A Matter of Justice

by ShiningStar

Disclaimer: The characters and situations of the TV program "Big Valley" are the creations of Four Star/Republic Pictures and have been used without permission. No copyright infringement is intended by the author. The ideas expressed in this story are copyrighted to the author.

This is Part 3 of a trilogy that includes "Out of the Ashes" and "Journey to Yesterday".

Chapter 1

“Mother! Mother! Where are you?”

The woman put aside the letter she was writing and stepped into the hall from her sitting room.

“Mother!” The quiet was shattered again by the loud call.

She closed her eyes and thought it would be nice if she could close her ears instead. “Victoria, must you start calling for me the moment you come in the front door? You know you can find me upstairs in my sitting room at this time of day.”

The younger woman paused halfway up the stairs, her face splitting into a wide grin. “There you are!”

“I believe I just said that,” the woman replied patiently. “Please lower your voice.”

Victoria Emerson advanced to the top of the stairs, and, enveloping her mother in an enthusiastic embrace, kissed both cheeks. “Just wait until you hear my news!”

“It will keep until you change. You smell of the stable.”

“I’ve been riding Star all afternoon.”

“Then go make yourself presentable while I make some tea and bring it into the library.”

“Oh, Mother, sometimes you can be so—so—so old-fashioned!”

“Thank you, Victoria, I consider that a compliment. Go.”

Katherine Wardell Emerson watched affectionately as her daughter strode down the wide hall and disappeared into her own room. Victoria was so much like she had been—eager, energetic, boundlessly enthusiastic about each small detail of her life. And now she—Katherine—was becoming more and more like her own Mother, insistent on the conventionalities of life. She chuckled as she went downstairs to the kitchen.

The kitchen had been remodeled in the early twenties, but it could do with another update, Katherine reflected as she took out the fragile cups and saucers that her mother always used to serve tea in the afternoons. They were white with a silver rim and small blue flowers the color of Mother’s eyes. Katherine set the kettle on the stove and turned on the gas. As a child, she had often inspected her own eyes to see if maybe—just maybe—they were turning blue like her mother’s, but they had remained what Papa called sea foam green. Once, many years ago, she had looked into eyes the same color and finally understood that genetics was stronger than wishes.

* * * * * * * *

“Now, tell me your news.”

Vicky, freshly bathed and wearing a dress instead of the ancient and disreputable jodhpurs which she steadfastly refused to abandon, accepted the cup of tea from her mother.

“Thank you, Mother.”

“You’re welcome. Your news, dear?”

Vicky’s face lighted up as if someone had thrown a switch behind it. “Charley’s coming home on leave for Christmas! He’ll be here until after New Year’s!”

“That’s wonderful, darling! I know his parents must be thrilled, too!”

“I stopped by on the way home—they’d just had a letter. He said that he was writing to me, too, but I guess it hasn’t come yet.”

“He’s been gone a long time.”

“Fourteen months! Honestly, thinking of him strolling the beaches in Hawaii with some of those Navy nurses just makes me boil!”

“Do you know that he does?” Katherine suppressed a smile.

“No, but I can imagine—he’s so good-looking, Mother! They’re bound to invite him to all their parties.”

“I should think there wouldn’t be that much time for parties on a Naval base.”

“Charley says it’s deadly dull. They don’t even go on alert anymore. There’s not going to be a war, no matter what they’re saying in Washington!”

“People said that twenty years ago, Vicky. They put on blinders until our boys marched off to sail for France.” She could have added—but didn’t—that President Wilson had said of the treaty that ended that war, ‘This is not a peace—it is a truce for twenty years.’ It was beginning to look as if he’d been right.

“Europe is always fighting,” Vicky said, helping herself to another thin butter cookie—her grandmother’s recipe. She’d never known her grandmother, but sometimes she felt she knew her. Mother was always quoting her, and so many things in the house had belonged to her.

“There have always been wars somewhere,” Katherine said.

“Are John and Rosalie and the children coming home this year?”

“I have no idea. Rosalie’s letter last week said that we might want to consider coming to San Antonio instead.”

“Oh, but Mother, I love Christmas at home!”

“I never spent a single Christmas in this house until your father and I were married. My parents and I always went to California to the ranch.”

“I’ve heard the story,” Vicky said impatiently.

“Wherever we’re together is the place to be at Christmas. You’re twenty-two years old, Vicky. Don’t sulk.”

“I’m not sulking! But if Charley’s here, and we’re there. . .”

“I see what you mean. Well, it’s only the sixth of December. We’ll work something out.”

“Do you miss going to the ranch?”

“I go every summer.”

“I mean at Christmas.”

“Not really. Everyone’s gone now—there are two new generations. I can hardly keep up with all of them.”

Vicky regarded her mother thoughtfully. “But it was special then, wasn’t it? I mean, not just Christmas but your birthday.”

“I think I’m finished with birthdays, thank you.”

“Now, Mother—sixty-one is hardly an advanced age!”

“I suppose not. My parents weren’t much younger when they took me.” She shook her head. “It’s funny, but I never thought of them as old. They were just my parents. I wish you’d known them, Vicky. I wish you’d known your own father. They were three of the most wonderful people in the world.”

“Sometimes I’m jealous of John because he knew our father. He was nine, so he has a lot of memories.”

“He was Teddy’s shadow everywhere.” Katherine thought of the small blonde boy keeping step with the tall blonde man in the hospital corridors. Brought your assistant today, I see, someone would inevitably call out, and Teddy would reply, I might need a consultation.

“John even looks like him.”

Katherine nodded. “He does indeed. And you look like me.”

“Mother, when Charley and I get married, will you be lonely here?”

“In this house? Of course not!”

“Memories aren’t particularly warm companions.”

“Mine are. Besides, I spend at least half my time at the hospital or teaching at the medical school. I’m not ready to retire yet. And you don’t have to wait until you and Charley get married before you move out on your own. Many young women have their own apartments these days. You don’t have to stay here because you’re worried about leaving me alone.”

Vicky dropped her eyes. “I guess—I guess I’m not ready—not just yet.”

“When you are, I’ll help you pack.”

“Mother!”

Katherine laughed. “I’m teasing you, Vicky.” She rose and picked up the tea tray. “What are your plans for tonight?”

“It’s Saturday— so I’m going to wash my hair, do my nails, and press a dress for church tomorrow, I suppose. And write to Charley, though he may not have time to get it before he goes on leave. Do you have to go back to the hospital?”

“I have a patient I want to check on. Suppose you meet me there at six-thirty, and we’ll go to dinner somewhere.”

“We need to find another housekeeper,” Vicky said firmly.

“Or you need to practice your kitchen skills,” her mother replied. “Six-thirty at the main entrance—all right? Now I’m going upstairs to finish the letter I was writing before I have to leave.”

* * * * * * * *

Katherine read what she’d written before being interrupted.

Dear Trevor,

It’s almost Christmas again, and I always think of the ranch at this time of year. Mother began preparations for our trip just after Thanksgiving, but I think I began to get excited by Halloween!

The day the trunks were brought from the attic was like a holiday to Katherine when she was a little girl. She loved helping Mother carry clothes from the bureaus, matching hats and gloves and shoes to each garment, discussing where and when each would be worn. She had her own much smaller trunk and a miniature one for her latest doll and its wardrobe. That one wasn’t checked, of course, but Papa always wrote out a tag for it and gave her a duplicate which she tucked into her own tiny purse. “Now, Kate precious, always take particular care of your baggage checks. You can’t claim your things without them.” And he’d make her produce that tag before she was allowed to open her doll trunk. Mother said it was good training—and, in truth, it had been.

They’d taught her so many things under the guise of make-believe and let’s-pretend. She understood now that, because they were so much older, they knew all too well that they might not be around until she was grown up and on her own. They’d prepared her to go on with her life without them, to be self-sufficient and independent. They’d done their job well.

She picked up her pen. Vicky has just told me that Charley will be home from Hawaii for Christmas. He’s been in Hawaii at some place called Pearl Harbor for fourteen months, and she’s missed him dreadfully. They’ve grown up together and taken it for granted that they’d spend their entire lives together. It will be a good marriage—they’re so suited to one another. They’ll be best friends as well as lovers.

Rosalie writes that, with all the talk of war, John may have to remain near the base. If so, we’ll go to San Antonio for Christmas. Of course, that presents a problem for Vicky and Charley, but I can send her back the day after Christmas if I decide to stay on. Jack and little Teddy are growing so fast, and I see them so seldom that I hate to miss a single moment with them.

I think there will be a war, Trevor, and it frightens me. John is an officer and young enough to be sent overseas. Your boys are already waiting on the draft. And Nick’s, Heath’s, and Gene’s grandsons are old enough to go, too. Papa used to say that war is such a dirty business—he never understood why anyone could think there was any glory attached to blowing men’s bodies apart.

Isn’t it odd, though, that there are still casualties of war that have nothing to do with fighting? My Teddy was too old to be drafted in the last war, and he was needed here anyway with so many of the younger doctors enlisting. But he fought a war anyway with the influenza epidemic—and it finally killed him.

Vicky was just saying this afternoon that she was jealous of John for having known Teddy. It is certainly a terrible coincidence that, after hoping and praying for almost nine years to have a second child, I finally conceived Vicky just days before Teddy sickened and died. He never even knew about her. But she was my salvation, I think. When I learned that I was pregnant again, I had to hurry up with my grieving and get on with life.

