Hayden wrapped his hand over hers. “You can’t be serious. I have no right to believe—”
“You have every right.”
“What you said in there to Dora Lee, I’m—I don’t know what to say. You’re incredible, brave, beautiful.”
She cupped his jaw with one hand, no longer the frightened sparrow spooked by the slightest wind. “A woman who doesn’t stand up for those she loves is not much of a woman.”
“Then you’re some kind of woman, Carrie Riley, and I’m a very fortunate man.”
She stepped into his chest and wrapped her slender arms around him, holding him while he digested the past few minutes that had changed his life.
“I’m so sorry for what you’ve been through,” she whispered. “I can’t imagine.”
No, she couldn’t.
“If you ever want to tell me—” She left the offer hanging. So like Carrie not to push, not to pry, which made her bold confrontation with Dora Lee so much more meaningful.
She loved him. Real love. The kind that stood up for what was right and didn’t back down.
He was awed, humbled...and determined to silence his childhood once and for all. He would tell her. He would trust her. Carrie deserved no less than all of him.
Dora Lee had held him captive since infancy, and he had one more thing to do before he was fully free.
“There’s somewhere I have to go,” he said softly, though dread laced the determination racing through him. “Will you go with me? I want you to know all of it.”
“I’ll go anywhere with you, Hayden. Anytime.”
Hayden hoped he could prepare her as well as himself for what was to come. Like Thaddeus, he was about to run into the fire. He hoped they both survived.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.
—Lao Tzu
1867
THE HOUSE STIFLED her tonight. Sitting in the parlor while Charlotte and Will made eyes at each other annoyed her. Not even sweet Benjamin’s offer to play chess had improved her mood, so Josie had retired to her bedroom to sulk.
She’d made her decision. Her conscience was happier and Margaret would be, too. A loyal Confederate did not lollygag with a Federal soldier, no matter how handsome he might be and how much poetry he quoted with such lovely eloquence. The words clung to her heart like honey to a spoon.
Josie took the scrimshaw hairbrush that had once belonged to her mother and wandered out on the veranda to brush her hair the requisite hundred strokes.
Thad’s eyes had gleamed when he’d seen her hair hanging down her back.
Closing her eyes to remember that last wonderful moment before she’d tossed him out like yesterday’s dishwater, she filled her lungs with the honeysuckled night.
Her eyes snapped open. She didn’t smell honeysuckle. She smelled smoke!
On the horizon, a terrifying glow lit the sky over the gristmill.
Her heart stopped. “Thad.”
She raced down the stairs, screaming like a banshee. “Fire! The mill’s on fire!”
Before the shocked faces in the parlor could react, she bolted out the door, jerked her skirts thigh high and dashed like a jackrabbit through the field.
The closer she got to the mill, the brighter the light glowed against the black horizon.
With every thought she alternately prayed and chanted his name.
Thad. Thad. Thad.
Flying over the weeds, heedless of the sticks and stumps and brambles tearing at her clothes and skin, she made the mill road in time to see a figure dart inside the burning mill.
“Thad!” she screamed, breath short, gasping for air. “No. No! Thaddeus!”
But her cries came too late. He was gone.
Her beloved Thaddeus who feared nothing on this earth except fire was inside a living inferno.
Terror sliced her heart open like a bayonet.
She sprinted toward the creek and waded in, ripping off her petticoats as she soaked herself head to toe. She tore the garment into two strips, wrapped one around her face and head and shoved the other for Thad into her bodice.
Dripping wet, she raced back up the incline...and into the mill.
Smoke and heat slammed her backward. She gasped, stumbled.
No one could survive in there for long.
She removed the cloth. Smoke gagged her. She coughed raggedly and screamed, “Thad!” and then slapped the petticoat against her mouth again.
Except for the flames shooting from the back, a deeper darkness than anything she’d ever seen enveloped her. She followed the flares, praying, pleading, mind chanting her love as if love alone was strong enough to douse a fire.
Halfway to the storeroom, she saw him. He stumbled, nearly fell atop a sack he dragged. No sack of corn was that valuable.
She pressed closer. Heat seared through the wet dress as she saw with a terrible knowing.
He didn’t drag a corn sack. He dragged a human.
Thad stumbled to one knee and coughed, weaving as if he’d collapse.
Josie rushed to him and yanked the wet petticoat from her bodice and wrapped it around his face. He nodded his gratitude and pointed toward the inert figure on the floor.
With a nod of comprehension, she ripped away her face protection and quickly wrapped it around the man’s face.
Thad grabbed her hand, tried to stop her. She pushed him away and reached for the fallen man’s wrist. “Help me.”
Smoke choked her immediately. She sucked in tiny draughts of air, fighting the cough, eyes streaming.
Thad struggled to his feet and took the other wrist. Together they dragged the limp body over the bumpy boards, across the threshold and out into the fresh air.
Shouts and lanterns circled the mill and filled the night. Men and woman, a dozen of them, formed two bucket brigades from the creek to the burning edifice.
