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“Stanley is four now,” Emily whispered.
“I’m certain we will get along famously,” Susanna assured her, thinking of her own son at that age—inquisitive, and beginning to exert a certain amount of household influence.
As Stanley stacked another block, the wobbling tower came down. The little boy put his hands to his head in sudden irritation and declared, “That’s a damned nuisance!”
Emily gasped and closed the door. “Cousin, this is the hardest place to raise children!”
“I imagine there are plenty of soldiers who don’t think much of letting the language fly,” she said, putting a real cap on her urge to laugh. “Must be a trial.”
“It’s not the soldiers,” Emily snapped, the portrait of righteous indignation. “It’s the no-account Irish living next door!” She lowered her voice slightly. “You’d be horrified what we hear through the wall.”
Susanna stared at her. “Here on Officers Row?”
It was obviously a subject that Emily had thought long about, considering that she never thought much of anything. “That’s what happens when the army promotes a bog Irishman from sergeant to captain of cavalry. So what if he earned a Medal of Honor in the late war? They’re hopeless!”
“I have a lot to learn,” Susanna murmured, hoping that the unfortunates on the other side of the wall were deaf. She thought of the pretty redhead who had given her a welcoming wave, and decided to form her own opinion.
Emily pulled back the army blanket strung on a sagging rod, revealing an army cot and bureau obviously intended for someone with few possessions. That would be me, Susanna thought.
“You should be comfortable enough here. I had a private from the captain’s company hammer up some nails to hang your dresses.”
“I am certain it will do,” Susanna replied. “I am grateful. Major Randolph said something about captains being alloted four rooms, not including the kitchen.”
She quickly realized this was another unfortunate topic, because Emily sighed again. “I think it’s … it’s unconscious for a widower to have six rooms!”
Do you mean unconscionable, Cousin Malaprop? Susanna thought, remembering Emily Reese’s bedroom back home. “I suppose that’s the army way. Now I’ll unpack ….”
Emily was just warming to the subject. “There are captains here with five rooms.”
“Why not Dan?”
“We came here at the same time as another captain and his wife who have no children, but this is what we have.” Emily frowned. “He was even in Dan’s graduating class!”
“Why did you get this smaller place?” Susanna asked, interested.
“Because Dan was academically lower in his class,” her cousin said. “Is that fair?”
I suppose that’s what happens when you marry someone no brighter than yourself, Susanna thought, amused. “What happens if someone comes to the fort who outranks the man who outranks … your husband?”
“We all move up or down, depending,” Emily said, “and the Major Randolphs just roll merrily along in their excess space.” She sniffed. “I didn’t know about this when I married the captain.”
No, you were mostly interested in how grand he looked in uniform, Susanna thought, remembering the wedding five years ago, where Tommy had been ring bearer. That was before Frederick started drinking each night. “There is a lot we don’t know, before a wedding,” Susanna murmured.
“Maybe it’s just as well,” her cousin said, with another noisy sigh.
No, it isn’t, Susanna almost said. If I had known …
No matter that it had been ten years since Melissa’s fiery death, Joe Randolph never opened the door to his quarters without the tiny hope that this time she would be there to take his coat, kiss his cheek and ask how his day had gone. As a man of science, he knew it was foolish, but that little hope never left him.
He had been gone nearly a month this time on court-martial duty, but he had learned that whether left empty three weeks, two months or two days, houses without women in them soon felt abandoned. He still missed Melissa’s rose talc.
“I’m not busy enough, M’liss,” he said out loud to her picture, when he looked up from unpacking. There she was, smiling at him as much as she could, considering how long she had to hold that pose for the photographer in San Antonio.
On that journey to Texas, he had pillowed her head on his arm as they whispered plans for the future. Their last night had its own sweetness, as they made plans for the baby she was carrying. He was no ignorant physician; he had picked up on signs and symptoms before M’liss overcame her natural reticence and spilled those particular beans. He smiled now, remembering how she had thumped him when he had said, “I kind of suspected. I did graduate first in my class at medical school.”