Well, Trevor, I have a patient I must see this afternoon—she had surgery this morning, and I want to look in on her. I spoke with the surgeon immediately afterward, and he said everything went well. Still, I’ve been her doctor for twenty years, and she’ll want to see me.

Do write me all the news of your family and of the ranch. Kiss as many of the children as you can grab on Christmas Day—I keep a list of them—I have to! The Barkleys are a prolific clan! My love to you and to Ruth and Tom and Nicky as well.

KatieBee

She folded, sealed, and stamped the letter and put it into her purse. Then she selected a starched white lab coat from her closet and slipped it on. From the closet by the front door she took her overcoat—Mother would have said it was too masculine, but it fit over her hospital coat perfectly—and went out to the car.

The sky was heavy—as if it might snow. Perhaps it would wait until Christmas. Tomorrow she would write to Rosalie and tell her about Charley. Then she would see if she could get a compartment on the train at this late date. She would buy Vicky’s return ticket for the twenty-sixth, and Vicky could stay with Charley’s family until New Year’s. Things would fall into place. Mother always said that planning ahead was the secret.

Katherine turned the key in the ignition and backed carefully from beneath the portico.

Chapter 2

As was her custom, Vicky brought breakfast to her mother’s sitting room on Sunday morning. When her parents married, they had moved into the suite of rooms formerly occupied by Royce and Victoria Wardell. After John was born, he was given the bedroom across the hall. Nine years later, Anne Victoria was placed in a lacy bassinet in her mother’s girlhood room. She still used the bird’s eye maple furniture, but her taste ran to pink instead of blue.

Katherine sat in a chair by the window reading the newspaper retrieved earlier from the front porch before her daughter arose. She didn’t know why she bothered reading it at all—there was no good news anymore, and she suspected there wouldn’t be for a long time to come. Now she put the paper aside and sniffed the air appreciatively. “Banana bread?”

“My specialty.” Vicky set the tray down on a low table and poured coffee for the two of them.

“This is an occasion then.”

Vicky curled up on the loveseat. “I thought about Charley all the time I was baking it. When we’re married, I’m going to bring him breakfast in bed every Sunday morning!”

“With a little perseverance, you could train him to bring your breakfast.”

“Oh, Mother!”

“Your father did that for me.”

Vicky leaned forward a little. “Did he really?”

“He really did. It was a special time for just the two of us. Later, John would come in and have his breakfast, and Teddy would read the comics aloud to him before we got ready for church.”

Vicky chewed her lower lip. “Do you still miss him, Mother?”

Katherine smiled. “Every minute of every hour of every day of my life.”

“Why did you never remarry?”

“I never fell in love again.”

“It wasn’t because of John or me?”

“Absolutely not. My parents had both been married before—very good marriages—and theirs was especially happy. I would have remarried if I’d met the right person.”

“You’re not too old.”

“I’m not too interested either.” Katherine laughed at her daughter’s expression. “Are you trying to get rid of me?”

“No, of course not.”

“If you’re seriously concerned about leaving me alone when you get married, don’t be. That shouldn’t even enter your mind.”

“When John married, you had me.”

“And when you marry, I’ll get a dog—or a cat.”

“Mother!”

“A lover?”

“Mother, stop it!”

“I thought we’d drive out to the country after church and see if the Ellistons still have walnuts. I want to take some to Rosalie.”

“That sounds all right. We’re really going to San Antonio then?”

“I checked to see if we could still get a compartment, and we can. So as soon as you know whether or not you can get some time off from the library, I’ll reserve it. Tomorrow if possible.”

“I’ll ask as soon as I go in. I haven’t taken any days in a long time, and you said I could come back on the twenty-sixth. Besides, the library will close down on the twenty-third anyway.”

“That’s right, but I think I’ll stay on until New Year’s. I don’t get to spend much time with my grandsons.”

“You spoil them dreadfully, you know.”

“Why, Vicky, I don’t!”

“Rosalie looks the other way—she can afford to for a few days.”

“You are a wicked child. Go get ready for church so you can ask forgiveness for your sinful ways.”

The two women laughed together companionably. They’d always been close. Vicky had grown up with only one parent, and her mother had all her loyalty.

* * * * * * * *

The spirit of Christmas had fully possessed them as they left the church and drove toward the Elliston’s farm. They tried harmonizing on Jingle Bells but dissolved into laughter—just carrying a tune was the best either of them could do. John, on the other hand, had inherited his father’s pleasant baritone and had performed with the glee club through high school. At West Point, he sang in the chapel choir.

The skies above Nashville had cleared during the night, so the day—though cold— was sunny. Katherine and Vicky discussed whether or not to decorate a Christmas tree since they would be spending the holidays away from home and decided that wreaths in the front windows and on the door would suffice. Vicky knew the facts of her mother’s birth, but she’d never heard the story of the holly wreaths at Christmas in 1908, so Katherine told it now.

“You never knew Annie,” Vicky mused, “yet you named me for her.” It was not the first time she’d wondered about her mother’s motivation.

“As Will Trowbridge said, Annie gave me breath, and my parents gave me life. It seemed fitting for you to be named for the two women responsible for my existence.”

“I like Uncle Will and Aunt Elizabeth. They were so nice to come clear across the country when I graduated college.”

“He’s always felt he’s had a least a spectator’s role in my life—so of course, he’d feel a bond with you.”

“I’ll be sure to invite them to my wedding.”

“And they’ll be sure to come it they’re able, I know.”

Vicky slowed the car and negotiated the sharp turn into the farm gate with precision. As they parked in front of the house, Patricia Elliston came flying out the door without even a sweater. She waved her hands frantically at them. Katherine rolled down her window hurriedly.

“Oh, Katherine, it’s horrible! I can’t believe it!”

Vicky leaned across her mother. “What can’t you believe, Mrs. Elliston?”

Tears welled up in Patricia’s eyes. “The Japanese! They’ve bombed Pearl Harbor! Thousands of our boys are dead!”

* * * * * * * *

It was a somber holiday season for thousands of American families, the Gills and the Emersons included. Katherine and Vicky remained in Nashville, awaiting any word about the ultimate fate of Lieutenant (J.G.) Charles Gill of the U.S.S. Arizona.

While Vicky remained hopeful, the Gills seemed resigned to the fact that their son was one of the men who had gone to their final resting place still trapped below the decks of the great ship. John, who had managed to get a seventy-two hour leave to travel to Nashville, supported his sister’s optimism as he had always done, but he confided privately to his mother that Charley’s chances grew slimmer everyday.

Finally, on the last day of January, the official telegram was delivered to the Gill home. Missing and presumed dead. Hope, as well as Charley Gill, perished with those four words. Vicky remained outwardly stoic, but Katherine often stood outside her daughter’s door at night and listened to her sob herself to sleep.

She remembered only too clearly how it was—how it felt to lose the person with whom you expected to grow old. She had wept until there were no tears left and considered that her life was truly over. Vicky was already moving inside her before she could think of Teddy without bursting into tears. Yet she’d gone on, and Vicky would, too.

In the aftermath of World War One had come the deadly influenza epidemic that swept the country. Early on it had taken Jarrod—already weakened by age and a second stroke. Teddy insisted that Katherine go to Stockton to bid him goodbye. Reluctantly, she allowed him to assume the care of her patients—a reduced number due to her teaching responsibilities—and had taken nine-year-old John with her on the sad journey.

It had been a short, heart-breaking trip. Jarrod hardly looked like himself, and she could barely bring herself to do more than glance into the open casket. But worse even than his death was the realization that the rest of her siblings were getting old. For the first time she had to accept the fact that the rest of her beloved family would likely be gone before John was grown.

The day before she left Stockton, she received a wire from Teddy telling her to leave John at the ranch. Influenza had arrived in Nashville with a vengeance. He would be safer on the ranch, but she was needed badly. Nick urged her to stay, too, railing at Teddy for even suggesting that she place her life in jeopardy.

“Nick, I’m a doctor. Teddy is speaking to me as a colleague—not as a wife. I know you don’t understand it, but I do.” And so she’d returned, leaving John behind in the care of her family.

Some nights she never left the hospital. Sometimes she went three days without changing her clothes. Most days she didn’t remember whether she’d eaten—or even if she’d slept. She was doctor, nurse, orderly, and janitor. Every job had to be done, and those who were still on their feet did them without questioning.

Then, as suddenly as it had begun, it seemed to be over. Teddy said it might only be a lull in the storm, but the number of new cases dropped daily. Exhausted, they slept for twenty-four hours, and then, only partially refreshed, gave in to the needs of their bodies for each other. The next day Teddy developed a raging fever—and three days later he was dead.

Trevor brought John home for the funeral—Katherine told the others to stay away—and stayed to help her take care of the business that always follows death. John, devastated at the loss of the father he worshipped, shut himself in his room for days. Katherine left his meals in the hall, grateful when they were retrieved and eaten, and let him alone.

She attributed the odd changes in her health to grief and stress, but finally in June she began to suspect the truth. When the doctor confirmed that she was pregnant, she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. In the end, she told John, and for the first time in weeks they smiled—then laughed—together.