Thad and Josie collapsed on the grass. Unfamiliar hands pressed water on them and took over care of the fallen man.
In the lamplight, Josie recognized the unconscious figure and gasped. “Freddy Stockton.”
They went to the same church. She’d known him all her life. And yet he’d done this to her family’s mill?
Beside her Thad struggled to stand, face soot covered and grim, eyes running. Hands pushed at him to stay down, and Will’s dear Yankee face appeared. “Rest now, cousin. We’ll take care of the mill.”
But the stubborn miller stumbled toward the bucket brigade, and Josie pushed wearily upward to follow. If a man covered in burn scars and exhausted from a smoky rescue could battle her family’s fire, so could she.
More people arrived, farmers and townsfolk, and in a short time, the flames were beaten down and the sheriff, at a word from Thad, hauled away the young fire starter with a promise to find Jim Swartz and learn the names of the other hooded figures.
“I heard about their sort,” Sheriff Williams said. “They’re burning out folks and stirring trouble over Pulaski way. We don’t tolerate that behavior in Honey Ridge.”
For a while, folks stood around talking, exclaiming shock over the event and relief that no one was killed. Finally, the weary group began to scatter.
Josie stood beside Thaddeus. She reeked of smoke, and so did he. She didn’t care. He was alive. Her prayers had been answered, this time with a yes.
“You coulda let that boy burn to a crisp and been in your rights,” a man said to Thad.
Thad shook his head. “No, Slim, I could not.”
“Then you’re a better man than most.”
“Pitts always was a liar.” Slim rested a hand on Thad’s shoulder. “Maybe we were wrong about you, Eriksson.”
Voices
muttered, some like Slim with a cautious new respect for the Yankee, while others simply drifted away.
They’d all been wrong, especially her. The realization cramped Josie’s belly.
She’d rejected a good and honorable man who would risk his life for another while she’d considered Jim Swartz a friend, a Southerner like her...and he’d set fire to her livelihood.
She turned her head and coughed, the taste of humility stronger than the smoke.
The scattered words of some long-ago sermon tumbled through her thoughts. Or maybe Charlotte had read it to her and only now did the words make sense. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male nor female: for ye are all one.
North nor South, she added. Yankee nor Reb.
A man’s character wasn’t determined by the circumstances of his birth.
Oh, Thad. I was so very wrong.
The weary crowd slowly dissipated until only Thad and Josie remained beneath the stars to stare at the yawning black hole in the rear of the mill.
“At least we didn’t lose everything,” Thad said.
Even if the mill was a total loss, her everything had survived.
Gritty-eyed and smelling of smoke so strong she’d never be able to sleep, she collapsed in exhaustion on the creek bank. Thad tumbled down beside her.
Weary beyond words, they lay on the cool, wet grass for long moments. Josie listened to him breathe, grateful beyond reason that he still could.
The old mill snapped and something fell. Neither turned to look.
“I was wrong, Thaddeus,” she murmured into the smoky night above. “Tom is dead. I am not.”
Margaret might never forgive her, and Josie would mourn their friendship, but tonight had changed her forever. She could not deny the truth any more than she could deny her love for Thaddeus.
He remained still, and she thought he might have fallen asleep until at last he spoke. “You hate Yankees.”
There is no Jew or Gentile...
“You can no more change where you were born or who you are than I can.”
“I think I’ve heard that somewhere.” Tired amusement laced his words.
He’d said those very words to her, hadn’t he? “I’m eating humble pie. Will you make me choke on it?”
“No. No.” Thad’s voice deepened, serious now. His hand found hers in the darkness. “You saved my life.”
She’d nearly lost him. Because of men she’d trusted more than the man she loved. She couldn’t bear to speak of it.
“You’d have managed fine and dandy without me,” she said. “We did, however, spare that stupid boy, for which he and his gossipy mother should be eternally grateful.”
Would Mamie Stockton change her sanctimonious views? Not likely, but perhaps others would see what the old gossip could not.
Thad rolled his head toward her and, smile tired, voice husky from smoke, murmured, “A team like us should stick together. I love you, Josephine.”
A giggle, completely inappropriate considering the night’s events, rose up in her chest. A giggle of relief, of joy.
In a single move, she rolled on top of him. Her riotous curls, wet and stinky, dripped onto his soot-covered face, and she kissed him.
The only part of him that moved was his lips. Hot and soft and smoky.
Teasing and so tender inside she wanted to cry, Josie asked, “Was that a proposal?”
His arms wrapped around her, heavy in their fatigue, but loving, too. His blue eyes, so tired and red, twinkled. “If it was, will you accept...or cut out my tongue?”
With a mischievous bounce of eyebrows, she trailed a finger across his lips. “I can think of better uses for that tongue of yours.”
“Is that a fact? Why, Miss Portland, you shock me.”
The ornery fire that had gotten her into all kinds of trouble flared up. She leaned closer, voice lowered.
