Shades of Honor (28 page)

“I never meant for this to happen.”

“‘Course not,” he said. “But it did, and it’s a damn shame is all I can say.”

Tears blurred her eyes as the doctor guided her father back into the house. Suddenly, Kyle's disheveled form stood above her and Evelyn scrambled to her feet. He was beaten and bloody with ugly red welts on his neck. “Kyle...” She reached for his hand. “I’m so sorry.”

His jaw clenched and he stepped away. “You've made your choice. Live with it.” With that he turned and slogged toward his mother's house. He crossed the wooden bridge where they had shared endless childhood dreams, where they had stuck worms on fish hooks, and challenged each other to stone-skipping contests. Evelyn could not bear the sight of his slumped shoulders and ripped clothing and the fact that she’d betrayed her only true friend.

With an unstoppable sob, she collapsed and buried her face in her drawn-up knees. She could not bear to be the cause of so much pain and disappointment.

“It’s over, Evelyn.” Radford tipped her chin up and traced a wet finger along her
jawline
.

Evelyn was horrified at the damage she saw. His face was lacerated and swollen beyond recognition. “Have you looked at yourself yet?”

He gave a slow shake of his head. “It was your face I wanted to see.”

“After what happened in there?” she asked incredulously. “After I came between you and Kyle and ruined your lives?”

He brushed her hair off her wet cheeks. “My character came between Kyle and me long before this.”

“You've got to get help, Radford.” She clutched his hand and he winced. Blood speckled his knuckles and his palms were scrubbed raw. That he’d done this to himself sickened her. “You can’t wash away the past, Radford. No matter how hard you scrub it’ll still be in the back of your mind.” She touched her fingertips to his sore palm. “Talk to me. Doc Kendall said you need someone to help you. Tell me what you’re trying to wash away.”

He sighed and pressed the back of his hand to his bloody lip. “I have to sort this out on my own.”

“No you don’t. You can let me help you,” she said. “Don’t you trust me?” she asked, her voice small, hopeless.

His grief-stricken eyes met hers. “It’s myself I can’t trust. What happened in there—he gestured with his cut chin toward the livery—is something I can’t live with. I thought I could control my past, but the truth is, it’s controlling me. I can’t risk hurting anyone else while I work through this.”

His battered image wavered in the rush of Evelyn’s tears. “What are you saying?”

He stood and she arched her neck to look up the long length of him, feeling the tears streak down her temples.

“I'm broken up inside, Tomboy. I don’t trust myself anymore.” He looked across the apple orchard toward his mother’s house where Kyle was slowly climbing the steps. “I don’t know who I am, or what I’m going to become.” With a resigned sigh, he turned back to Evelyn. “I need a chance to put myself back together again. I won’t risk hurting you while I try to do that.”

His words sliced through her. “Are you leaving?” she asked, barely able to push the words from her thick throat.

“Until I’m human again. Until I’m worthy of you.”

She jumped to her feet and grabbed his hand. “Talk to my father. Please! He knows what you’ve been through. He can help you.”

He shook his head and pulled his hand away. “I’ll stay at my mother’s house tonight. I’ll come get Rebecca and some clothes in the morning.”

“But Kyle is there!” Evelyn stepped in front of him, afraid he was walking toward another confrontation. “Please don’t fight again.” Tears filled her eyes. “I couldn’t stand it, Radford. It’s tearing me apart knowing I caused you two to hurt each other. I never meant to turn you against one another,” she cried.

Radford kissed her forehead and brushed her hair off her wet cheeks. “It’s over, Evelyn. This was my fault, not yours. No matter what happens, I’ll never again raise my hand to Kyle.”

November wind howled outside and pelted the windows with cold rain. Frigid drafts crept around the sill and turned the bare wood floor to ice beneath her feet. Curling her toes, Evelyn peered into the stormy night, thinking that nature's angry outburst was an accurate reflection of her own mood.

She’d lost Kyle. She’d given him a week to calm down, but he refused to speak to her when she went to his house that morning. He’d been living there since the fight with Radford and hadn’t spoken to either of them since.

Evelyn had tried to apologize to Kyle for not telling him the complete truth when she broke their engagement, but Kyle didn’t want to know about her feelings for Radford or hear her apology. He told her to go back to Radford, that he wasn’t interested in a secondhand woman or her lies.

Evelyn couldn’t go back to Radford, because she’d lost him, too. After giving her father an apology, the two men had talked privately, then Radford had taken Rebecca to his mother’s house where they had been living since the night of the fight. Though Radford still came to the livery each day, and visited in the evenings with her father and the doctor who had decided to extend his stay, Radford’s eyes were dark shadows of misery, and his thin body looked gaunt.

Sensing he was on the verge of collapse, and that Rebecca was suffering, too, Evelyn had begged her father to talk to Radford, but he said Radford needed to find his own way in his own time.

Fearing Radford would never be ready to talk about his past, Evelyn stole his diary from the black chest in the corner of his bedroom, vowing she would save him, no matter how low she had to stoop to do it.

Ignoring her conscience, Evelyn went to her own room and lit the lantern. The light glowed upon the black, leather-bound journal as she opened it and traced her fingers over the slanted ink. Wishing Radford would have placed his faith in her instead of forcing her to search his trunk for his past, Evelyn began reading.

 
 
o0o

... July 1, 1863.
Arrived at Gettysburg.
Artillery roared on all sides, but we were not engaged that night.

July 2:
General Greene ordered us to dig breastworks, which we were later grateful to have as we took shelter behind those makeshift walls, the ring of ramrods and blast of our muskets filling the night as it became an unimaginable, unspeakable hell.

