The Soldier's Bride (10 page)

His eyes met the empty space and rose to greet Shunsaku. “Where’s . . . ?” the question died on his lips when Leland took in the man’s haggard appearance. His mouth was drawn into a tight grimace, and his face looked puffy with dark circles under his eyes as if he hadn’t slept in weeks.

“Emika is not well,” he spoke and his voice faltered.

“Please, come in and sit down.” Leland guided him to a chair and sat beside him.

“She has contracted polio,” Shunsaku said, his voice barely above a whisper.

Leland sucked in a breath and swallowed. His eyes pricked with tears. “No.”

Shunsaku clenched and unclenched his hands several times. “Emika must go to a special rehabilitation hospital that treats polio survivors.” He looked at Leland and then past him toward the skeleton of the desk being built. “It’s in Minneapolis. My sister will care for our son, so my wife can stay with Emika.” Shunsaku hung his head. “I am a man of my word. I will pay for the desk.”

“I’m not worried about payment. Take care of Emika,” Leland said. “Do the doctors think her chances are good?” He couldn’t finish the thought, knowing the paralysis rate for children with polio was unreasonably high.

“Such a happy girl. Always dancing and singing and now she may never walk again.” Shunsaku’s voice broke. He bit his knuckle and bowed his head.

“I’m so sorry,” Leland muttered. “Things like this shouldn’t happen to children.” He rose from his chair and walked over to the workbench. Leland picked up a fraying orange rag and dusted off the music box. He had wound it in anticipation of Emika’s visit today. How would her death affect her parents? Would it tear them apart as it had him and Rhonda? He clenched his jaw. She couldn’t die.

Leland glanced at the slumping form of Shunsaku and then back at the music box. “I want to give this to Emika.”

“No, I couldn’t take that from you.” Shunsaku held up his hands. “I can tell it is special.”

“It is special.” Leland opened the compartment and watched the ballerina spiral before him. He closed his eyes and followed the notes of the tune in his mind. Then he opened them again and reached for his notepad. With a thick wood-marking pencil, he wrote a few words.

He tore the paper from the pad and placed a tiny daub of wood glue on the back of the note. Smearing it with his finger into a smooth luster, Leland placed the note in the side compartment next to the other messages. He pressed it until the glue took hold, then closed the compartment and smiled.

Turning to Shunsaku, he held out the music box. “It’s very special. That’s why I want Emika to have it. Tell her this ballerina wants her to try hard to get better.” Leland licked his lips and continued, “Tell her she must live so she can sing with the music and maybe dance like a ballerina again.” He placed the box in Shunsaku’s hands. “And even if she can’t . . . dance, she must always let a smile dance across her face.”

“Thank you, Leland, you are too kind,” Shunsaku murmured.

“Go and take care of your family,” Leland said. “Don’t worry about the desk. I’ll keep working on it, and when you get back we will see.”

Shunsaku gripped Leland’s hand then left the shop. He waved as Leland closed the door and thought about the kindness and concern he had seen in Leland’s eyes.

He pulled his coat tighter around him and took careful steps on the sidewalk cluttered with broken branches and leaves.

After the moisture in Shunsaku’s eyes had cleared, he was able to lift the compartment of the music box to see what Leland had been fixing. He focused on the notes glued behind the velvet paper lining. Leland had not been fixing the box. He had left Emika a message.

Shunsaku felt sure the bold, dark pencil strokes belonged to Leland, having seen his handwriting on the order slip for the desk. The other notes must have been written by a feminine hand. Shunsaku read the notes and spoke them aloud at the same time a cold wind gusted down the street past him, seeming to snatch the words from his mouth—“Don’t die with me.” “Forgive yourself—allow God to forgive.” “Live to dance again.”

Tiny flakes of snow flurried about Shunsaku as he watched the wind carry the words down the street, pushing the last vestiges of Old Man Winter from the ground, making way for spring.

The front porch swing swayed as Evelyn cuddled Danny, wrapped in thick blankets against the unusual chill in the April weather. Three weeks after Harlan’s attack, Evelyn voiced her fear, “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to go back there.”

Sterling sat by her side. He looked at her and chewed on his bottom lip. “If that’s really what you want, I won’t say anything.”

