The Mapmaker's Children (24 page)

“You've never seen me at the bookstore,” she retorted for argument's sake. Old habits died hard.

“I don't need to see you with children to see you,” he said, and she understood that he meant more than her role as storyteller. “I've always wanted you to have whatever you wanted, Eden. If it was a child, so be it. But that was never a
requirement
of mine. I never envisioned that as an absolute part of my life. Not like I did you.”

Tears blurred her vision, and she fought them. She wanted to believe him. Their Apple Hill walk had been the peace talk. Now came the treaty terms: a life together without kids? Could she re-dream her dream? Maybe, just maybe, the future needed to unfold as it might. No dreaming or scheming.

The thought was exhilarating in its lack of obligation, unburdened by personal responsibility to make the broken pieces something whole. Eden realized then that she'd been trying to put life's puzzle together based on what she thought the picture should look like, without a master guide. She'd been maddeningly unsuccessful and had made a mess of everything. Worst of all, she'd convinced herself that Jack blamed her. In reality, it was she who pointed the finger at them both.

She'd been reaching for a child at the expense of her husband. It had made her miserable and lonely with the lie that only a baby could fill the void of her embrace. Jack had taken the thrashings, the cold silences, her inability to express her inner sorrow, every angry remark, and every bitter hour for years. Because he loved her even while she doubted her love for him. She'd considered them cursed, but now…She kissed him.

In their bedroom, their bodies took to each other instinctually. It was the first time they'd made love in New Charlestown and the first time in years that Eden had given herself without contemplating the outcome, good or bad. It was like it'd been at the beginning—no, it was better. Because in it was all they had lost and all they were gaining. In it was forgiveness and the promise of possibility.

NEW CHARLESTOWN POST

Fort Edward Institute, Saratoga, N.Y., April 14, 1861

Dear Freddy
,

Please send word as soon as humanly possible! No time for formalities—we are at war! God help us. I am breathless with worry and won't sleep a minute until I receive news from you, Freddy. I'll spend my nights in fervent prayer for protection over you and all those I cherish in New Charlestown
.

Love
,

Sarah

New Charlestown, Virginia, May 4, 1861

Dear Sarah
,

We are well in body, if troubled in spirit. I'm sorry this letter comes at such delay. I pray you have not been sleepless for these many weeks
.

Mid-April, a northeast storm hit our village with more merciless clout than any militia attack. The roadways were blocked by fallen trees and flooding. We were cut off from all except our own until the waters recessed and passage over the hilltops was cleared. We emerged to a world transformed, war and Virginia's secession
.

Harpers Ferry is now under the rule of Virginia's new Confederate forces, slaveholders. New Charlestown was spared the infiltration of military forces due to our location betwixt the river ravines and storm damage. However, this moratorium will soon end, as armies on both sides are being called to arms
.

Lincoln has suspended Habeas Corpus, sanctioning Yankees to judge and punish as they see fit. The Rebels have implemented similar practices. Soon every man will feel just in taking life on insult alone. A civilized
nation has been degraded to anarchy. Mother believes we are living in the biblical Apocalypse. Father and I don't align with her. This is revolution, not rapture! And for that, we are ready to march with force to see our ways changed for the better. We will enlist in the Union Army
.

Now, I have news that I do not write easily but I must send given the haste of this war. There is a girl here named Ruth Niles. She and her family are long-standing members of our church congregation and friends of shared trust. Her parents came to pay their respects the day of your father's passing. Ruth is the eldest of five siblings and so is familiarized with the duties of child rearing and running a household. A good girl. Father and Mother think it a sensible match and the Niles are highly enthusiastic, but…I feel as if I'm betraying her devotion with every thought of you
.

Mother has repeatedly brought up your name in conversation, gauging my reaction, I believe. She knows, in the way only a mother can, to whom my true heart belongs. She's petitioned to take more time deciding, but unfortunately, time is not a luxury we are afforded. If Ruth and I are to wed, I must do so before I join the northern ranks. She would move into the house with Mother, Alice, and Siby while Father and I are away and would be of great comfort to them
.