July 3: Dawn arrived cool and cloudy, but we were drowned in our own sweat and weary to our soul from long hours of fighting so fiercely.
We endured one fierce volley after another from the Rebel line.
The battle raged.
Dead bodies began to putrefy.
I gagged repeatedly on the stench and squinted at the enemy through a river of tears.
The metal barrel of my gun blistered my palms.
The day became an endless slaughter and ammunition grew scarce.
There were desperate charges from both sides.
Smoke-blackened faces were streaked with sweat and tears.
Our lips bled from the saltpeter in the bullet cartridges and it was hard to recognize our own men.
William raced by me in a panic only to return a moment later and roughly scrub my face with his shirtsleeve.
When he determined it was me beneath the grime, he hugged me fiercely, told me to keep my head down, then raised his rifle again.

Enemy fire continued until the morning of the fourth, when the Confederates finally retreated.
Thousands of bloated corpses scattered the ground and rocks.
The earth was riddled by grapeshot and pieces of canister.
Glazed, unseeing eyes stared back at me from bloody piles where men had fallen dead upon their friends.

The sounds of whistling shells and cracking muskets still roared in my ears in the silence of that desolate morning.

A dark rage churned in my gut at the pathetic waste.
I yelled and cursed all men for the destruction of our families, for robbing our lives of peace.
William dragged me away, but not before I gazed one last time upon the field of dead men who would never return home to those who waited for them.

Dear God...what manner of animals are we?
                  

Evelyn closed the book, unable to see through her tears.

To read of Radford's agony was heartbreaking. She turned up the lantern and hugged the journal to her chest, feeling utterly powerless to help a man who'd suffered so much.

She
had
to talk to her father, to beseech him one last time to ignore Radford’s privacy and try to help him before the pressure drove him insane or something terrible happened to him.

Hoping he was still awake, Evelyn crossed the hall and knocked on her father’s bedroom door. He didn’t answer. Knowing he’d been weak and upset since the fight between Radford and Kyle, Evelyn eased open the door to assure herself that he was sleeping.

Her father was sprawled on the floor, his skin as pallid as paste.

“Papa!” Evelyn rushed to his side, blood pounding through her ears. She shook his shoulder, but he remained unresponsive.

“Doctor Kendall! Help!” Evelyn yelled, her panicked voice echoing through the hall. She heard a thump, imagined the doctor’s feet hitting the floor, then his door burst open and he hobbled down the hall into her father’s room.

He gripped the footboard on the bed and lowered himself to his knees with a jerky, pain-filled movement. Using two fingers, he touched her father’s neck, then put his ear to his chest. “Help me get him into bed,” he said.

They worked their arms beneath her father’s prostrate form and poured their strength into lifting him onto the mattress.

“Is he breathing?” she asked as her voice quaked with fear.

“Yes, thank God. Get my bag from my room.”

Evelyn raced to the guest room, grabbed the doctor’s bag from beside the satchel he’d packed in preparation for leaving on the morning train, then raced back to her father’s room.

“William?” Doc Kendall called. He lightly slapped her father’s cheeks, but didn’t receive a response. “What happened?” he asked, lifting her father’s eyelids.

“I don’t know,” Evelyn said, sick to her stomach with fear. “I thought he might still be awake, but when I checked on him, I found him on the floor. Is he...will Papa be all right?”

The doctor’s eyes were grave. “I honestly don’t know. He’s extremely weak. He must have been on the floor for a while. He’s cold as hell.” After giving her father a more thorough physical, the doctor sighed and rubbed his neck. “There’s nothing to do but wait.” He glanced at Evelyn. “Will you be all right alone for a while?”

Filled with fear, Evelyn nodded.

“All right, then. There’s nothing else to do but keep him warm,” the doctor said, covering her father with blankets. He stepped back and patted Evelyn’s shoulder with a fatherly kindness that surprised her. “You sit with him a while. I’ll go next door and let them know what happened.”

Evelyn watched the doctor shuffle from the room and prayed that Radford would return with the old man. She needed him.

Thirty minutes passed before Evelyn heard Radford’s boots on the stairs. “Evelyn,” Radford said quietly as he came into the room and squatted in front of her chair. “Are you all right?”

Her eyes misted and she shook her head, knowing she was far from all right.

“Your father has survived unbelievable battles. He'll fight this, too.”

Evelyn bit her lip and averted her face, praying Radford was right, and wondering if he was going to survive his own battle. He looked exhausted and physically abused, his hands shaky and red. She couldn’t stand to look in his haunted eyes after reading his journal and knowing the torment he was suffering.

“He’ll make it through this,” Radford said, stroking his hand down Evelyn’s arm.

“This is my fault,” she said, picking at her fingernail. “Papa’s been so upset about the break between you and Kyle, and my part in it, that he could hardly eat all week. I should have never run for Papa when you and Kyle were fighting. It was too much for him.”

Radford held her trembling fingers in his hand. “Regrets won’t change or improve your father’s condition.”

“I know, but I’ve been so selfish!” Evelyn closed her eyes against the sting of tears. “I hurt Kyle and caused you to betray him. Now Papa’s in bed because he has worried himself sick over the three of us.”

“Your father’s failing health isn’t your fault.” Radford’s shoulders slumped as though the weight of the world rested on them. “Neither is my problem with Kyle. My betrayal started long before last night.”

 
 
o0o

“How’s he doing?” Agatha asked as she entered the bedroom where Evelyn had been sitting with her father all night. Despite being tired, Evelyn was glad to see Agatha, hoping it would keep her mind off Kyle and his visit that morning. He’d been rigid and silent as a stone to her, bristling with such animosity when he passed Radford on the stairs that Evelyn thought Kyle would strike him again. Thankfully, they hadn’t fought, but both men were so tense, Evelyn’s nerves were frayed by the time Kyle left the house. She’d tried to thank him for coming by, but Kyle had made it painfully clear he’d come to see her father, not her.