The Innocent Read Online Free Page A

her about being too ready to wish and dream. “You can’t dream up a fire in the cookstove or wish a pot on that stove full of beans. Men like your father can dream of paradise, but the women behind those men have to think more on the practical matters of empty stomachs to fill.”
    Carlyn raised her head and looked out the door. The grass was still green, the trees full with leaves, and yet summer was dying. The cardinal singing in the tree sounded almost frantic, as if it knew the hard times were coming when seeds wouldn’t be plentiful. Carlyn stared out at the road. The empty road.
    Never coming home.
    When Ambrose strode away from her across their yard thatlong ago January day, she’d grabbed the porch post to keep from running after him. He had already told her goodbye. His lips on hers were soft.
    “’Twill only be for a little while, my Carly.” He cupped her face in his broad hands and stared down into her eyes. “We’ll beat those Rebels back and make our country whole again. Then I’ll be running home to you.”
    He had kissed her one last time. “Nothing short of death can keep me from coming home. You can depend on that. You’ll see me coming back across this yard, and when I see you in the door, I’ll be shouting hallelujahs to the Lord for giving me the likes of you for a wife.”
    Nothing short of death.
    Carlyn blinked her eyes to clear them of tears and imagined Ambrose coming across the yard toward her. He’d be smiling. Maybe slimmer than when he left due to the privations of army life. She smiled, seeing him in her imagination, but then her smile disappeared as the image shimmered and faded. Instead, in six days, it would be the sheriff striding across her yard to put her out of the house. Tall and strong like Ambrose but with a very different purpose. Not that he wanted to put her out. She’d seen his compassion when he asked if she had family. And seen his pity.
    Why did that poke her so sorely? Did not her father forever preach that pride would bring a person down low?
    She shook her head to rid it of the thought of the sheriff’s pity and of her father’s preaching. Her father could hardly accuse her of pride. The whole last year, she’d practically lived on the charity of her neighbors. Nothing prideful about that.
    But her father’s words wound through her mind from some long-ago sermon. Whether preached from a pulpit orfrom the head of the supper table, she did not remember. “Not accepting the lot the Lord assigns to you is sinful pride. You cannot think you know more than God of what your life should hold. A man does well to bend his head and accept the yoke the Lord has for him.”
    When her father was preaching, Carlyn always got shivers. Not holy ones that transported her into a glorious feeling the way her father said it should, but dreadful shivers that she would never be able to measure up to what a Christian should be. In her mind then, God was too much like her father. He took no excuses for failure and would be quick to dole out punishment.
    The Lord chastises those he loves. Another of her father’s oft-repeated verses. Her father was quick with punishment in the face of the smallest infraction. Carlyn had learned early to stay beyond his reach. To hide away from his sight. At times she wanted to do the same with God, even though she knew such was not possible.
    But Ambrose had introduced her to a gentler faith. One where God was love. An ever-present help in trouble. She could embrace that vision of God when she was with Ambrose, but it leaked away without his strong presence beside her. If the Lord was a help in trouble, then why wasn’t he helping her now? Why hadn’t he let Ambrose come home?
    Carlyn looked up at the sky, blue as Ambrose’s eyes when he told her goodbye. Blue as the dresses of those odd Shaker women in the village a few miles down the road. Those women who never married. Her father had railed against them as heathens who rebelled against the