Anne Victoria Emerson was born on a cold, sunny morning in late January. John, age ten, presented himself at the hospital as the man of the family, conferring in all seriousness with the doctors as to the health of his mother and baby sister. The staff, who had known him all of his life, treated him with kindness and Katherine felt that their compassion helped him heal even more in the familiar setting where he’d spent so much time with his father.

They had become a family of three again—never forgetting, always missing Teddy—but carrying on in a way that would have made him proud. Katherine thought of those days often now as Vicky began to heal. She wanted to tell her that—in time—the pain would dull, but she hadn’t believed those who told her the same thing, and Vicky wouldn’t believe her either. She would just have to wait and learn that truth for herself—but it would be a hard lesson.

Papa said that the hardest lessons were often the ones best learned and the most valuable. Katherine agreed with him—after a fashion—but she didn’t always relish the learning. Like the time she’d taken a school chum’s dare to walk the porch railing at school—and fallen off with inches to go. The derisive laughter of her classmates had followed her home.

Mother wanted to know why she was angry, of course, and Katherine told her. Mother was sympathetic but firm—under no circumstances was she to attempt the feat again, and Papa reiterated the edict. But the next day, the temptation was too strong—and this time she’d made it all the way around before toppling off at the end, breaking her wrist.

She expected to be smothered with sympathy and concern—poached eggs served on Mother’s blue-flowered dishes, Papa sitting beside her bed reading aloud for hours, Arthur and Guinevere smuggled upstairs by Mrs. Tompkins, the housekeeper, who thought Katherine not only beautiful but perfect.

The hurt she felt at being expected to carry on as usual was almost worse than her throbbing wrist. “You disobeyed us, Kate,” Mother said matter-of-factly, “and now you must take the consequences. I’m very sorry that your wrist hurts, but you can’t expect to be rewarded for disobedience.”

To Katherine, Papa’s reaction bordered on treachery. “I’d break my wrist twice over for you, Kate precious, but the fact remains that you did exactly what we told you not to do—and for no good reason other than to impress your little friends.”

She’d sulked in her room for an entire afternoon—and then she’d given up and come downstairs for dinner, hair brushed, sash tied, face arranged with a smile. Papa had helped her with the lessons she’d missed in school, and then Mother had read aloud from The Knights of the Round Table. Papa did slip her a stick of peppermint candy when he kissed her goodnight—and when the doctor said she could go back to school, Mother fashioned her a sling from her own favorite blue scarf. Small concessions—and a large lesson.

But Vicky’s loss wasn’t simply a broken wrist and a temporary fall from grace, Katherine mused, and her own heart ached for her daughter.

Chapter 3

As spring came on, Katherine recognized an agonizing restlessness in her daughter. So, in June when Vicky announced that she’d resigned her position at the library, Katherine wasn’t surprised. It was what Vicky said next that was a shock. “I’m going to join the WACS. I can do something to win this war besides stamp books.” With her master’s degree in library science, she did a great deal more than stamp books, but Katherine didn’t say that.

“You’ve thought this over very carefully, I suppose.”

“You know I have, Mother. You know I’ve never been impulsive—you taught me better than that.”

“Yes, I did.”

“John said that when he received his orders, he’d send Rosalie and the children home, so you won’t be alone.”

“I’ve told you before that being alone is not something I find burdensome.”

“I’m going to enlist tomorrow.”

“All right, Vicky.”

“Are you—upset with me?”

“I don’t want either my children going to war—but then, you’re not children anymore. And I would be less than the mother I want to be if I did anything but support you completely.”

Vicky threw herself down on the floor beside her mother’s chair and buried her face in Katherine’s lap. “Oh, Mother, it’s eating me up! I know Charley’s not coming home, and I can’t stay here and keep waiting for something that’s never going to happen!”

Katherine stroked her daughter’s thick auburn hair. “Of course you can’t, darling. I understand—I really do.”

* * * * * * * *

Rosalie and the children arrived in September just in time to enroll Jack, the oldest, in first grade. Rosalie’s father had died when she was sixteen, and her mother had sold their home and now lived in a small apartment in Nashville, so it was natural that she and the boys would move in with Katherine for the duration. Katherine gave Jack and Teddy their father’s old room and put Rosalie in the guestroom, telling her to make it her own.

John was off to London, his assignment unknown, even to him. Vicky was in Texas working as a medical records clerk in the base hospital. Though she hadn’t chosen medicine as a career, she’d picked up a thorough education in medical terminology from Katherine, and now it was becoming useful. Katherine, Rosalie, and the children settled in to wait.

“I can live with the shortages and rationing,” Katherine told her daughter-in-law after a particularly long day in October, “but not without all the younger doctors who are being drafted or are enlisting. I know they’re needed—but I’m not sure how long those of us who are left behind can keep up.”

Rosalie brought Katherine a cup of tea and gently shoved an ottoman under her feet. “I know it won’t do any good to tell you not to overdo, but I’ll tell you anyway.”

“Mother always said that one does what has to be done.”

“And you do. I promised John I’d look after you.”

Katherine’s feet came down with a soft thud. “You can tell your husband that I don’t need looking after!” she snapped. “Not yet anyway!”

Rosalie held up her hands in mock surrender. “Sorry.”

“I’m just tired tonight, Rosie—forgive me.”

“It’s forgotten.” Rosalie took up the sweater she was knitting for John.

“Audra used to knit,” Katherine observed, putting her aching feet back on the ottoman. “She knitted for the orphanage and for all her friends with new babies. She was good with her hands. They were never idle—almost to the last.”

Katherine closed her eyes and listened to the soft rhythmic clicking of the needles. Teach me to knit, Audra. I can learn. Teach me to knit a coat and cap for my doll. Audra had put aside her own project to search out extra needles and scraps of yarn for her baby sister to use. Then, with characteristic loving patience, she had proceeded to help Katherine turn those scraps into a tassled tam and jacket for the new china doll, Jennifer Jane.

After that, whenever Audra was knitting or crocheting or embroidering, Katherine sat on a stool at her feet and did likewise. She knew that Papa liked seeing his princess act like such a little lady. However, when she was roughhousing in the barn or climbing trees or straddling the corral fence watching one of the hands break a horse, he turned a blind eye. Mother assured him that Audra had done all that, too, and still blossomed into a lovely young woman—and their Kate would also.

As Katherine grew up, Audra had exerted almost as much influence on her as her mother. Audra was beautiful and charming and knew how to handle their four bossy brothers. Just listen and smile, KatieBee, and then do exactly what you think you should do. They mean well, and sometimes they really do know best. But always remember that you have to make your own decisions.

She’d been four when Audra married Don. There were six bridesmaids, all wearing rose taffeta dresses with white roses in their hair. When she asked why her dress was pink, Audra said it was because she was special. I want my sister to stand out from all the others, KatieBee. I have lots of friends to be bridesmaids but only one little sister.

When the ceremony was over, and Audra and Don started down the aisle arm in arm, Katherine had thought it was the most natural thing in the world to go over and take Audra’s hand and walk with them. Audra had seemed to think so, too, even though some people in the pews were tittering as they passed. Later she’d overheard a lady saying how that child had certainly spoiled things, and she’d hidden in a corner and cried until Audra had found her and made her tell the reason for her tears. I didn’t mean to spoil things, truly I didn’t!

She could still remember how she felt when Audra, heedless of her bridal finery, had hugged her close and whispered words of comfort as only she could do. How many girls can say that their little sisters walked down the aisle with them? Oh, KatieBee, whenever I think of my wedding day, I’ll remember how special you made it!

After her mother died, Katherine looked to Audra more and more for counsel and comfort—she was like Mother in so many ways. Audra had even come to Nashville and helped plan Katherine’s wedding. She wasn’t well, of course, but she’d come anyway. Katherine arranged for her to see a women’s specialist while she was there. Audra didn’t tell her the truth about the diagnosis until much later—long after the wedding.

It was cancer—the same kind that had taken Mother. Teddy had been so kind and understanding, just as he’d been when Katherine needed to take care of her parents, and sent her out to California to stay with Audra that last month of her life. She told Don that she’d come to care for Audra, but it was Audra who cared for her instead. Katherine sat beside her bed for hours, listening to the old family stories again, remembering the love and the laughter, and screaming inside because she was losing her beautiful sister.

I’ve always taken the credit for you, you know. If I hadn’t been so involved with the orphanage, Royce and Mother might never have known about you. You were such a special blessing,, KatieBee. I think you made all of us—Jarrod, Nick, Heath, Gene, me—better parents. We watched Mother and Royce with you and knew that’s how it should be.

Katherine begged to be allowed to arrange Audra’s hair herself before the viewing. I know how she liked it. Please—I want to—I need to do it. So she had brushed and pinned—and mourned.

* * * * * * * *

Rosalie prepared Thanksgiving dinner and suggested they invite Charley’s parents. The Gills accepted gratefully, and the day—while full of poignancy—was a pleasant one. Vicky called from Texas just before their guests left. After speaking with her, Violet Gill turned to Katherine with tears in her eyes. “She said that she was thankful for having had Charley in her life—even if things didn’t work out, she wouldn’t have wanted to miss him.”

Katherine nodded. “We all risk loss when we love, but if we didn’t love—we wouldn’t really live.”

“You know that better than anyone, Katherine.”

“No, my losses have been no more than many others. Let’s just say I’ve learned something from them and leave it at that.”