“Then, my beloved Mr. Eriksson, allow me to shock you further.” She touched her mouth to his, whispering, “I love you, too.”
There on the banks of Magnolia Creek with the stars occluded by smoke, Josie let go of hatred and anger and prejudice. She didn’t care if Thaddeus was Yank or Reb. His heart was good, and he was hers.
Life as they’d both known it was gone forever, but men and women like them would build a new South.
It was time to put aside the past, to forget what came before and to let the future begin.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
It’s no use going back to yesterday because I was a different person then.
—Lewis Carroll
Present
THE DRIVE FROM Louisville took less than three hours, but the place where Hayden grew up might as well have been on another planet.
Carrie was struck by miles and miles of little except nature’s beauty. They passed through tiny towns with only a post office or a gas station and past empty, leaning houses and rusted school buses not far from lovely homes and modern schools—a contrast in lifestyles she’d not seen before.
As the rental, a Jeep this time, took the hairpin curves and sharp inclines up into the far reaches of the Appalachians, Hayden’s hands tightened on the wheel and he grew less and less inclined for conversation.
She felt his anxiety, though he still hadn’t told her why he needed to return to the place of his childhood. Not that the reason mattered. He’d asked her to come. He needed her support.
“The countryside is breathtaking, Hayden,” Carrie said from the passenger seat. “Look at the leaves and the colors.”
Fog the color of Hayden’s eyes hung over the mountains, a stunning frame for the autumn spectacle.
“I forget about this sometimes, about how beautiful it can be and what a wonderful place it is for some.” He rubbed at his chin, pensive. “Not all of Appalachia shared my experiences. I understand that on an intellectual level. There’s good here as well as the ugly and evil.”
“As there is everywhere.”
“But the bad sticks in my head. In my heart.”
It was the most revealing thing she’d heard him say, and she understood, at least a little. Her betrayal by a man she hadn’t known was married had clouded her view of relationships and had stuck in her heart, as Dora Lee’s abuse had stuck in his.
He hadn’t told her everything, but enough that she knew his childhood had been a nightmare and he’d used his storytelling gift to escape.
Thank God he’d had that.
They parked in front of a badly rusted and listing trailer with plastic over the windows and trash littering the yard.
They got out of the car and crossed the obstacle course of clutter and stepped up on a porch so rickety she worried about falling through.
Hayden pushed open the door, and they went inside.
Unwashed dishes and pans and carryout cartons piled the table, the sink, the stove. Ashtrays filled with cigarette butts sent up a stench that mingled with the disturbing smell of rotted food and mouse droppings. Trash and clothes spilled out everywhere, and bits and pieces of broken furniture crowded the tiny space. There was hardly a walkway from the door to the inside.
“Home sweet home.”
The bottom fell out of her stomach. Hayden had lived here?
“This was my life, Carrie. This is who I am.” Shame filled his eyes. “You deserve to know who I really am.”
She shook her head. “Do you think this matters to me? You were a helpless child, Hayden. You couldn’t help what happened to you any more than Brody could.”
“There’s something else I want to show you. Something I have to reconcile once and for all.”
She tilted her head, saw the dread and something else in his face. Hayden was afraid.
Reaching for his hand, she offered her most confident and lovi
ng smile. “Together.”
* * *
LITTLE BY LITTLE, Carrie was setting him free.
Hayden was still stunned and thrilled that she hadn’t walked out on him at the hospital. No matter how many times he apologized for leaving her at the hotel and for the lies, he knew he’d failed.
He didn’t want to fail her anymore.
If they were to have any chance for a relationship, she deserved the whole truth. He loved her enough to give her the one thing he’d never given anyone else. Himself.
But to live in truth for the future, he had to resolve his past. All of it.
Hand in hand, with his belly trembling but his head determined, they walked behind the trailer and down the steep grassy incline toward the place of his torture. When the well came into sight, he paused to calm his thrumming pulse and catch his breath.
How many times had he stood here so terrified that he couldn’t breathe?
The well had held him captive for far too long.
“What a picturesque old well,” she said. “Did your family use this for water?”
Picturesque? He tried to see the round rock structure through her eyes. Tried and failed. “I hate this place.”
“Why?”
He drew in a strengthening breath and started down the incline. When he came to the well, it seemed a harmless hole of water rocked up the sides with an overhead crossbar where once hung a rusted old bucket and a well rope.
He refused to let it frighten him ever again.
“Dora Lee...drowned things here. Things that annoyed her.”
Carrie gasped, hand to her mouth. “She did what?”
“I think she enjoyed playing her sick game of omnipotence. A mouse. A bird. A rabbit. She’d hold me by the arms and make me watch them swim and claw and struggle until they died, all the while threatening to drown me, too.”
“Hayden! That’s heinous.”
“Isn’t it?”
He turned to her then, wanting to pull her close and forget this odyssey into his childhood but knowing he must purge the past to ever be completely free.