My biggest hesitation is the hope (as impractical as you may think) that you might reconsider my proposal. I pray for it every waking hour. I'm at an impasse, Sarah. I can't turn left or right, forward or backward. If you were to say that you merely needed time to think, I would immediately cease discussion of marrying another
.

I love you. I feel no reticence in writing this because it is as true today as it will be a hundred years from now. However, if you are certain you hold no feelings for me, I will follow in the way convention leads and marry for companionship rather than love. Tell me what you wish, Sarah. I will do as you ask
.

Eternally yours
,

Freddy

Fort Edward Institute, Saratoga, N.Y., May 25, 1861

Dear Freddy
,

Marry Ruth Niles. She will bear you a good family, a future seeded with happiness and legacy. It would break my heart forever to see you grow old alone. Please, dear friend, you deserve a full life and home, as is God's will for every man. Marry, and quickly. I hate to think of you marching off to war without some adoring kiss good-bye, someone beckoning you to return safely. Of course, I wish you the same, but I recognize that my friendship is, as you said, not enough. You merit more than enough
.

Tell your family that if they need anything from us Browns, they need only send word, and we will be at their calling. I remain in Saratoga with Mary Lathbury. Please write me here from your military post, though I will harbor no ill will if you feel you cannot. It goes without saying that I am stricken…I will be praying daily for sovereign protection over you and your father
.

Eternally your friend
,

Sarah

New Charlestown, Virginia, June 30, 1861

Dear Sarah
,

I am wed
.

Though much of New Charlestown came to be witnesses, somberness pervaded the ceremony, knowing it to be the last village gathering without enmity between neighbors
.

Father and I leave tomorrow for the District of Columbia, where
thousands flock for Union enlistment. Those joining the Confederacy troops are off to Richmond
.

Ruth is settling into the house with Siby and Mother. Alice, for whatever reason, has not taken kindly to her sister-in-law, though she's known her all her life. Mother believes it's the upheaval of everything—at home and across the land
—
that's affecting her mood. She will adjust. There is no alternative
.

It would greatly gladden my heart if you'd be so good as to write Alice now and again. Your letters bring her much joy. If you have time left over, I, too, would be uplifted to hear from you, as my affections are unchanged
.

I will send my military post address when I have one to provide
.

Eternally yours
,

Freddy

N
EW
C
HARLESTOWN
, W
EST
V
IRGINIA
A
UGUST
2014

T
hey opened the bedroom window afterward. The night air was cold, steeped with the smell of fallen leaves and coming autumn. The breeze spilled goose bumps across their naked skin as they talked over the maple tree branches pattering the window. The ceiling medallion was no longer an eddy of monstrous teeth but a harvest sky of constellations in motion. Outside a nightjar began to call,
Whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will
.

They'd been talking for over an hour with Eden tucked into Jack's arms. She pulled slightly out of his cupped embrace to check the clock.

“Denny will be home.”

Jack kissed her before rising. “I'd best wash up.” He collected his shirt and pants and started for the bedroom door.

“There's a bathroom in here, you know.” Eden pushed back her tousled hair. “It's nice. A waterfall shower.”

“Oh?” He stopped. “Quite right. I remember ordering that fixture. It advertised, ‘The supply of Niagara with the grace of a summer rain.' ”

She laughed. “Well, it marked itself up a bit. You be the judge.” She nodded to the master bathroom. “Please, don't go, Jack.”

Even in the dim of the room, she could see his glad expression. He bowed and dropped his clothes back to the floor.

Eden wasn't ready to leave the warmth of their bed and snuggled back into the rumpled sheets. She felt like a teenager again, minus the twinge in her hips. Perhaps not that young—mid-twenties, she decided—and played with a curl of her hair, spinning it round and round her finger like yarn on a spindle.

He left the door cracked so that a sliver of light cut clean through the darkness. The shower began.

“Jack Anderson, Jack Anderson,” she whispered to herself, and then: “Jack and Eden. The Andersons of New Charlestown.”

There was a rising magic in the incantation, as if
they
were finally made true by it being spoken aloud. She gazed out the window at the gypsum moon. A V of geese sliced through it.