* * * * * * * *

John’s letters from London came regularly, and he always wrote to both his wife and his mother. Vicky wrote sporadically, but she’d never been a very good correspondent, even when she was at Bryn Mawr. Katherine continued her voluminous correspondence with her extended family. Trevor’s sons had been drafted, as had Heath’s grandson. Gene’s two grandsons were trying to finish one more year of college before enlisting. Peter, Nick’s grandson who ran the ranch with his father, was struggling with his conscience about taking the exemption for working in a war-necessary industry—cattle—or enlisting with the others. Katherine hoped he’d decide to stay—the family was giving enough.

Will Trowbridge had adopted Eric, Elizabeth’s son by her first marriage, and they’d had a daughter—Tessa. Will wrote that Eric’s son Bill was in the Navy, and so was Tessa’s husband who was a gunner’s mate. “I’d have gone in their place, Katherine, old as I am. I waited so long for a family, and to have even one, much less two, of them in danger is almost more than an old man can bear. Please God they’ll all come home—John, too. Eric is weighed down with business responsibilities. I turned things over to him long ago, but I try to advise him whenever he comes to me. The war has charged the economy all right, but the cost has been too dear for those overseas and those of us at home.”

Katherine thought of her father’s aversion to conflict of any kind. When she’d asked him about his experiences, he’d been willing to talk about his time in the cavalry after graduating from West Point, but not about what had come to be called the Civil War. Was is a dirty business, Kate. It took me a long time to feel clean again after I came out of it. I put it behind me, and that’s where I want it to stay.

Heath wouldn’t talk about his time in Carterson either, but Mother said he wasn’t as bitter about it as he had been in the beginning. He’d begun to see that the soldiers on both sides were the victims of a political struggle that might, had cooler heads prevailed, have been averted.

Nick was always good for a story when she needed information for an essay, but he never really told her the whole truth either. For some reason, she spent more time with him than with the others, and before she was ten she understood that all his yelling and stomping around was to hide the tenderness that made him so vulnerable to the wounds of those he loved.

She’d found him weeping at the desk in the library the afternoon of Jarrod’s funeral. What are we gonna do without Pappy? He was always there for us—always there. What are we gonna do without Pappy? And he’d never been quite the same after Susan, his wife, died a few years later. It was like the heart had gone out of him. He kept working because that’s all he knew how to do. Reckon I’ll die in the saddle one of these days, he liked to joke. He did, too. One afternoon his horse wandered back to the barn with an empty saddle. Heath found him up on the north ridge like he’d just laid himself down in the waving grass and gone to sleep in the warm autumn sunshine.

* * * * * * * *

Katherine was having lunch in the hospital cafeteria on the first of December when she was aware that someone had paused beside her table. “Dr. Wardell?”

She looked up at the stocky man wearing a rumpled white coat. His stethoscope hung crookedly around his neck, and his nondescript brown hair stuck up comically and was more than a little gray at the temples. “I’m Dr. Neville—the new kid on the block, you know?” He grinned.

“Please—sit down,” she said cordially. “You were introduced at the staff meeting this morning.”

“I’m the one that your chief-of-staff threatened out of a well-earned retirement in sunny Arizona.”

Katherine’s eyebrows went up. “Threatened?”

“We grew up together. He knows too much about me.” The man laughed, and Katherine found herself warming to his easy manner. “Yeah, he knows who put the teachers’ privy on the schoolhouse roof and ran off old man Couch’s cow wearing his wife’s best bonnet and. . .”

“Aren’t you a little young to be retired?” She studied his full, unlined face with frank curiosity.

“Well, the truth is, I still had my shingle out, but I only worked when I wanted to. I was the neighborhood doc in a little town outside Phoenix. Treated sore throats and stomach aches, delivered a few babies, that sort of thing. Ran a few cattle on a little piece of land I bought. Played a little golf. I made a pretty good living when I was doing surgery—I specialized.” He tapped his chest.

“Thoracic?”

“Yep. Got tired of it. Had a nest egg, so. . .” He grinned again. “But this damn war. . .” He coughed. “’Scuse me, Doctor. . .this stupid war’s taken all the best and brightest, and now old codgers like us have to pick up the slack.”

“You’ll pardon me if I don’t class myself with the old codgers.”

“Present company excluded, of course.”

Katherine smiled. “You may liven things up around here anyway, Dr. Neville.”

“Mac.” He leaned across the table slightly. “Actually, my name’s Lancelot, but if you ever tell, I’ll operate on your thorax and put your ribs where your brain is.”

Katherine exploded with laughter. When she could speak again, she said, “I take it your mother was an aficionado of the Knights of the Round Table.”

He grimaced. “I have a sister named Guinevere.”

“I had a dog named Guinevere once—and one named Arthur.”

He sawed at his lamb chop. “I’ve eaten shoe leather not as tough.”

Katherine nodded sympathetically. “Oh, for a nice ribeye! My brother Nick could catch it, kill it, carve it up, and throw it on the fire for dinner, and it practically melted in your mouth.”

Something flickered in his eyes. “You come from a ranch background?”

“I was raised in Nashville, but we went back to the family ranch in California for two months every summer.”

“Never been to California.”

“It’s beautiful.”

He put down his knife and fork and shoved the plate away. “You know any place we can get a ribeye?”

“Not legally.”

“Who cares?”

“I’ve heard there’s a place about ten miles out that serves anything you want—if you call ahead.”

“Got the number?”

“No.”

“Can you get it?”

“Possibly.”

He wiggled his shaggy eyebrows. “Well, look, why don’t you get it, and I’ll pick you up at seven after I get off duty.”

She regarded him with a mixture of amusement and impatience. He was certainly taking a lot for granted. “Do you frequently pick up women in hospital cafeterias, Dr. Neville?”

“Mac. Hell, no, I didn’t pick you up—I picked you out. Saw you right off in that staff meeting this morning. You’re name is really Emerson, but you’ve always gone by Wardell professionally. You graduated from Vanderbilt where you still teach a class three times a week, and you have a son who graduated from West Point and a daughter who’s in the WACS.” He stirred his tea. “Anything else you want to know about yourself?”

Katherine stared at him. “You’re rather forward, Dr. Neville.”

“Nah—I’m a pussycat. Wait ‘til you get to know me better.”

Katherine stood up with the cool dignity she had learned so well from her mother. “I can wait,” she said and walked away.

Chapter 4

Katherine had just settled herself in her favorite chair and was sipping the tea that Rosalie always had waiting for her when the doorbell pealed loudly.

Rosalie touched her shoulder. “I’ll get it.” She was back in a few minutes bearing a long white florist’s box. “Did I forget your birthday or something?” she asked, laying the box across Katherine’s lap.

“No, but when it comes around, you’d better forget it if you want to remain my favorite daughter-in-law.”

Rosalie laughed. “Well, aren’t you going to open it?”

The box held a dozen red roses and a card.

Roses are red.

Ribeyes are juicy.

I’m taking you out,

So you better get sprucy.

Mac

“Well, he certainly has his nerve!”

“He?” Rosalie tried to get a look at the card. “He?”

“A temporary replacement at the hospital—he should have stayed retired in Arizona!”

Rosalie captured the card. “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” She began to laugh.

“He’s—impossible!”

“Oh, do something totally out of character and let him take you to dinner,” Rosalie urged. “I won’t tell on you.”

“It’s bad enough that I have to work with him! I don’t have to spend my free time with him, too!” Katherine plunked the box on the library table. “Honestly! Honestly!” She left the room hurriedly.

Rosalie couldn’t stop giggling as she arranged the roses in a vase and set them on the piano. Roses in December weren’t cheap, she reflected. She pictured her mother-in-law in her mind—Katherine looked at least ten years younger than her age. She was a petite woman but incredibly strong and almost totally unflappable. One summer, when little Teddy had slipped through the balcony railing and was dangling ten feet above the ground, Katherine had calmly hauled him up again—all thirty solid pounds of him—set him on his feet, and told him firmly that if he wanted to play in the yard, he should go downstairs and out the front door—not off the balcony.

Her thick auburn hair had turned salt-and-pepper in the last ten years, and Rosalie had heard Katherine bemoan the fact that her mother’s hair had been solid silver at fifty. But the sea foam green eyes were as deep and clear as ever—and Rosalie was convinced that they could see right through a person into his very soul.

All in all, Katherine Barkley Wardell Emerson was not so far removed from her youthful beauty. Rosalie was surprised that someone hadn’t snapped her up before now. John wouldn’t have objected—he’d said so more than once. Vicky might have hesitated, but she’d have come around, too. She adored her mother and sincerely wanted her happiness.

Thirty-eight was a relatively young age to be widowed and remain unmarried. Rosalie shivered. Before this war was over, there were going to be so many widows much, much younger. She didn’t know what she’d do if John. . . She stuck the last rose in the vase and went out to the kitchen to see about supper.

* * * * * * * *

Katherine was admonishing Jack and Teddy to spread their napkins in their laps when the doorbell pealed. “I’ll get it this time,” Katherine said.

“Ready to go hunt up those ribeyes?” Mac Neville stood on the porch, looking as rumpled in his jacket as he had in his hospital coat, and grinning from ear to ear.

“Dr. Neville, I didn’t agree to go out with you tonight—or any other night.”

“Didn’t you get my note?”