She had kissed him, rendering the thump moot, and snuggled close in a way that made him feel like Lord Protector. Too bad he couldn’t protect her that next morning, when she stood too close to a campfire and went up like a torch.
Even four years of war had not prepared him for that horror. There wasn’t even a bucket of water close. Burned, blind, swollen beyond recognition, Melissa Randolph had suffered agonies until nightfall, when, jaw clenched, he’d administered a whacking dose of morphine that killed her immediately. The steward standing by never said a word to anyone.
There she was in the frame, forever twenty-four. Joe admired her for a long moment. “M’liss, what would you have me do?” he asked her picture. “I am thirty-eight and I am lonely.” He looked down at his wedding ring. He had never taken it off his finger since she’d put it there.
He took it off now. Her wedding ring had gone with her into Texas soil, mainly because he would have had to amputate her swollen finger to release it, and he could not. She had earlier removed a ruby ring he had given her. When he could think rationally again, he’d put the ring on a chain, and he wore it around his neck.
Joe lifted the delicate chain over his head now, unfastened the clasp and slid his wedding ring onto it. After another long moment he put the necklace and rings in his top drawer, under his socks.
His bedroom seemed too small after he closed the drawer, so he put on his overcoat again and went outside. He looked up Officers Row and saw lights winking in windows of houses with families. He stood there until he had formulated a good enough excuse to visit the Reeses again, and walked two houses down.
He chuckled to think of Emily Reese forced to live next door to the far kinder O’Learys. He would suggest to Mrs. Hopkins that she might find their Irish company enjoyable. Katie O’Leary had more brains than both of the Reeses, and Mrs. Hopkins would appreciate her.
Pipe in hand, Dan Reese opened the door to Joe’s knock. “Come in, Major,” he said, then called over his shoulder, “Mrs. Reese, is someone sick?”
What a blockhead, Joe thought, not for the first time. “Captain, I just wanted a moment with your cousin.”
The captain gestured him inside. “Is Mrs. Hopkins sick?”
“Not that I know of,” Joe replied, wishing he could laugh. “I’m current president of the administrative council and Mrs. Hopkins needs to make a visit to our commanding officer tomorrow. She has some credentials to show him.”
“Of course.” He looked over his shoulder again. “Susanna?”
It wasn’t a fluke. He saw relief in Susanna Hopkins’s eyes when she came out of the parlor, cousin Stanley riding on her hip, reaching for her spectacles. Captain Reese wandered back into the parlor, obviously the possessor of a shorter attention span than his son.
Susanna set down Stanley and cleaned her spectacles on her apron. Spectacles off, she looked at him, and he was struck with her mild beauty. He probably shouldn’t have—it smacked of the grossest impertinence—but Joe touched that dimpled spot under her left eye. She stepped back, startled.
“Beg pardon, ma’am. I am curious—can you see out of that eye?”
He supposed she could have ordered him from the house, but she didn’t. She put her glasses back on. “I have a corrective lens in that side. The other lens is plain glass.”
He had his suspicions, but he wanted to ask how she had come by such an injury. Yet he knew he should beg her pardon. She held up her hand, maybe knowing what he intended.
“Don’t apologize. I know your interest is medical.”
He nodded, wondering if she was right.
“I’m a blockhead,” he said simply. “Will you come with me tomorrow morning after guard mount to see Major Townsend? He needs to see your certification. Since I am president of the administrative council, you are my responsibility.” Good Lord, you sound like a jailer, he thought, disgusted.
Susanna Hopkins didn’t see it that way, apparently. “Certainly! The sooner I offer my credentials, the sooner I can get out of …”
She blushed, which he found charming.
“This house?” he asked in a whisper. “Tell you what, Mrs. Hopkins, after we visit the colonel, I’ll introduce you to your next-door neighbor. She’s clever, witty and …”
“Not what my cousin has already said?” Susanna finished. “I thought as much. I would like that. But tell me, what is guard mount?”
He was on sure ground now. “It’s our one daily affair, when the night guard goes off duty and the day sentries come on. In the summer, when there is no danger of trumpeters’ lips freezing on their mouthpieces, the band plays and the companies and troops go through the manual of arms.” He bowed. “Mrs. Hopkins, I will meet you on this porch at nine of the clock.”
