Daughter of Twin Oaks Read Online Free Page A

centuries old by the size of it, shaded the final resting place of Joshua Highwood, his wife Miriam, and the two children who died before the age of five. Two field workers remained and began shoveling the dirt back in on top of the box.
    Jesselynn heard the thuds echo on the wooden cover. She would return in the evening with a spray of roses from the garden and dust grass seed on the mound so it wouldn’t be so harsh. The graveyard had become a place for rest and contemplation for many of the family members. Squirrels raced through the overhanging branches of the oak, pelting the ground with shells, while birds sang their courtship arias. A camellia bloomed in the spring, dropping pale pink petals over the graves. Through the benevolence of Mother Nature, helped along by the women of the Highwood family, the burying plot had become a place of peace in spite of the sadness.
    Jesselynn looked back again. This too she would be leaving, her parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents, along with various uncles and aunts and more cousins than she cared to count. Her family history. Please God, don’t let anyone ransack this sacred place as they have others . She breathed the prayer and clutched her Bible in trembling fingers. God promised to watch out for orphans, and now that’s what they were.
    Coming out of her reverie, Jesselynn recalled her manners and stopped the preacher before he could climb into his buggy. “Won’t you stay for a cool drink and some of Lucinda’s lemon cookies, Reverend Benson?”
    “Why, thank you, Miss Jesselynn, I most certainly would.” The white-haired cleric placed his Bible and prayer book on the seat of the buggy and turned to follow his hostess to the portico, where she gestured him to one of the rocking chairs. He settled himself with a sigh and pulled the clerical band away from his perspiring neck. “Thank the good Lord for shade, breeze, and a tall glass of lemonade of Lucinda’s secret recipe. I’ve sat here many a time and enjoyed all three.” He looked across the braided rug to the young woman in the opposite chair. “Your father sat in that chair, telling me of his dreams for his family and for Kentucky. What a loss for all of us.” He shook his head. “Such a waste.”
    His gentle voice made Jesselynn fight the tears again. She had made it to this point of the day without a tear shower, but if he kept on like this, another wasn’t far away.
    “What do you plan to do now?”
    His question caught her up short. She couldn’t tell him they still had horses on the plantation, for someone might ask him, and he’d be obliged to tell them. She was sure he didn’t lie well, as neither did she. But she had to start practicing sometime, and now was as good a time as any.
    “I-I’m not sure.” That part was certainly the truth. “I might go visit my aunt in Memphis.” Jesselynn cleared her throat. “She’s been ailin’.”
    “Is that where Carrie Mae and Louisa are staying?”
    “Ah, no. They’re with Aunt Sylvania in Richmond.” Truth again. Maybe that was the trick, mix truth and stories, so one couldn’t tell where one began or left off.
    “You are fortunate to have family to turn to. I know these years have been terribly hard for you.”
    “But no more than for all the others around here. The war is draining everyone, and as my father so frequently said, ‘It will get nothing but worse.’ If only heads like his had prevailed instead of those foolish hotheads who thought we would win the war in a matter of weeks.” Pictures floated through her mind of her brothers cheering the news of Fort Sumter being fired on, thinking war was glory and honor instead of death and destruction. While some of their friends and relatives were Union sympathizers, like her father, most of the young men she knew talked secession. She brought her attention back to the man beside her.
    “Yes, even if God is on our side, war is—”
    Jesselynn tossed her manners over the