“Yes, I got it—the roses are lovely, by the way—thank you—but I’m just about to sit down to dinner with my grandchildren.”

“What are you having?”

“Meatloaf.”

He made a face. “When there are ribeyes to be had?”

“Dr. Neville, I. . .”

“It sure is cold out here, Could we discuss this inside?”

She stood aside to let him in and closed the door. “There’s nothing top discuss.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“Quite sure.”

“Who is it, Katherine?” Rosalie called from the kitchen.

“Someone from the hospital, and he’s just leaving.”

Rosalie stuck her head around the corner. “Oh—you must be Dr. Neville. Hello, I’m Rosalie Emerson, Dr. Wardell’s daughter-in-law.”

He bowed. “How do you do, Rosalie Emerson. Do you have any influence with this lady?”

“Not much. But I do have a rather large meatloaf. Would you like to join us?”

“Rosalie!” Katherine turned around quickly to look at the younger woman with real irritation.

“Oh, Katherine, it will be nice to have another face at the table for a change.” She disappeared into the kitchen.

Mac began to unbutton his coat. “What a nice girl!”

Katherine glared at him. “She’s skating a very thin line right now!”

* * * * * * * *

He kept Rosalie and the boys laughing throughout the meal—telling stories and performing small sleight-of-hand tricks. Once or twice he thought he saw Katherine almost laugh, too. When supper was over, he followed the family into the library as if he belonged there. “Nice house,” he observed.

“It belonged to my parents.”

“You grew up here then?”

“Yes.”

“What about you, Mrs. Emerson? Is Nashville your home?”

“I was born here, but John’s been posted to four different places since we’ve been married.”

“Well, travel is broadening.”

“Oh, yes—we’ve enjoyed everywhere we’ve lived. Jack was born in North Carolina and Teddy in Texas.”

He watched the boys playing on the floor with their building blocks and toy cars. “They’re nice little guys.”

“John and I think so.”

Mac Neville looked at Katherine. “And I suppose that granny spoils them.”

“Certainly not!” Katherine said.

Rosalie smiled. “Not much.”

Mac and Rosalie kept up the conversation until the clock on the mantle struck nine. “Time for bed, boys,” she said.

With a little prodding, they put away their toys in a wicker basket beside the fireplace and then hugged and kissed their grandmother. “Sweet dreams, darlings,” Katherine said. They shook hands with Mac, wanting to know if he’d be there for breakfast to do more tricks.

“No!” Katherine said firmly.

Rosalie had a hard time not laughing as she hurried her sons out of the room.

“They’re nice little guys,” Mac Neville tried again. “I never had children—and I’m sorry.”

Something in his voice caught Katherine’s attention. “Children are—a blessing.”

“I married when I was in medical school. It just never happened. Then I went overseas during the first war, and she—she found someone else while I was gone.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Well, after almost twenty years with a woman, you don’t expect something like that.” He shrugged. “But it happened.”

Katherine’s irritation dropped away. She, like her brother Nick, had a tender heart. “My husband died in the influenza epidemic after the war.”

“I heard. I heard he was a good doctor, too.”

“Yes, he was—very thorough, very compassionate.”

“You had your children, of course.”

“I don’t know what I’d have done without them.”

“You said you grew up here, but you went home to a ranch in California during the summers. I’m curious about that.”

Katherine gave him a brief explanation.

“Do you still have family there?”

“Dozens and dozens of them—but all my brothers and my sister are gone. Jarrod, the oldest, had a stroke and then took the flu. My sister Audra died of cancer like Mother. Nick—well, I think maybe Nick just died of a broken heart after his wife went. The others—Heath and Gene—they died in the thirties, so I had them a little longer.”

“My sister lives in Denver with her family—husband, two daughters, five grandchildren. I don’t see her too often, but we keep in touch.”

Katherine wasn’t aware that they’d talked for two hours until the clock chimed eleven. “I didn’t mean to keep you so late,” Mac said.

“It’s all right.” She walked with him to the door. “Dr. Neville. . .”

“Mac.”

“Mac, I’m sorry I was ungracious earlier, but you do have an irritating quality about you.”

He grinned. “So I’ve been told. Think we might hunt up those ribeyes tomorrow night?”

She shook her head. “I give up.”

“Does that mean yes?”

She opened the door. “Yes. Goodnight.”

Chapter 5

By Christmas, Mac Neville had managed to ingratiate himself with the entire hospital staff—including Dr. Katherine Barkley Wardell. Not only was he a excellent physician—his diagnostic skills approaching amazing and his bedside manner approaching perfect—but Katherine was beginning to see a man who hid his vulnerability behind a wall of casual, self-deprecating humor.

He was at the house frequently, much to the delight of Jack and Teddy and the amusement of their mother. He helped them trim the tree and wrap gifts and wangled an invitation to Christmas dinner, which he helped prepare. On New Year’s Eve, he escorted Katherine to a formal dance at one of the city’s posh hotels. She protested that she hadn’t danced in twenty-five years, but he said it had been even longer for him and that they’d disgrace themselves together.

Katherine had to admit that, despite his brash manner, he was a perfect gentleman, and she grew comfortable with him. Sometimes she thought he deliberately cultivated his rough speech to throw people off—because he was an astute judge of people and politics and widely read. Part of him reminded her of Nick—and the other part reminded her of her father.

Rosalie was waiting up for her after the dance. “I stayed up writing to John,” she said. “Did you have a good time?”

Katherine unpinned her orchid and laid it aside. “It reminded me of the parties I went to when I was a girl.”

“Were you a belle?”

“I suppose so. By virtue of being Royce Wardell’s daughter, I had entrance into elite society. I always wondered if my origins were the subject of discreet gossip behind my back, but by that time, I didn’t care. I knew who I was. Let’s go up to the sitting room, Rosalie. I’d like to change.”

Rosalie brought up the inevitable tea, and the two women settled down to visit. “I’ve often wondered why your origins—as you call them—were even known in Nashville.”

“My parents were old enough to be my grandparents—that became more apparent as the years passed. So, of course, people wondered if they were rearing a grandchild—you know, one of those indiscretions that happen in the best of families. One piece of gossip led to another, I suppose. Mother and Papa never felt it necessary to explain to anyone how they happened to have me. I was theirs—that’s all.”

“Well, of course you were.”

“Mother was every inch a lady—in the strictest sense of the word, you understand. But she’d accepted Heath without reservation, and I think she felt that people should accept me the same way.”

“That seems reasonable.”

“It was to her anyway.”

Rosalie was silent for a moment. “I wish I’d known your parents, Katherine. I wish John had known his grandparents. He’s told me stories about them.”

“He listened to every word that was said whenever we visited the ranch, and we talked about Mother and Royce—and Tom Barkley—often.”

“It seems like another world.”

“It was. Oh, it certainly was. Tom Barkley and Mother carved their empire out of an empty wilderness, and Papa rode with the cavalry where cities stand today.”

“And fought in the Civil War.”

“Yes. It cost him everything—his commission, his friends of long-standing, his wife. . .”

“You’re named for her.”

“That’s right.”

“Did she really die—that way?”

“Yes.”

“You should write down all these stories—for Jack and Teddy if for nothing else. And Vicky will marry and have children someday. She won’t grieve for Charley the rest of her life.”

“I hope not.” Katherine stared into the gas grate with its steady yellow and blue flames. Sometimes she thought they symbolized not only the passages of her life but its inevitable end. They burned inexorably, but she could turn them off. Life was that way, too—the brightness and then the snuffing out.

“I might write them down someday,” she replied finally. “If I ever have the time.”

“I know. The war.”

“Yes, the war.

Katherine remained watching the flames after Rosalie had gone to bed. Mother, Papa, Audra, Jarrod, Teddy, Nick. . .one by one they’d burned so brightly and then gone out. She’d clung to Heath and Gene even more tightly when they were all that was left, and the two brothers had turned to each other, too. Heath and Nick had been so close, and when Nick was gone, Heath didn’t seem to know what to do with himself. Gene spent less time in his law office and more at the ranch then—and they’d both come to Nashville twice a year to see their little sister.

Their last trip had been in 1932 when John graduated from West Point. Vicky was twelve then. She hadn’t known Audra or Jarrod and barely remembered Nick, but she adored her remaining uncles, and they doted on her.

They’d gone by private car to New York, stopping in New York City to see a show on Broadway and visit a few museums. After the graduation ceremony, John had leave to come home for twenty days, and they departed in high spirits. The night before they arrived in Nashville, they sat up late reminiscing about the past and speculating on John’s future. Katherine had felt some of the old warmth and security surround her. Finally, they’d said goodnight with hugs and words of affection.

When Gene tapped on her sleeping compartment the next morning, his stricken face told her everything. She’d practically pushed him aside to get to Heath, but she knew immediately that it was too late—that it had been too late for some time. The better part of John’s leave was taken up with returning Heath’s body to the Valley for burial.

Katherine shook herself from her reverie. Old age, she told herself sternly. Old age and this kind of thinking. . . But then, she’d felt so young earlier tonight—so young moving across the dance floor in Mac’s arms.

* * * * * * * *

Vicky received her first leave in June and came straight home. She looked tired but fit and seemed more at peace that she had before she went away. Katherine’s classes were in recess during that time, so she had more time to spend with her daughter. Just having Vicky home seemed to fill up the house that often felt empty even with two active little boys in it.

