Christmas at Harmony Hill Read Online Free Page B

splashing in the water. But thinking back, I believe Mother feared the worst from the very beginning. Pa had heard talk of the cholera in town. She took Jimmy in her bedroom and wouldn’t let any of us come in until she was too sick to raise her head. I had to take care of them then. I had to. Jimmy died first. Then Mother. I figured I’d go next, but the Lord spared me.”
    “Oh, Beth, our father was right. I should have been here to help you.” Heather grasped Beth’s hand as Lucas tried to hug them both.
    “You couldn’t have stopped the cholera. Nobody can do that. Pa knows that. He just can’t think straight right now what with all the dying. Can’t none of us.”
    “He’s not going to change his mind about me.” It was best to face the truth of that.
    “No,” Beth agreed. “Mother might have been able to convince him, but I can’t tell him anything. Me or the boys. But he does love the boys. Losing Simon tore him apart even before the sickness took Mother and Jimmy.”
    Lucas must have noted how Beth didn’t include herself in the circle of their father’s love. He grabbed Beth’s hand and declared, “I love you. Willie and me, we both love you.” He turned to look at Heather. “And you too. No matter what Pa says.”
    Heather touched his cheek. “You were always a tenderhearted boy. You must have taken that after our mother.”
    “He is much like her,” Beth agreed. “Willie’s more like Pa, ready to fight the world sometimes.”
    “Thirteen can be a hard age for boys,” Heather said. “They always want to be older.”
    “I’m glad he’s not.” Beth’s voice was firm. “He’d have run after Simon to the army if he’d had a few more years, but now they say the war’s the same as over. That the Yankees have won.” Beth peered over at Heather. “You were with them. So, is that true?”
    “The fighting hasn’t stopped, but so many have died and those still standing are weary of war. I have no way of knowing, but I think, I pray it will end soon.”
    “How was it? Following the army?” Beth asked.
    “Not easy. I had no idea what would happen when I left home. I just knew I wanted to be with Gideon. I guess I was lucky to get the washerwoman job since it meant I got to stay near Gideon, but I paid for it by seeing sights no girl should ever see. There were times I wondered if the Lord had tired of our sinfulness and was bringing down a flood of artillery to wipe us out. But then the guns would stop firing and Gideon would come back in one piece and life went on with more trousers to wash.”
    Heather paused, but neither Beth nor Lucas spoke. So she went on. “Then I got in the family way and Gideon didn’t want our baby born on a battlefield.”
    Beth reached over to touch the swell of Heather’s stomach. “When is your time of confinement?”
    “Late December as near as I can figure.”
    “A Christmas baby,” Lucas spoke up.
    “Perhaps.” A smile tugged at Heather’s lips, but it didn’t last. She clutched her hands in her lap and looked toward her sister. “What am I going to do, Beth? I came home to Mother and now she’s gone.”
    “She didn’t forget you at the end.” Beth pulled something out of her pocket. The paper captured the scant light in the barn. “I suppose she had a prescience of things to come. She thought you might come home, so when she took sick, she wrote this to you.”
    Heather reached for it and held it to her heart. Her mother’s last thoughts of her. Tears pushed at her eyes, but she held them in. Lucas and Beth had seen enough tears. After a moment she opened the page, but she could only see the shape of the letter. “I have no light to read the words.”
    “You’ll have to wait until morning,” Beth said. “I couldn’t take the chance of Pa seeing us cross the yard with a lantern. But Mother bade me read it. I can tell you what it says if you want.”
    “Do.” Heather folded the letter and held it to her cheek as though she