Suddenly, Jack's cell phone pealed from the floor. She leaned over the mattress edge and dug it out of his jeans pocket. An incoming text. Austin area code.

Having once been Jack's public relations attaché, she was familiar with the majority of his business contacts. The only people in Austin were big-ticket Aqua Systems investors. It might be important. So she pulled up the message and read:

Pauline: I'm sorry we couldn't get together this trip. Sounds like you had a busy week. Are you back Monday? Lulu and I are waiting on you for our next dessert date. The Hot Kiss cake ball was definitely my favorite. Love, P

Pauline? Lulu? The smell of Jack's shower was potent. Reminiscent of that rainy night when she'd discovered her father creeping back from his mistress's bed. She thought she might throw up.

The shower turned off. Jack came out, towel around his waist. The light silhouetted him, and steam rose from his skin. A ghoulish brume.

The breeze had taken an icy edge, stinging her nose.

“It's freezing,” he said and closed the window.

She pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them to shield herself. “The phone.” She was surprised by the firmness of her voice. “A text…from Pauline.”

Jack gave her a quizzical look, then reached for it.

“If you would, please take it outside,” she said. She got up, pulling the sheet with her, picked up his jeans and shirt, and pushed them at him. “I mean, outside the house.”

He scrolled on the phone; then his face went stark. “It's not what you think.”

Her caustic laugh snapped the air. It was the best she could do to keep from crying. “Classic, Jack.”

“Lulu is a child—Pauline's daughter!”

A distressing picture blossomed: Jack. Child. Mother. No wonder he didn't need her to have a baby—he already had one. An illegitimate child. An affair. How could she not have seen the signs?

His crumbling poise was more proof. Jack never lost his cool.

“Eden, please, it's not at all what it sounds like. She's an old friend I knew when I was twelve—before my parents' accident. I ran into her and her daughter on the plane months back. They live in Austin. We had cake balls.”

“What is that, some kind of sick code? Hot Kiss cake balls? Please, Jack, spare me the spin-doctoring. Remember, I'm the one
you
once hired for it. I was a pro at turning bullshit into gold!”

“Cake balls are cake balls! It's not a euphemism. It is what it is. A Hot Kiss—bugger—I don't know why people put silly names to desserts time after time. Sex on the Beach drinks, Eton Messes, monkey breads!”

“Spin, spin, spin.” She was shaking, enraged and hurt. “You know what is the same no matter how or when or what you name it? Adultery. And when a woman signs ‘Love' to a married man, there's more than meets the eye. It's code for ‘There are real,
big
feelings involved.' ”

“It's code for Americans being too blasted chummy with each other!”

“I'll give you ten minutes to get your stuff, and then I swear to God, I'll call the police if I have to.”

He calmed himself and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Eden, darling, I admit, I shouldn't have been meeting up with them without mentioning it to you. But I swear on my life, it was entirely innocent. She's going through a nasty divorce, and her daughter is suffering miserably—”

She'd heard enough and didn't care what trials this woman and her daughter faced. Suffering? What the hell kind of
cakewalk
did he think she'd been on?

“Get out,” she growled, and he backed away onto the upper landing, covering himself with his balled-up jeans.

“Eden, this is madness.”

She slammed the door. How dare he try to make her feel like she was—“Madness!” she yelled through the wood. “You'll see madness if you don't get your ass out of this house. You have eight minutes now.”

The stairs creaked under his weight. Still standing in nothing but the bedsheet, she pressed her ear to the door and listened: Jack said something to Cricket; shoed footsteps clapped the floor; the screen door banged. Eden had wrung the sheet so tightly in her hands that it bound her like shackles. She loosened them. Her nail beds were shaded blue and cold from lack of circulation. She pulled on her robe and cracked the door.

Below, Cricket whined, but otherwise, the house was silent. Jack was gone. She came down and sat on the bottom step, taking Cricket into her lap and rubbing her fingers over his warm belly until they regained feeling.

“We forgot to feed you,” she whispered. “I'm sorry. It won't happen again.” She stood and carried him into the kitchen, where his plate of Buffaloaf sat on the countertop and the oven was still slightly warm.