“You want to wait until you finish with the army?” Elizabeth had asked.
“I spoke with David and he had a good point. One never knows what the army may do. I shouldn’t want you to be carrying our child if I am sent to battle...”
Elizabeth had blushed ten shades of crimson. How dare David discuss such intimate details of her and Jeremiah’s life! Her embarrassment had only been surpassed by the fear invoked by the validity of the statement. The thought of Jeremiah leaving the safety of the hospital, of him lying wounded in some blood-crusted field, had made her tremble. Her beloved had immediately realized her distress and taken her in his arms.
“Come now, don’t think of such things... Besides, you know that hospital can’t get along without me. Why, I heard a rumor that next week they are planning on making me chief of surgery!”
The words had been so ridiculous that she’d laughed.
But the merriment could not last for long.
A cold, wet November had brought sickness to the hospital. The army had suspended all liberty passes as pneumonia and other ailments ravaged the wards. Jeremiah had soon fallen ill himself. Elizabeth, frantic with worry, had begged to tend to him. She knew the hospital was short on nurses and her help was surely needed, but because of her brother’s involvement in the Confederate army, and her refusal to disavow him, she wasn’t permitted to step foot on hospital grounds.
It hadn’t been until dear old Dr. Turner, the physician she had once served, pleaded her case to hospital command that she’d been allowed to see her fiancé. David had come to fetch her the night Jeremiah lay dying. By then he’d been too ill to recognize her, let alone speak.
Elizabeth had held his hand those final hours and watched helplessly as he’d slipped into eternity. Her faith had slipped away that night, as well. She felt cheated, in every sense of the word. Cheated by God.
Cheated by him...
David stood before her quietly. His eyes were as blue and clear as Jeremiah’s had once been. Elizabeth didn’t want him anywhere near her, but she forced herself to display customary courtesy. She had to focus on his chin whiskers in order to keep her voice steady. “David, I must thank you for your assistance... I appreciate your willingness to allow a funeral here in Baltimore.”
“It was the least I could do,” he said. “Considering...”
Her heart squeezed again, and she was grateful he didn’t finish the sentence. Instead of claiming the place beside her, he moved to the far end of the receiving line, putting Elizabeth’s mother, Jane, and her sister, Trudy, between them. Her mother tugged on her hand. Elizabeth knew it was both a gesture of comfort and direction.
“It is time, Beth,” she whispered.
Turning to the left, Elizabeth began the difficult task of greeting her guests. All of her closest friends had gathered—Julia and her husband, Samuel Ward, Sally Hastings and Rebekah Van der Geld. Even Emily and her new husband, Dr. Evan Mackay, had come. They had arrived by way of the Washington train early that morning.
Dr. Mackay was first in line. “Your fiancé was a good soldier,” he insisted, “and a fine Christian man.”
Both the compliment and the man’s presence brought a quiver to her chin. Elizabeth fought hard to keep control. Jeremiah had once served in his ward. Dr. Mackay was skilled in treating lung ailments, and Elizabeth had no doubt her fiancé would have survived his illness had this particular physician not been transferred just weeks before to the hospital in Washington.
“May God comfort you in your loss,” Dr. Mackay added.
She had been told by others previously that He would, but so far she was still waiting.
Emily then moved to embrace her. “Don’t concern yourself with anything in the kitchen,” she whispered. “The girls and I will see to everything.”
“Thank you,” Elizabeth managed. She was grateful for her friends’ assistance, as well as for the food they had supplied. A proper funeral demands a proper meal. Today should be a day of dignity and respect.
As Emily and her husband moved to her mother, Elizabeth glanced to her left. The queue of mourners stretched throughout the darkened parlor. She willed them to disappear. She did not want their condolences. She did not even want their prayers. What she wanted drove an ache so deep through her body that she feared for a moment her knees were going to buckle. She wanted Jeremiah back.
Get a hold of yourself, she commanded. You must not cry.
She tried to steel her resolve by reminding herself she had but only a few more hours to endure, then she could retreat to the solitude of her room. There she would not be forced to make polite conversation. She could be alone.
“This world will not be the same without him,” she heard Dr. Mackay say to David.
The finality of her fiancé’s death seemed to wrap her in a tight-fitting shroud. It is not just these few hours I must endure, she realized. It is a lifetime. I will never again hear the sound of his laughter, feel his kiss upon my lips. I will never claim his name as my own or hold his child in my arms. My dreams have died with him. I will mourn his loss the rest of my days.
* * *
When the last person had paid their respects, Elizabeth very quickly left the parlor. David wanted to follow after her, but he didn’t dare. He knew she’d prefer to be alone.
As her mother gently laid a hand upon his arm, David turned. The lines around her eyes were far too many for her years. Worry and sorrow had deeply etched their mark.
“Why don’t you go to the kitchen?” she suggested. “Get something to eat.”
“Oh, thank you, ma’am, but I’m not that hungry.”
“You must keep up your strength.”
She was concerned for his health, as were many of the ladies here today. Several had been volunteer nurses and apparently thought his welfare was in jeopardy. One had asked if he had enough warm clothing for the journey north. Another if he’d been showing any signs of chills or respiratory illness himself.
David assured them all that physically, he was fine.
To please Mrs. Martin, he went to the kitchen and accepted the piece of fried chicken that Miss Sally Hastings laid upon his plate.
“How about a slice of raisin pie?” she asked.
David doubted he could even handle the chicken. “I’m certain it is delicious but...I don’t think so...”
Miss Hastings must have understood, for she smiled sympathetically. David knew she had recently lost a brother herself. “I’ll set aside some food for you to take on the train,” she promised.
He thanked her politely and then moved to the dining area. As he stepped into the once elegant room, he couldn’t help but notice some of the flocked wallpaper was peeling. In another corner, a piece of crown molding was loose. With Elizabeth’s father having passed four years ago and her brother somewhere south of the Potomac, the absence of any male presence to maintain the house was beginning to show.
David wondered why Jeremiah had not seen to such things before falling ill. I suppose he and Elizabeth had far more on their minds than household repairs. Shoving the thought aside, he scanned the faces in the room. His fellow mourners were gathered in tight groups of conversation. Hushed whispers drifted about. Most of the words centered on his brother and Elizabeth.
At the far end of the room several hospital physicians had collected along with a few members of David’s regiment who, like him, had completed their enlistment and were about to return home. Though he appreciated their presence, he had no desire to speak with any of them at the moment. The only person with whom he did truly wish to speak did not wish for him