The Yankee Widow by Linda Lael Miller

Author:Linda Lael Miller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MIRA Books
Published: 2019-02-27T19:14:02+00:00

* * *

The next day in her sun-splashed garden, Caroline remembered her conversation with Enoch and shuddered, running an arm across her brow to wipe away the perspiration.

She reached for her daughter, secured the bonnet, and smiled at the little girl’s upturned face, already smudged with garden dirt.

“Did my nose peel off, Mama?” Rachel asked, wrinkling the feature in question.

Caroline nearly laughed, until she raised her eyes slightly, and was reminded that a fragment of the Union army was encamped squarely between the house and the barn. “It might,” she replied distractedly, “if you don’t keep your bonnet on.”

Taking in the tents and wagons nearby, and those soldiers who were well enough to tend the wounded moving about, she yearned for peaceful days gone by. Long days, full of hard work and, yes, worries, with a war going on and her husband far from home and constantly in harm’s way, but still blessedly alive at that time penning long letters to her whenever he had the chance. Letters of promise—we’ll have more children, Caroline, sturdy boys and girls, you wait and see—we’ll save every spare cent and buy more land—keep beef cattle and raise hogs—and when our sons and daughters have all grown up and married, we’ll travel. We’ll see New York—maybe even sail across the Atlantic, visit places like Paris and Rome and London—

Oh, Jacob, she thought sadly. Jacob.

He’d had such wonderful, high-flying dreams.

Her own aspirations had been so much simpler; she had wanted more children, certainly, but otherwise, she would have been content to live out her entire life on that modest farm, raising babies, growing and preserving vegetables, milking the cow, separating the cream and churning the butter. She hadn’t yearned to go on long journeys, however spectacular the sights; she’d been to them all, at least in her imagination, through the pages of her grandfather’s many books.

Jacob, on the other hand, had never tired of making extravagant plans, though he, too, had loved the farm and being part of a small community. But how his eyes had shone when he spoke of traveling far and wide. The loss of him constantly weighed her down, but she was determined to do anything the grim circumstances that faced her required.

Caroline once again fixed her attention on the doings before her. Soon, according to Alderman, the men assembled on her grass would be moving on, with tents and their wounded, and those who were able would fight again. She decided she’d return to town to be as useful as she could be. She’d see her friends in the Ladies’ Aid Society, Hannah and Patience and the others, and help with whatever she could.

In that contrary way of human nature, she both looked forward to the soldiers’ departure and dreaded it. She and the rest of the state would move ahead, perhaps tentatively at first, pushing up their sleeves, collecting the scattered pieces of the lives they’d lived before the battle and then beginning the long and arduous process of rebuilding.

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