“You don’t march?”
“Doctors don’t have to, thank God. And now I’d better go see if the hospital is still standing.”
It was a feeble witticism, but she nodded as though he had said something profound, and held the door open for him. Joe wasn’t going to look back at the Reese quarters as he started toward the hospital, but he turned around and there she was, watching him.
It was a small thing, but it gratified him as he walked to the hospital on its knoll behind the cavalry barrack. Not since Melissa had another female paid him any attention—at least, not that he was aware of.
The hospital was still standing. According to Theodore Brown, his steward, the contract surgeon had done no harm, all a man could hope for. Ted’s notes and files were impeccable as always, and much easier to read than Joe’s own scrawl. There was nothing to do but take an unnecessary ward walk, and return to his empty quarters.
Most of the quarters on Officers Row were dark now. He glanced at the Reeses’ duplex again, even though he knew it was silly to think that Mrs. Hopkins would still be standing there. To his surprise, she was.
I will be her friend, he thought as he went into his quarters. He knew someone as pleasant as Susanna Hopkins would make friends soon enough. From habit, he pressed the extra pillow next to him, and was soon asleep.
Chapter Five
“Can’t you sleep, cousin?” Emily asked Susanna, coming downstairs after closing the door to her own room. She came to the window to stand beside her. “Is there something unusual outside?” she asked. “Indians? Coyotes? Should we raise an alarm?”
Susanna sighed inwardly, certain that her cousin had never been inclined to stand at a window and think. She had just watched Major Randolph return from the hospital.
Touch me, Emily, she thought. Just put your hand on my shoulder. We used to be close, and now we are not. She tried to think of the last time anyone had touched her, until she realized that it was an hour ago, when Major Randolph had touched her eye out of professional curiosity. His fingers had been gentle.
Her cousin made no move. There had been a time when they had shared secrets, and a bed when they went to visit their mutual grandmamma, a tough old boot from Gettysburg who had spent that battle frying doughnuts for whichever army happened to control the town on any particular day and tramped near her kitchen.
One of them had to speak, and Susanna knew she was the one with both gratitude and grievance. “Emily, I appreciate your arranging this teaching position,” she said, before the silence between them reached an awkward stage.
Emily turned startled eyes on her. “I had nothing to do with it,” she exclaimed. “Mama knows a lady in town who is a sister of the colonel of the regiment. Mama inquired about any teaching positions out here, and word eventually got to the colonel. Mama contacted me.” There was no ignoring her tiny sigh, until Emily put on her company face again. “I told her we didn’t have room, but you know my mama.”
“I appreciate your sacrifice,” Susanna said. She knew her aunt’s expertise in twisting Emily’s arm, even through the U.S. mail. “This is a fresh start for me.”
She should have left it there, but she couldn’t, not with her anxiety about Captain Dunklin and his wife from Carlisle. “Why did you tell people I am a widow?”
Emily’s company face vanished as her eyes grew smaller. “Do you think I want anyone to know that you abandoned your child, and your husband divorced you for neglect?” she whispered.
Susanna gasped. “Emily, what have you heard? If I hadn’t left the house, Frederick would have beaten me to death!” She closed her eyes, remembering the pain and terror, and Tommy’s mouth open in a scream on the other side of the window as he watched her stagger down the walkway. “I didn’t abandon him! I had to save myself!”
“The newspaper Papa sent me said abandonment,” Emily told her, sounding virtuous, superior and hurt at the same time. “Such a scandal! I had to say what I did, or you never would have been hired. You should thank me for thinking of it.”
“What the papers printed was a lie. My former husband—when he sobered up—hired a good lawyer and paid all the other lawyers in a fifty-mile radius not to take my case,” Susanna said, trying not to raise her voice. “You never had to say anything. I am just Mrs. Susanna Hopkins. All they want is a teacher.”
Emily looked at her with sad eyes. “What did you do to make him so angry?”