Evelyn brushed back an auburn curl from the side of her face. “What do you mean?”

“You seemed to enjoy singing your song.” He rubbed his thumb against the green fibers of the blanket. “It would be a shame to let him win by giving in to your fear.”

Moisture gathered in her eyes, and she bent her head toward Danny’s sleeping form and kissed the dark crown of his head. She thought about the music again, the song she had written for Jim to the special tune of the music box. Her baby boy hadn’t heard the song for weeks because she couldn’t find the courage to sing it.

It still played through her mind and sometimes at night when the wind whispered through the trees it seemed like she could hear snatches of the melody. The music was inside her, around her, and in a way Sterling was right—she couldn’t stop singing because of what happened to her. But how could she find the courage to sound her voice again in a crowd?

Sterling reached across the blanket and caressed her hand, lacing his fingers with hers. His black hair gleamed against the late-afternoon sun, and when he looked at her, Evelyn could see a wistfulness in his eyes.

She squeezed his hand in return and attempted a smile. He had been her strength through the ordeal. Sterling never stopped coming over to visit, even though she wouldn’t see him for the first ten days. The swelling had diminished and only a faint yellow hue remained of the bruising that had mottled her face.

Harlan sat in jail awaiting trial and had received so many threats against his life for dishonoring a war widow that even his father, the favored son of Callaway Grove, could not intercede on his behalf. The people would see him punished for his crimes. But all of it had changed Evelyn—changed her again when she was barely emerging from her shell, thinking of shedding her black wings and adding more color to her life.

She focused on Sterling’s fingers clasping hers, the dark lines of mechanic’s grime imbedded around his nails. He was strong, but how much strength would it take for her to feel safe again? She hunched her shoulders and sighed. “I did enjoy singing, but I don’t know if it would ever be the same. I gave Frank my notice—I won’t be working anymore. I have a good savings started for Danny. He’s almost eighteen months old and I don’t want to leave him anymore.” She wouldn’t be attending any classes, but Evelyn resolved not to dwell on that disappointment—Danny was most important.

~*~

Sterling watched the toddler cuddled in his mother’s lap and rubbed the shadow of dark hair on his chin. He blew out a breath and thought about the precarious situation Evelyn faced and how he could help her.

“I know. Frank wanted me to try to talk you out of it.” He brushed a tawny red strand of hair from her cheek and cupped her chin, turning her face toward him.

Her lips were full and he wanted to kiss them until the curve of sadness morphed into the smile he had begun to see before Harlan. He hadn’t kissed her yet. His own nervousness coupled with her reticence had held him back, and now he wondered if she would let him be close to her. “Evelyn, I know you want nothing more than to hide away from the world, and I don’t blame you. But please don’t hide your heart.”

Her dark lashes lowered and although she blinked several times, a few tears fell onto Sterling’s hand. He moved his hand from her face and put his arm around her. “Don’t cry. It’s okay now.”

She rested her head on his chest and his heart quickened at her closeness. “For a few weeks, I saw the real you,” he murmured. “Your smile—you seemed happy.”

She swallowed, and he noticed the hollow of her neck tense. Another tear clung to her lashes before falling down her cheek. “I was, at least I thought so, but now I don’t know. I just don’t know who I am anymore.”

Sterling’s breath caught in his throat as he heard the echo of his own words come from her mouth. He knew what she felt—the despair, the agony of trying to piece a heart back together, to pretend like life could go on when you were trapped in the eye of a storm. His skin prickled with fear and a familiar feeling of panic swelled in his chest. His leg throbbed as the blood coursed through his body and sweat formed on his brow.

He gasped for air, startling Evelyn who sat upright. “What’s wrong?”

Her voice pulled him from the flashback and he focused on her face. She was so pretty—her hair framing the porcelain skin contrasted against full red lips and drawing out the deep brown of her eyes.

“Sterling, you’re scaring me. Are you all right?” Evelyn’s voice rose and her eyes widened.

He shuddered, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath, then opened his eyes again and focused on her. “A flashback—it’s been over a year and I can still feel the shrapnel hitting my leg, see it blowing my buddies to bits.”

She covered her mouth and her eyes held a frantic look as he continued.