Mac and Vicky hit it off immediately. Katherine was a little surprised, but she hid it well. She wasn’t prepared, however, for Vicky’s direct question the night before she left to return to Texas. “So, when are you getting married, Mother?”

Katherine turned her back to hide her discomfort. “What kind of question is that, Victoria?”

“When you call me Victoria, I know there’s something afoot.”

“I’m not going to marry Mac Neville.”

“You like him, don’t you?”

“I like him very much, but I’m not in love with him, and even if I were. . .”

“Even if you were—what? You’re too old? Too set in your ways?”

“This discussion isn’t going any further.”

Vicky put her arms around her mother. “All right, I’ll hush. But Dr. Neville is in love with you, and I don’t think he’s going to be a pushover the way I am.

* * * * * * * *

In the fall, John came home on leave. Katherine kept Jack and Teddy while their parents went to Atlanta for a second honeymoon. To everyone’s delight, John was still home at Christmas. He spent a lot of time in Washington, D.C., and he never talked about what he was doing, but nothing mattered except having him home.

Like Vicky, he got on well with Mac Neville from the beginning. If he was curious about the man’s relationship with his mother, he didn’t betray it—nor did he ask any questions. Then, in January, he was summoned back to London. “The next time I come home, it will be for good,” he promised his mother. “The war won’t last forever.”

As the months dragged on, though, so did the war, and Katherine thought she’d forgotten what it was like to live just for the day without wondering what tomorrow would bring. They were busier than ever at the hospital—and more understaffed. She and Mac seemed to spend their time together in the doctors’ lounge drinking coffee and making notes on charts instead of going out for dinner or to the movies.

* * * * * * * *

June 6, 1944. D-Day. Invasion. The end of the beginning. People spent every spare moment huddled around a radio somewhere to hear the news. By August, the telegrams had begun to arrive. Regret to inform you. . .killed in action. . .missing, presumed dead. . . Nashville. . .Stockton. . .

Trevor’s son James. Heath’s grandson Bill. Too much. . .too many, Katherine thought. She and Rosalie cringed every time they saw the Western Union delivery boy pass the house—and then thanked God when he didn’t stop.

* * * * * * * *

On V-E Day, church bells rang and people thronged the streets of every city and town all over the country. Katherine and Mac sat with Rosalie in the library listening to the news bulletins. It was over—in Europe at least—but in the Pacific, the fighting raged on. There were two more Barkley boys there—and Will Trowbridge’s grandson and son-in-law.

She walked with Mac to his car later that evening. “The Japanese will fight on to the last man,” he said. “That’s their code.”

“I can’t bear it, Mac,” she murmured and didn’t protest when he held her against his chest. “I can’t bear anymore death.”

He didn’t reply, because there was nothing to say.

Chapter 6

It was hot that August of 1945, hotter than Katherine could ever remember it being in Nashville. She felt sticky by nine o’clock in the morning, and she took long, cool showers every evening when she got home. The next morning it started over again. She began to avoid looking in the mirror because she didn’t want to see the fine lines forming on her heretofore smooth face.

Mac looked worn, too. He wanted to go home to Arizona, but his going would leave too large a hole in the staff, and he knew it. But he talked about going—the day after the war ended, he said, not one day later.

John was still in London, and Vicky had been in California for almost a year. She was near enough to Stockton to go to the ranch whenever she got a leave. It made Katherine feel that she was almost home.

The letter from Elizabeth Trowbridge on the third of August brought news of her husband’s death. “He went quickly and peacefully, Katherine dear. I miss him, but I don’t begrudge him his rest. We had thirty-six wonderful years. I’ve often thought that, but for you, he might not have made enough peace with himself to chance a relationship—and I’ll be forever grateful. Vicky was able to come to the funeral. I told her not to write to you—that I wanted to do it. I knew you couldn’t come. Tessa’s husband is home safe. He’ll have shore duty, at least for awhile. Eric’s boy was wounded at Iwo Jima—he lost a leg but not his life—for which we give thanks. I think of you often, my dear, and send my love to you and yours.”

Katherine had shared her story with Mac long ago, and now she shared the letter with him. “I remember he said once that yesterday was over—or something like that. But I wonder, Mac, is it really? Can it ever be over?”

“I don’t think we ever really forget yesterday—if that’s what you mean.”

“I don’t want to forget, Mac. My yesterdays were wonderful. I don’t want to lose them completely.”

He sighed. “I thought about asking you to marry me awhile back, but I knew what your answer would be.”

She reached across the table and took his hand. “Oh, Mac, you know I care about you, but. . .”

“But you’re not in love with me.”

“Not that way.”

“Well, it was a thought anyway.” He patted her hand. “We’ve made a pretty good team professionally though.”

“I think so.”

“John and Vicky seemed to think they were going to get you off their hands.” He chuckled.

“They’ll have to think again.”

He looked at his watch. “Well, come on, Dr. Wardell, We two old warhorses have to circle the corral one more time before we can go home.”

“Old warhorses?” She pretended offence.

He took her arm. “Well, maybe one—and a pretty filly.”

* * * * * * * *

It was over. It was finally over. There were more church bells and throngs of people celebrating in the streets. Katherine, Rosalie, and the boys went to church instead. Afterwards, Mac took them out to dinner.

The next morning at the hospital, Katherine asked him if he was packed.

“Packed?”

“Well, you said you were leaving the day after the war was over, and it’s the day after.”

“Trying to get rid of me?”

“I’ll miss you.”

“I’ll miss you, too.” He fingered a strand of hair that had fallen out of the coil of hair she wore low on her neck. “Katherine. . .”

“It’s time for rounds, Mac.”

* * * * * * * *

Everyone was home for Christmas that year. Mac had gone home, too, and Katherine missed him, but she knew it was for the best. They’d shared almost four years of their lives in the best possible way—as professionals and good companions. Now they exchanged letters regularly and talked of future visits, but they both understood that letters and visits were all that there would ever be.

Two days before Christmas—her sixty-fifth birthday—she was dressing for the small party that her children had planned when the quiet of the evening was shattered by Vicky’s strident calls.

“Mother! Mother! Where are you?”

Katherine sighed. “I’m in my room, Victoria, dressing for the celebration—or wake—however you want to look at it. And please lower your voice—my hearing is still sharp.”

Vicky sat down on the bed. “Mother, you’ll never guess what I have to tell you!”

“I’m sure I won’t.”

“There’s going to be an extra guest tonight. He just telephoned.”

“Oh?”

“I met him when I was stationed in Texas, but he went on to England in forty-three. He was a pilot—flew P-47’s and never got a scratch. But the day before he was due to be mustered out, he tripped on a loose board and broke his ankle—and he only got sprung today. His train gets in at nine tonight.”

“Will he be with us for Christmas?”

“The entire holiday—he has a half-brother, but they’re not close.”

“Where is home for him?”

“New York City of all places! He’s an architect, by the way—left a good job to enlist, but he felt obligated.”

“So many did.” Katherine fastened her mother’s pearls around her neck. “Is this serious, Vicky?”

Vicky chewed her lip. “I thought my life was over when Charley was killed, and in a way it was. Charley was special, Mother. I’ll always love him in a special way. But I love Richard, too, and I want to spend the rest of my life making a home for him.”

“That sounds quite serious to me then.” She held out her arms to her daughter. “I could have told you that you’d heal, Vicky, but you had to find out for yourself.”

“Did you heal, Mother? Did you get over my father? I really thought you’d marry Dr. Neville.”

“Did I heal? Yes. Did I get over your father? Yes in the sense that I went on with my life. But I married him for love, and I couldn’t do less for Mac.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“I’m not sure that you can at your age.”

Vicky kissed her. “I’ve got to dress now—you look lovely, by the way, Mother—and let John know that he’ll have to host by himself when I go to meet Richard’s train.”

Katherine watched her daughter go. Well, this is what she’d wanted for Vicky—a second chance at love. But she was satisfied with her own decision. Mac Neville was a good friend—maybe the best friend she had now at this time of her life—but a marriage between them wouldn’t have worked.

She glanced at the last family picture that had been taken in Stockton. She was eighteen. Mother and Papa were still a handsome couple—but their age was apparent. She considered how beautiful Audra was—no longer a just a pretty girl but an extraordinarily striking woman. Jarrod looked every inch the elder statesman. He was already a judge then. Nick—poor Nick in his rarely-worn coat and tie! Only for Mother would he suffer such an indignity on a weekday unless it was a wedding or a funeral! Heath—that secret smile on his lips—what was it he knew? How precious their family was? Probably. And Gene—looking younger by far than the others. He’d looked young when they’d buried him at the age of seventy-five.

After Heath’s death, Gene had pretty much retired from managing the family business. He said it was time for another generation to take over, and Trevor hadn’t argued with him. He and Lucy had traveled for awhile—the Northwest, even into Canada. It was on one of these trips that he’d tripped on the hotel stairs and fallen to the bottom, breaking his neck. A younger man might have survived the injury and learned to live with what he had left—but she was glad that Gene hadn’t ever understood that he was permanently paralyzed. She shook her head and rose quickly from her dressing table. Old age and memories—a lethal combination, she thought.

* * * * * * * *

She enjoyed the party, even kept her dignity intact through the singing of Happy Birthday and the arrival of a cake blazing with candles. “We couldn’t get all of them on there, Grandmother, but we put as many as we could,” Teddy said earnestly.

