“Where is…my mother…?”
“The captain said I should tell you everything straightaway, if you asked, because you’re not a person who likes the truth hid from them no matter how bad it is.”
“She’s dead…isn’t she?”
“Yes, ma’am. Your mother—Miss Emma—died. You’re remembering that now, I guess.”
Abiah nodded, wiping furtively at the tears that ran down her face.
“We buried her in that little herb garden near the house—where the ground was soft enough. And words was said over her, so you don’t have to fret yourself on that account. Cap says to tell you he did the best he could by her.”
Abiah believed that without question, but the tears came anyway, tears and then finally the welcome refuge of sleep. She woke from time to time, wondering if the sergeant would be there. He never was, and she began to wonder if he’d actually sat in the chair by her bed or if she’d been dreaming. There was only Gertie, who seemed to know exactly what to do to make her more comfortable and who, more often than not, insisted that Abiah drink a hot, salty chicken broth and then take some bitter tasting medicine, after which she fell into yet another dream-ridden sleep. It was so hard to think clearly, to know what was real and what wasn’t. But conversation took far too much effort, regardless of Abiah’s growing curiosity.
“Miss Abiah, look who’s here,” Gertie said one afternoon, and Abiah opened her eyes to see another enemy soldier, who after a moment turned into a very awkward Thomas, standing at the foot of the bed. She stared at him, not at all sure if he really was here or not. There had always been a sadness in Thomas Harrigan; it was one of the things that had drawn her to him from the very first time Guire brought him home. But at this particular moment, he looked so lost.
“What’s wrong?” she asked him, and he looked at Gertie instead of answering.
“Tell me,” Abiah said. “What’s wrong with you?”
“That is my question, I believe, Abby,” he said, and she smiled.
“Oh, well, then. If that’s the case, the answer is ‘nothing’—if you don’t count the fever…and being out of my head most of the time.”
“So how is your head at the moment?”
“I don’t know,” she said truthfully. “Sometimes I think Gertie is Mother. Sometimes I think Guire’s here—or you. You are here, aren’t you, Thomas? I’m not talking to the bedpost, am I?”
“Most definitely I am here,” he said.
“Say ‘heart,’ then. So I’ll know.”
“Heart?” he asked, clearly puzzled.
She immediately gave a soft laugh. “Yes, it’s you. H-a-t—‘heart.’”
He smiled in return. “You are so very bad for my masculine certitude, Abiah. You are the only female I know who always makes fun of me.”
“I have to. You’d be insufferable if I didn’t.”
Gertie laughed in the background.
“I see you agree with her, Gertie,” Thomas said.
“I can’t help it, Captain,” Gertie said.
“Well,” he said, still forcing himself to be cheerful. This was a Thomas Abiah had never met before. “The doctor tells me you’re doing better.”
“Does he? He doesn’t tell me anything.”
“He says you mustn’t get overly confident. You must continue to play the invalid even if you feel like dancing.”
“Dancing? I’m having trouble knowing the day of the week.”
He smiled again, but this smile quickly faded. He stood there with his hands behind his back, tall and handsome, once her brother’s greatest friend and then his sworn enemy—and hers.
“I need to ask you something, Abiah,” he said.
She waited while he looked around the room as if it were of great interest to him, and then just to her left—everywhere but at her.
“I was wondering if you would consider something,” he said, now looking at the floor. He abruptly pulled around that same ladder-back chair and sat down. Then he cleared his throat and noisily slid the chair closer to the side of the bed. He brought the fresh smell of the cold outdoors with him. Damp wool and wood smoke. Soap and tobacco. Horse and leather. She longed to be closer to him still.
“If you intend to catch me…while I’m still lucid, I think you’ll want to hurry this along, Thomas,” she said.
“All right. Abiah, I was wondering if you would marry me.”
He finally looked at her, met her eyes briefly and glanced away.
“Too late,” she said, in spite of her astonishment. Even at her most mentally confused, even if she’d been in a room full of fever-spawned Thomases, she would not have expected that question.
“I beg your pardon?” he said.
She smiled slightly, because once again his Boston accent had determined that he leave out an R. As a Southerner, she had a bit of a problem with that letter of the alphabet herself—only she didn’t leave it quite so blatantly out of the middle of words or add it onto the end where it didn’t belong. The years he had lived in Maryland with his grandfather hadn’t erased his accent at all. Knowing even so little of the relationship between the two men as she did, she wouldn’t have been surprised if Judge Winthrop hadn’t made an effort to weed out that particular reminder of his daughter’s failed marriage, just as Abiah wouldn’t have been surprised if that was a reason Thomas might have tenaciously retained it.
Guire had told her once that Thomas looked very much like his father—who being the only son of a wealthy shipowner, had enough inherited money and enough favors owed him to open at least some of the doors kept firmly closed to those with an Irish surname. But there the similarity ended. Unlike his father, Thomas Harrigan clearly didn’t abandon a woman who needed him.
“I said ‘too late,’ Thomas.”
“You mean your lucid moment is going?”
“No, I mean someone else…has already asked for…my hand in marriage.”
He looked startled. “May I ask who?”
“John William Miller,” she said.
“Johnny Miller wants to marry you?”
“Well, you needn’t make it sound so…incredible, Thomas. I believe he has been of a mind to since I was fourteen.”
“This is the same Johnny Miller who was at your mother’s house practically every time I came to visit.”
“Yes.”
“I suppose he’s in the other army?”
“Yes.”
“He’s an officer, no doubt?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re making plans to marry him?”
“No.”
“No?”
“I didn’t give him an answer.”
“Why not?”
She looked into his eyes. “You know why not,” she said.
He flushed slightly.
So, she thought. She had told him precisely where her heart lay. She was very much afraid that that particular memory was real.
“You don’t have