Catch a Shooting Star jd edit 03 12 2012 html (43 page)

Someday, they would return all the things that had been donated in the interest of the South’s cause.  But, today, they would focus on the family that awaited them in the home that now stood looming above them in the middle of the plantation that had been named Robin’s Glen.  Today, they would start a new life as if no other life had existed beyond the Civil War, beyond the invasion of the Union, beyond the intrusion of El Diablo, beyond the existence of life apart and a life that did not include little Benito and sweet Hannah Claire.  Today, life would begin again with the treasures that life had already bestowed upon them.

Tomorrow, life would continue as if nothing had interfered, as if happiness had already existed for this newly formed family.  And this household would subsist without fears and without heartache but would live in harmony, as if all of the traumatic encounters of all the yesterdays had never intervened—as if life was the way it should be, as it would be for all time.