Robin Oliveira by My Name Is Mary Sutter (v5)

Author:My Name Is Mary Sutter (v5) [Sutter, My Name Is Mary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General, Historical - General, Historical, Civil War; 1861-1865, Nurses, Medical, Medical novels, United States - History - Civil War; 1861-1865, Historical fiction, American Historical Fiction, Fiction - Historical, United States, History
ISBN: 9780670021673
Publisher: Viking Adult
Published: 2010-09-15T04:00:00+00:00

Later, Mary found Thomas sitting on the front stoop. The summer heat had leached any color from the sky, and he had long ago emptied his canteen of water. Mary sat down beside him.

“How is he?” Thomas asked.

“He died,” Mary said.

Her voice was flat, but Thomas knew she would not weep. This was why everybody loved her. She balanced pain with anger and so was able to survive. Everyone is a friend of Mary’s. She had slipped away from them. He noted the pride and the sadness, how they worked together to make her beautiful. She held her hand to her chest, and her long, exquisite neck rose above the ruin of her dress. In her dishevelment, in her intelligence, Mary was something to admire. He looked away, down the cobbled street toward the bridge and the creek, where trees arced over a deep culvert. If there had been no Jenny, maybe. But he would not betray. A choice was a choice. He let out a long sigh, as if he were very tired, and he was tired, though mostly he was ashamed.

He said, “Compared to you, I’ve done nothing. All I did was build a fort. I haven’t done anything else. I haven’t even seen a Rebel; I haven’t seen anything, except when the ambulances went by, and then I couldn’t even look at them. You have done more in this war than I have.”

“Of course you’ve done something,” Mary said, though she was stunned and weary and only half listening now. She didn’t see Thomas bury his face in his hands, didn’t see him look up finally, newly uncertain. She and Stipp had stood together at the foot of the bed. How is the boy? The boy is dead.

“I cannot leave you here. Amelia will have my head.”

“It isn’t your fault that I’m staying.”

But Thomas couldn’t help but feel that it was, somehow. There was a long silence, broken only by the traffic of Bridge Street running at their feet.

“I admire you, Mary,” Thomas said.

Admiration was not love, though less than a year ago Mary had been pleased to hear him say just those words to her, believing they represented love.

“Jenny is waiting for you. Tell my family I am well. Tell my mother everything will be all right.” Mary touched his forearm then, and said again, “You’ve got Jenny waiting.”

And a baby.

Everything of any consequence that had ever happened in her life had been because of babies.

Now she would admit it, as she had been unable to ever admit it to herself before; she had come to Washington because of the baby. She had come because she couldn’t watch Jenny grow large with Thomas’s child. But now Thomas was going to go home and see Jenny, and Jenny would tell him, and then they would have the baby together and Mary would stay here.

Thomas held Mary’s gaze for a long time. It seemed a betrayal to leave her, as wrong as it had felt to leave Christian at the Capitol grounds.

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