Jack snickered. “Wrong thing to say, little brother.”

Katherine bent slightly and cupped Teddy’s freckled face in her hand. “How old are you now, Teddy?”

“Eight, Grandmother.”

“Then if you want to be nine, I’d suggest you not mention the number of candles that you tried to put on my cake.” She kissed him. “Understand?”

He grinned at her. “I understand, Grandmother. It’ll be our secret.”

By nine o’clock, most of the guests had drifted off. Violet Gill let Katherine help her with her coat. “Vicky told us about the young man who’s coming here tonight and promised to bring him over to meet us. We’re happy for her, Katherine. She was too young to mourn Charley for the rest of her life.”

Katherine kissed Vi’s cheek. “You’re a dear friend, Vi.”

Charley’s mother smiled. “Well, we’ll always consider Vicky part of our family.”

John had sent the boys to bed and was helping Rosalie wash punch cups when Vicky and Richard arrived. Katherine was glad there was a chair behind her when she caught her first glimpse of her future son-in-law and heard Vicky say, “Mother, this is Richard Wright from New York.”

Chapter 7

Vicky was so excited that she didn’t notice the way her mother sank quickly into the chair or the way she pressed her hands together to keep them from trembling.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Wright,” Katherine said, relieved that her voice at least was steady.

The young man was blonde with fair skin that had probably seen too much sun through the cockpit cover. He was still in uniform, but he had that right for a period of time after his discharge. She noticed the captain’s bars on his collar.

“The pleasure is all mine, Mrs. Emerson. I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time. Now I can see where Vic gets her good looks.”

“Flattery will get you absolutely nowhere with this woman,” John said, offering his hand. “I’m John Emerson, Vicky’s brother, and this is my wife Rosalie. Our two terrors are upstairs—asleep, hopefully.”

“Have you had anything to eat?” Rosalie asked.

“I was lucky to get a place to stand,” Richard said.

“Then I’ll get you a sandwich and some coffee—oh, and a piece of birthday cake.”

John took Richard’s overcoat. “Army Air Force, huh?”

“That’s right. P-47’s.”

“I spent my war flying a desk in London. The weather was rotten, and the buzz bombs didn’t help.”

Richard shook his head sympathetically. “Vicky says you’re career Army.”

“I’m going to be a thirty-year-man, I hope, or a full colonel—whichever comes first.”

Rosalie returned with a tray for Richard. “Let’s go up and let Katherine have a chance to visit,” she said to her husband. “We’ll get better acquainted with Richard tomorrow.”

When they’d gone, Katherine realized that she’d have to make some sort of conversation. “Vicky tells me that you’re an architect.”

“I was—the firm promised to hold a place open for me, but we’ll see.”

“Architecture and flying P-47’s is an odd combination.”

“I probably chose both of them because my family didn’t want me to—but I don’t regret either one.”

Katherine took the opportunity that presented itself. “What does your father do, Richard?”

“I was raised by a half-brother. Banking, investing—Wall Street—the whole blooming family’s done it for four generations! I knew I wasn’t going to get involved in all that!”

Katherine wanted to ask why, but she said simply, “Well, architecture is an interesting career.”

“I may as well tell you, Mrs. Emerson, that Vic’s marrying into one crazy family—but I don’t intend for us to see more of them than necessary.”

“Oh?”

“They were Old New England—the whole blue-blooded bunch! My mother—now you’d have liked my mother—wasn’t into all that, but she died when I was fourteen. She was the one who encouraged me to make my own decisions about what I wanted to do with my life.”

Katherine couldn’t resist. “I seem to recall knowing some Wrights in New York. A Richard Wright, actually, but he was too old to be your father.”

“Probably not—my father was sixty-nine when I was born—Mother was his third wife and thirty years younger, and they didn’t expect me, I can tell you! I was eight when he died, so I was old enough to remember him. He was a cantankerous old coot, so if you’d met him, you’d remember him, too!”

Katherine did remember—remembered all too well. It was a story she’d never told anyone, not even Teddy. How ironic that after all these years it should come back to haunt her in her own home.

Richard finished his sandwich and started on the cake. “A belated happy birthday, Mrs. Emerson,” he said. “You almost got edged out with Christmas being so close and all.”

“Not quite. Mother and Papa always made a big fuss on my birthday.”

“You’ll have to get her to tell you about them, Richard.” Vicky perched on the arm of his chair. “They were unique.”

“I’d like to hear it,” he said.

Katherine rose. “Well, not tonight. I’m sure you two won’t mind if I leave you alone. It’s been a long day, and I’m tired—and I have to make rounds at the hospital in the morning before I’ve earned my Christmas vacation.”

She offered her hand to the young man. “John and Rosalie are staying in the larger guestroom, but the one at the end of the hall is adequate, and there’s a half-bath. I’ll be up early and out of the house by seven, but feel free to sleep as long as you like. I’m sure you’re tired from your trip.”

Then she kissed Vicky. “You may have to get Richard some extra blankets from the linen closet. Goodnight, darling, and thank you for the lovely party. I’ll see you at dinner tomorrow night.”

Katherine’s mind was whirling as she went up the stairs. She’d always wondered what she’d saved the old man for, and now she knew. If she’d known then, what would she have done? Do no harm. She’d always kept that oath scrupulously, even then. But she couldn’t know—not about John or Vicky and certainly not about young Richard Wright.

She unfastened the pearls and laid them away in the velvet-lined box. Never lay pearls on your dressing table even overnight, Kate. Always put them away, and they’ll be as beautiful in fifty years as they were when they were new. She’d loved to watch Mother get ready to go out—and she especially liked it when she wore the pearls. These belonged to my mother, and someday they’ll be yours. Perhaps you’ll pass them on to your daughter.

Katherine remembered how she thought immediately of her sister. But shouldn’t Audra have them, Mother? She’s the oldest.

Mother had smiled, pleased at her thoughtfulness. I gave Audra a choice between the pearls and a diamond pendant and earrings that belonged to my grandmother. So the pearls will belong to you, Kate.

Katherine had worn them at her wedding to Teddy and on every special occasion thereafter. She would give them to Vicky soon, and perhaps someday Vicky would have a daughter.

If Vicky had a daughter—or a son—Richard Wright would be the father. Her grandchildren would bear the name of the family to whom the name Wardell was abhorrent. Justice, Kate precious, not revenge. It had become Papa’s mantra. What would he say about this? Was this her justice? Or had her well-meaning lie come back to exact its revenge?

Chapter 8

Richard’s pre-war position wasn’t available to him as promised, but he took that as a sign he was supposed to get out of New York for good, and he did. By April he was working for a small architectural firm in Nashville, and wedding plans were underway.

Vicky approached her mother about the possibility about staying on in the house after she got married. “Richard and I will pay our way—we’ve both got good jobs.”

“If you want to stay because you don’t want me to be alone, then the answer is no.”

“That’s not it at all, Mother.”

“Then what?”

“This is my home.”

“When you marry Richard, wherever he is will be your home.”

“My father moved in here with you.”

“That was different—it was just the two of us then, and it seemed foolish to sell this house and buy another one.”

“And you wanted to stay, didn’t you?”

Katherine sighed. “I’ll admit that I did, yes, but so did Teddy. He loved this house as much as I did.”

“Then you should understand that I love it, too.”

“What does Richard say about all this?”

“He says that whatever I decide will be all right with him.”

“I don’t know, Vicky. It doesn’t sound exactly right.”

But, in the end, the decision was made. Katherine did insist, however, on vacating the suite of rooms that had belonged to her parents and then to Teddy and her. “It will afford you more privacy, Vicky, and you need that. And frankly, I’d like to move back into my childhood room—it was always my favorite anyway.”

So Richard and Vicky had redecorated the bedroom and sitting room for themselves, and Katherine had recreated her room in blue. Richard turned out to be a regular handyman. “I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth all right,” he told Katherine one afternoon while he was hanging her new drapes, “but there’s not much I can’t do.” When he didn’t offer any further explanation, Katherine didn’t ask. She couldn’t afford give the slightest hint that she knew more than she did about his background.

Little by little, however, Richard filled in the details. “I told you that my mother was Father’s third wife. He had two sons by his first wife—my half-brothers, but I never really knew them because they were so much older. The second wife didn’t stay around much longer than it took to get an annulment.” He chuckled. “He was rich as Midas and mean as old Scrooge. Anyway, Mother was the daughter of a business acquaintance who died pretty much penniless and in debt. Father made her a proposition—he’d pay off her father’s debts, educate her sisters, and make sure that her mother was taken care of in her old age—if Mother would marry him. She was twenty-eight, and he was fifty-eight.”

Katherine decided to risk a question about the family history, but she phrased it carefully. “So you really don’t know much about the Wrights genealogy?”

He grinned. “I didn’t say that. Hey—I’m descended from one of the Mayflower passengers. The Wrights migrated to New York from Massachusetts later. There were Wrights in the American Revolution, the War of 1812, and the Civil War.”

“My grandfather and two of my uncles fought in the Civil War,” Vicky offered.

“But for the South, right?”

“My grandfather anyway.”

“Yes, well, I’ve heard of diehard Confederates, but the Wrights were diehard Unionists. I remember my half-brothers talking about it. All of our father’s brothers—there were four of them—graduated from West Point like your brother John.”