“I didn’t do anything,” Susanna replied, wanting to end this inquisition, because her cousin’s mind was already made up. Pennsylvania may have been miles away, but nothing had changed. “About five years ago, Frederick’s business began to fail and he started drinking to excess. After that, nothing I did was right. Nothing.”
She stopped, thinking of those afternoons she had come to dread, waiting for Frederick to return home. She’d always tried to gauge his attitude as he walked up the front steps. Was he going to be sober and withdrawn, ready to sulk in his study? Or would he be drunk and looking everywhere for something to touch off a beating or more humiliating behavior, once Tommy was asleep? She never knew which it would be.
For all his simplicity, Susanna knew Emily’s husband was a kind man and her cousin would never suffer such treatment. Emily hadn’t the imagination to think ill of Frederick, who could put on a company face as good as her own.
“I’m certain you meant well,” she told her cousin. “Captain Dunklin informed me that his wife is from Carlisle, too. Suppose she writes someone back home and mentions Susanna Hopkins?”
“Carlisle is so far away,” Emily said, locating it somewhere next to Versailles. “I’m sorry if I did the wrong thing, but you don’t know these women, Susanna! They’re so superior. If they knew you were a notorious divorcee, no one would receive me, and Captain Reese’s career would suffer. I had to tell that little lie!”
“Notorious divorcee?” Susanna said, stunned. “Emily, I am nothing of the sort! I have been wronged in the worst way, whether you believe it or not.”
They stared at each other, her cousin with a wounded expression, and Susanna wondering how Emily had become the victim.
“When did you start wearing spectacles?” Emily asked, obviously wanting to change the subject.
“After Frederick pushed my face into the mantelpiece and fractured the bone under my eye,” Susanna said, not so willing to let Emily off the hook. “I don’t see too well out of that eye.” Susanna touched Emily’s arm. “We’ll hope that Captain Dunklin’s wife has no curiosity about doings in Pennsylvania.”
“I won’t give it another thought.”
I don’t doubt that for a minute, Susanna thought as she said good-night. After she closed the army blanket around her quasi room, Susanna sat still, her mind in turmoil. As she contemplated the gray blanket that constituted a wall, she felt a chill more than cold seeping into her bones.
She undressed in the cold space, then did what she always did, closed her eyes and thought of her son. Usually she got no farther than that, but this time she added Major Randolph to her mental inventory. It was not a prayer, because she had given up pestering God.
A bugle woke her in the morning, followed at an interval by a different melody. After the second call, she smiled at a massive groan from the Reeses’ bedroom, which suggested to her that Emily’s lord and master was not an early riser by inclination.
Captain Reese eventually clumped downstairs, swearing fluently, which told her the true source of his son’s salty language, rather than the family through the wall. Susanna heard Captain—O’Leary, was it?—go down his own set of stairs on the other side of the wall, and decided there wasn’t much privacy in army housing.
As Susanna lay there, she heard Mrs. O’Leary, in her bedroom through the wall, reciting the rosary. Her low murmur sent Susanna back to sleep.
When she woke again, Stanley had pulled back her blanket and was staring at her. She remembered the times when Tommy had done the same thing: same solemn stare, same lurking twinkle in his eyes. With a laugh, Susanna pulled him down beside her. Stanley shrieked, then giggled as she snuggled with him.
“Did your mama send you to wake me up?”
“Damn right,” he said, the twinkle in his eyes daring her.
Time to nip this in the bud, Susanna thought.
“Do you know what I used to do to your cousin Tommy when he said things that he knew would shock me?”
Stanley shook his head. “Mama usually shakes her fist at the wall.”
Susanna sat up, her arms around Stanley, who had settled in comfortably. “I reach for a bar of pine tar soap, shave off a handful and make Tommy chew it.”
Stanley’s eyes grew wide. “You would do that to a small child?” he squeaked, which made her cover her mouth and turn her head slightly, to keep her amusement private.
“Yes! Tommy never cusses anymore. I would advise you not to, either,” she said, looking him right in the eye.
Stanley considered the matter. “Would you make my father chew soap, too?”
“I’ll leave that to your mother. But as for you …” Susanna reached around him into her carpetbag and found a bar of soap.
