He loves her dearly.
And Maria apparently loved him in return. That was the most important thing, wasn’t it? He couldn’t want more for Maria than that. But, whether she was happy or not, he still had to face her—and his father. He closed his eyes. He dreaded it, almost as much as he dreaded facing Eleanor. He had never answered her letter, but even after all this time, there were things still to be said.
He took a wavering breath. The things he’d done—and not done—had become overwhelming and indefinable. His sins were so many he couldn’t separate them out anymore. They had all melded into guilt, into sorrow, into a relentless sense of regret. There would be no fatted calf for his homecoming, nor should there be. He didn’t deserve one, not when he’d abandoned what was left of his family the way he had, and the worst part was that, despite the progress he’d made, he was still lost in the relentless apathy that passed for his life.
I need Your help, Lord, he thought. I have to make this right if I can. If I haven’t waited too long. If the damage can be undone.
“Who is here in the house?” he asked abruptly.
“Right now? Mrs. Kinnard—she comes and goes. Mrs. Russell and Mrs. Justice are here on a more permanent basis for propriety’s sake. And Sergeant Major Perkins. Several soldiers from the garrison who are usually assigned to the infirmary—they’ve been taking care of you. The army surgeon is in and out. And there are one or two other soldiers whose job it is to keep Mrs. Kinnard happy.”
“And my father?” he asked. “Where is he?”
She looked surprised by the question. “I’m sorry, Mr. Markham. Your father died not long after Maria and Max were married,” she said.
He took a deep breath, and then another, trying to distance himself this time from a different kind of pain. Coming home, getting this far, had been the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life. He had known that the old man might not still be alive, but he had hoped—prayed—that that would not be the case. Incredibly, he hadn’t realized how much he was counting on his father being here.
Dead and gone. Like Samuel. Like Jimmy Russell. Like so much of his life. His faith was strong enough for him to believe that they would all meet again; in his heart he knew that. But surely he hadn’t thought he could come home after all this time and find that the important things would have remained the same? The sorrow he felt at this moment told him that he had.
He knew she watched him as he tried to process the information she had given him so ineptly. He was grateful she hadn’t just left him to try to understand all the things she’d told him on his own.
“My father— Do you know...what happened?” he asked after a moment.
“He was very ill. It was his heart,” she said. “They had to hurry the wedding on account of it—at his request, because he wanted to see Maria as a bride. And his doctors advised that there could be no delay.”
“My father approved of the marriage, then.”
“Yes. He was quite fond of Max, and he...” She hesitated, apparently uncertain as to whether he was up to hearing the details of his sister’s marriage to a Yankee colonel.
“Go on,” he said. “I need to know.”
“He made sure that Maria could live here as long as she wanted. It was in his will. He was worried that something might happen with the occupation and the house might be confiscated if Maria owned it. So he left it to Max. Your father trusted him to take care of her—they had long talks together about it. The ceremony was held here in the upstairs, the wide hallway right outside his room on the other end of the house. He could see and hear everything. Maria looked beautiful—she wore the earrings you and Samuel gave her before you left for the war—”
“We thought she would marry Billy Canfield. Where is he? Why didn’t she?”
“You would have to ask her about that,” Kate said.
“My father was pleased about her marrying your brother,” he said. It wasn’t a question, but the whole idea of such a thing was hard for him to believe.
“Yes. He was. I think it was a very enjoyable day for him. Lots of food and drink and good company, and I’m certain he sneaked at least one cigar.”
Robert smiled briefly at hearing that his father’s love of cigars had never waned. At least he had had something pleasant to focus on at the end of his life. “An enjoyable day. That’s good. I’m...glad.”
“I liked Mr. Markham very much,” she said after a moment. “We would talk sometimes.”
“Did he ever—” He suddenly stopped, unable to bring himself to ask the question.
“What were you going to ask?”
“I— Nothing.”
“He spoke of you once,” she said, and once again he thought she was trying to second-guess what he might want to know.
“He said you were his warrior son. And Samuel, his poet.”
Robert looked away. He had thought he was ready to hear these things, but he wasn’t. Had he not been such a hotheaded “warrior,” Samuel might be alive today.
He forced himself to push the conversation in a different, but no less painful, direction.
“The colonel—isn’t here?” he asked.
“He and Maria and the boys left for New Bern three days ago.”
“Boys? There are...children?”
“Three. Two are adopted. One, the youngest, is their birth child. My brother had military business to attend to in New Bern and he wanted his family with him. And Mrs. Hansen.”
He looked at her sharply. “Mrs. Hansen?”
“She helps Maria with the children. The boys are quite a handful.”
“You’re talking about Warrie Hansen?”
“Yes. You would know her, I think.”
“I did,” he said. “A very long time ago.”
So, Robert thought. Now he knew where he could find Eleanor’s mother at least.
“How...long have I been...?” He couldn’t quite find a word to describe his current condition. He felt as if he had slept a long time, but he didn’t know why or how. He reached up to touch his forehead again. It still hurt.
“You arrived the day they all left,” she said.
“Poor...timing on my part. Or perhaps not,” he added after a moment, primarily because of the look on her face.
“Given the circumstances,” Kate said, “it would have been alarming for Maria to suddenly come upon you the way I did, but, given the state that you were in that day, I think it would have been even worse. When you fell in the hallway, you hit your head on the parquet floor. Hard. The army surgeon says your collapse was caused by hunger and exhaustion from trying to travel on foot through the deep snow. That, and the wound you received, I assume, at Gettysburg. He says it left you—”
“I know how it left me,” Robert said. He lived with the pain every day and with being less than he’d once been both physically and mentally. He was thirty-three years old, and he felt like an old man.
But he suddenly remembered. “Mrs. Kinnard was there—when I was on the floor.”
“Yes,” she said.
“I remember...bits of it. She was upset with me. It was like...when the Canfield brothers and I tipped over...one of her outhouses.”
She looked at him with raised eyebrows.