together on a principle that you know isn’t real. You’re going to have to be strong now. You need a drink now, but don’t drown yourself in drink. You lived through a bad thing but it’s over now. You’re a strong, righteous man because you tested yourself. It’s good that you told the truth. You might get better because of it.”

“I ruined my sister’s life,” said Joseph. “I suspected and suspected, and then I knew the truth. Yet I let her flounder through this life hurt and lost. If I had told the truth, she’d be happy with Sawyer right now and no one would be dead because of me.”

“You didn’t ruin my life!” said Somerset. “I ruined it. I loved Sawyer, but I never got over Eric. Phillip still would have come to Century Grove for his birthday, and I would have fallen for him because he looked like Eric. I’ve been in a land of make-believe for weeks now where all I had to do was skew my vision and I had Eric back. Sawyer has always been a sight too good for me. I hope one of you will tell him so when he comes back.

“I’ve hurt more people than I can count and I’ll never make it up to everyone. If you want to blame someone living, blame me, but beyond that, this is Teddie’s fault.”

“Joseph, I put you in a prison long before Theodore did,” said Blanche. “I favored him and esteemed him. I told you to aspire to be him. If I hadn’t been driven by blind love and favoritism, more of my children might have made it through the war intact.”

She looked more frail and ill than Somerset knew was possible, worse than the night she tried to kill herself. She thought Blanche aged ten years in the time it took Joseph to tell his story. Somehow her face was more graceful. With the hard façade of youth down, she looked like a graceful, loving woman.

There might be hope for her after all, thought Somerset, and she excused herself.

She trudged down the hall and out the back door in her bare feet.

She’d learned everything about herself that she would ever need to know in an hour.

She might be a twenty-three-year-old spinster, but she was also fickle and easily swayed. Helping others was in her heart but she had no business chasing down a dream until she had grown up herself. For all her intellect, she was as blind and deaf to people’s hearts and minds as a small child.

A child is more perceptive, she thought. I’ve wrought madness on everyone I ever touched just because I wanted one thing.

Eric.

He wasn’t out there somewhere like Sawyer, on horseback in the Badlands, carving out a new life. He didn’t walk out of a hospital a different man and disappear into the streets not knowing who he was and take a new name only to fall in love with a new woman. He didn’t die of exposure within harsh prison conditions, a blanket of holes and fleas draped over him while his bedmates died night after night.

He was in a scratched-out grave on the Chickamauga, a bloodied and battered weapon thrown on top of him and hidden with scant mud and branches.

She found herself at his ugly monument in the middle of Century Grove cemetery. She wasn’t surprised. If she lost her sight, her feet would know the way.

“I miss you,” she said. “I’ve survived everything that came my way in life because you taught me love. If I don’t live another day, even with all my failures, my life is worth plenty because I know what love is. It’s the only lesson I ever learned. It might be the only lesson I ever need.”

“Somerset! Somerset!”

Myra was riding at full gallop toward the cemetery, her skirts flying all around her in whirlwind clouds. She managed to rein in at the gates. Her eyes looked as big as the silk flowers on her hat.

“Honey, Franklin was at Maple Pool visiting the help, and he came back to say that Sawyer just arrived at Riverside. He came back for you. Franklin said that he was homesick at the end of three days and turned around and came home. Can you imagine what all he’s walked into? Oh, Somerset!”

“Do you have any money?” asked Somerset.

“I have fifteen dollars in greenbacks in my corset. Why?”

“I need your shoes, your horse, and your money,” said Somerset. “You can’t expect me to stay here after I shamed Sawyer, myself, and everyone else in the Grove. I have to leave. Mother has you, and Ivy and Joseph have each other. I won’t stay here and let him tell me that I’m not to blame. He’ll tell me this is all his fault.”

Myra dismounted from her mare and began pulling money out of her dress. She crammed the bills into Somerset’s waiting hands and slipped off her silly little slippers.

“Am I to tell everyone the truth about where you went?” asked Myra. “Or am I to say you sneaked off when you heard Franklin’s rumor?”

“I’m done with secrets,” said Somerset. “You might as well let Sawyer know I’m at Somerset Manor in Baton Rouge. He’s crossed the country for me already. If he doesn’t hate me upon finding out about Phillip, a few more hundred miles aren’t going to stop him.”

She got on the mare’s back and turned her head in the general direction of Tuscaloosa.

“Wait,” she said.

She took a scrap sheet of wrapping paper from her pocket and the pencil she used for writing receipts and scratched a message.

This is not your fault. I am to blame.

The most beautiful gift I’ve ever been given is the thought behind seven crocuses on an outstretched palm.