“I know how you feel.” He tapped his chest. “In here, it’s broken and you wonder how it will mend, how you can still be
you
with everything tore up inside.” He tilted his head back and stared at the remains of a swallow’s nest packed into a corner of the overhanging roof. The nest had been knocked down, but bits of dried mud clung to the eaves, a few pieces of straw, string, and hair swayed back and forth.

Sterling cleared his throat. “I shouldn’t even be here now—not alive and breathing when so many are dead.”

“Please, don’t say that,” Evelyn whispered.

Sterling noticed how tightly she clutched Danny to her chest. “What I mean is, nearly everyone in my company died. My brother died, my best friend died, your husband died. Why not me? Why am I here and they aren’t?”

He lifted his leg and flexed his foot. “I should be grateful I only have a crippled leg, but it doesn’t make me happy about the fact that I limp and my bones ache. The nightmares come during the daytime. I’m better now at pushing them out, but my mind will always hold those images—the ugliness of war.”

Evelyn frowned and the crease between her eyes tightened. “I don’t know what to say, I’m sorry. I don’t understand what the war did to you or anyone else.”

“But you do. It’s what you said a minute ago. You don’t know who you are anymore. All of us who fought in the war or lost someone in the war have changed. We have to redefine our existence—who we are without those loved ones we lost. And somewhere in the process we realize a part of us has gone missing, and we spend the rest of our lives trying to recapture it.” Sterling put his arm around her again.

“This is what I’m trying to tell you. I think we have to give up that part we lost and live today. We can’t spend our lives trying to recapture a part of us that has died.” He stroked Danny’s hair with his other hand. “I spent a lot of time trying to hide when I got back. I finally realized I have to change and be confident that I do know who I am, so I can live for the future.”

“I’m trying to do that, too, but it’s so hard.” Her voice was thick with tears.

“I know,” Sterling said, and then he chuckled. “You know that first night I saw you at the restaurant was only the second time I’d ventured out on my own.”

“It was?” Evelyn raised her eyebrows. “But you kept coming back.”

Sterling smiled. “I had good motivation. I still do.”

“I feel so nervous all the time now, so . . .” Evelyn bit her lip and shook her head.

“Panicked?” Sterling finished for her. “It feels safer to lie in bed than to walk the streets where some crazy person could hurt you. I’m telling you, I know how you feel, and I want to help you if you’ll let me.”

Evelyn took a deep breath and leaned into Sterling. She thought about what he had said, but she remained quiet and as still as her sleeping baby.

Sterling came by to visit her every day. Some days Evelyn agreed to see him and other days he would rock on the porch swing for an hour, hoping she would change her mind. Marie began letting him take Danny for a walk around the block. Sterling could see that Marie hovered on the brink of tears over the heartache she felt for her daughter. He kept coming and brushed aside Marie’s concern that Evelyn might not ever be the same, confident that he could help her.

~*~

One evening Marie arranged for Evelyn to be in the sitting room so she couldn’t refuse to visit with Sterling. He brought Evelyn a beautiful bouquet of colorful tulips for the first day of May.

“It’s been six weeks, Evelyn. I’m worried about you.” Her face looked gaunt and pale, her hair had lost its luster, and her eyes were lifeless. “Please, let me help you.” His tone was soft. “Just come for a walk with me and Danny today.”

“Okay,” she agreed.

They walked slowly in the opposite direction of town, where the streets were quiet and the chances of meeting someone were near zero. Sterling held her hand but remained silent. The sound of the air moving through the trees overhead was conversation enough.

When they passed two women walking in the opposite direction, Evelyn noticed the disapproving looks they gave her, as though what happened was somehow her fault. She hated the way her breath halted and her throat burned in anguish. She would rather stay indoors.

Late that night Evelyn sat up in bed, her breath caught in her throat. Lifting a hand to her cheek, she felt the wetness of tears and shuddered as the nightmare slithered on the edges of her consciousness. It was always the same, she and Sterling were inside the Montgomery’s barn talking, he leaned in to kiss her and it felt so nice to be close and comforted. But then she was kissing Harlan, and he was laughing, pulling at her stockings, ripping her dress. In the dream, Evelyn tried to scream, but no sound came from her throat.