“My grandfather graduated from West Point, too,” Vicky said.

“And fought for the South?”

“So did Robert E. Lee,” Katherine said. “Loyalty to one’s family and place of birth superceded any other consideration in that conflict.”

“It did for the Wrights anyway. One of my half-brothers said that Father wouldn’t do business with any ex-Confederate as long as he lived. There was some deep dark family secret that was the reason why, but I don’t know what it was. I wasn’t ever interested enough to ask.”

Katherine knew the story, of course, but she saw no reason to share it—at least, not now. She thought of the afternoon her mother had told it to her. Catherine was the only daughter—she had four older brothers and one younger—and they all doted on her. When she married your Papa and followed him from one army outpost to the other, none of the family were happy about it. They felt she should stay with her family and be content with visits from her husband when ever he got leave. She didn’t see it that way, of course.

Richard was speaking again. “Mother didn’t know either, but she knew she’d sold her soul when she agreed to marry Father. She was younger than both my half-brothers, and they resented her even though they were already married and out on their own. I guess they didn’t like the idea of their inheritance being divided three ways. And then when I came along eleven years later—well, it was a shock to everyone.”

Vicky ran her hand through his hair. “So that’s what you are—a whoops.”

Katherine couldn’t help laughing. Vicky had been a whoops, too, but a welcomed one.

“I was a slap in the face to Nathan and Roland, that’s for sure. And, when Father died, Mother found out that the family home had been left to them, and they sold it out from under us.”

Vicky had heard the story before, but it still bothered her. “How mean,” she murmured.

“Oh, Mother had an income—Father saw to that—and there was a trust for my education. We lived pretty well, but then Mother died six years later, and Roland was appointed as my guardian. He wasn’t mean to me or anything—I just didn’t really exist for him. When it came time for me to go to college, he seemed to take it for granted that I’d get a degree in finance and join the family business—he only had daughters, and Nathan just had one son, so a young Wright was suddenly an asset.”

“But you went your own way,” Katherine said.

“Heck, yes, I did! I didn’t want their money—I could earn my own. And I’d seen enough of that kind of life. It wasn’t what I wanted—not any of it. Anyway, I haven’t seen either Nathan or Roland since I announced that I was getting a degree in architecture. My trust was administered by the law firm that handles all their legal affairs. I wrote to Roland when I enlisted after Pearl Harbor, but I never heard from him.”

“Does that bother you?” Katherine asked.

“Not really. The whole family’s crazy—oh, I don’t mean they’ve got anything wrong with them that I could pass on. I guess my genes are good. But money and position and power can mess people up.”

Katherine nodded. “Yes.” She hesitated. “My father put my inheritance into a trust for me to protect me from unscrupulous suitors. I’ve done the same for Vicky.”

“Mother!” Vicky sat bolt upright on the sofa beside Richard.

“You’ve known that for a long time, Vicky.”

“But you don’t have to make it sound like. . .”

Richard was laughing so hard he couldn’t speak for a minute. “Actually, I knew that, Mrs. Emerson. Vicky told me.” He began to laugh again.

“What’s so funny?” Vicky demanded.

“Your mother—no offense, Mrs. Emerson—protecting you from me. She doesn’t know how you already wear the pants in the family!”

Vicky smacked him with a sofa pillow. “That’s mean!”

He grabbed her. “That’s true.” He kissed her soundly, then whispered in her ear, “At least until I get those pants off of you—next week!”

Vicky’s face crimsoned, and she glanced guiltily at her mother, but Katherine hadn’t heard the words. There was something about Richard Wright that reminded her of Mac Neville—self-confident, unconventional, unpretentious—and something that reminded her of Nick, though she couldn’t put her finger on it at the moment. But he would take care of Vicky, and she would take care of him—just as it should be.

The wedding the following week could have been the social event of the Nashville season. The names Wardell and Emerson had figured prominently in the city for years. But although Vicky wore her grandmother Victoria’s wedding dress, and John wore his full dress uniform to walk her down the aisle, it was a quiet affair. Only family and close friends were present in the church to see the two promise to love, honor, and cherish for as long as they lived.

The California Barkleys, led by Trevor, were well-represented. Eric Trowbridge and his sister Tessa brought their mother. And Mac Neville flew in from Arizona. After a simple reception in the church hall, Vicky and Richard drove off to a carefully guarded location, and the rest of the guests dispersed to their homes in various parts of the United States.

Katherine saw Mac off at the airport. “She was a beautiful bride,” he told her. “But then, she’s a beautiful person—like her mother.”

“You never stop, do you Mac?”

“Nah, and I never will.” He drew her into his arms and noticed that she clung to him—but only in friendship. He could tell the difference. “Come on out to Arizona when you get tired of punching a clock,” he said. “You can punch cows instead.” He kissed her quickly and then crossed the tarmac to the waiting plane.

“Do you have any regrets, Mother?” John asked as they watched the plane taxi.

“None at all, John.”

“You always told me to be sure I made the decisions that wouldn’t leave me with regrets.”

“And you always did.”

“But I think Father would have wanted you to be happy—remarry if that’s what you wanted to do.”

“I am happy, John. I’ve always been happy. I was Papa’s princess and Teddy’s wife—and your and Vicky’s mother. What more could a woman ask for?”

He put his arm around her as they walked to the car. “You’re quite a woman.”

“My mother was quite a woman, so I consider that the highest compliment.”

They got into the car and drove away.

Chapter 9

The next year Katherine resigned from the hospital but continued her teaching position until she was seventy. By then, Vicky and Richard had two children—a son named John Richard and a daughter named for Richard’s mother Emily, whom he remembered with affection.

John and Rosalie had surprised everyone—including themselves—with Mary Katherine born in 1950. Jack, fourteen, and Teddy, twelve, were fascinated with her. Katherine foresaw a charmed life for her newest grandchild—she well remembered what it was like to have much-older brothers.

The living arrangements she had questioned had worked out better than anyone imagined. Richard and Vicky insisted on paying two-thirds of the costs of maintaining the house. Richard found the original plans for the house and saw to the necessary remodeling for safety and convenience while keeping the look and feel of the home in which Katherine had lived most of her life.

John retired in 1962—not as a colonel but as a brigadier general—and came home to Nashville to start a second career as a counselor for underprivileged boys. By then, Jack had followed his father to West Point and chosen a military career. Teddy had surprised everyone by following his grandmother—and the grandfather he had never known—into medicine. There would, it seemed, always be a Dr. Emerson at Vanderbilt.

Katherine made few trips to the ranch. It was so much changed, and she preferred to remember it the way it was. Trevor came to Nashville once a year until a broken hip ended his traveling. She visited Mac in Arizona, and he came to Nashville at Thanksgiving and stayed through Christmas. When Emily and Johnny began calling him Grandpa Mac, no one objected.

After Katherine’s retirement, Vicky had mentioned the old family stories again and how they needed to be written down for the new generation. When her mother seemed agreeable, she bought her a typewriter and arranged a desk in the library for her to work.

“I wish I’d written these down years ago,” Katherine said as the struggled to get started. “When I first heard them—when there was someone to ask for the details.”

“We’re not just interested in what you heard, Mother—we want to know about your life, too.”

“You know about my life.”

“Write it all down anyway,” Vicky insisted, and so Katherine did.

The words flowed more easily once she began to think of her childhood. Everyday she remembered something else to write down—something her mother had said, something Papa had told her. Papa had taught her to ride at a stable near Nashville. He’d even bought her a horse of her own to keep there, and Mother had insisted that she learn to care for it herself. Her brothers were always surprised at her skill with the horses at the ranch, but she knew what she was doing as well as they did.

She wrote about that and about her schooldays—how Papa had helped her with her lessons in the library every night after dinner while Mother had worked on her embroidery—how, when she hated mathematics at first, Mother had shown her the practicality of it by teaching her to keep the household accounts—something she’d done now for over sixty years.

It took her a year, working almost everyday, to put it all down. When Mac couldn’t travel anymore, he called her every week, and the first thing he always wanted to know about was her writing. “Gonna be the great American novel,” he always said.

“Hardly, Mac—it’s just a book of an old woman’s ramblings.”

“Be careful—you’re talking about the woman I love.”

“Mac, you’re incorrigible.”

“You gonna send me a copy when you get done?”

“Of course.”

“Autographed?”

“Of course.”

“Then this is what I want you to write in it: To Mac, in memory of those passionate nights. . .”

“Mac, there were no passionate nights,” she said patiently, trying not to laugh.

“Well, you know that, and I know that, but if anyone picks it up after we’re both gone, they won’t know that.”

“Mac, did I ever tell you that you’re a dirty old man?”

“No, but I wish I had been.”

This time she did laugh.

From the beginning, she’d known that there was one story she didn’t want to write—and yet, it was important. It was the reason for so much of her life—and Vicky’s. She hadn’t had difficulty writing about Annie. Annie was a part of her past that she’d come to terms with. But this—this was different. Justice, Kate precious, not revenge. Not revenge.

Papa had reason to want revenge if anyone did. Mother said that his quest for it consumed five years of his life. It was hard to imagine her gentle Papa hating anyone—much less hating enough to want to kill. After Mother told her the story, she’d loved and admired Papa even more.

Did you want to kill the men who shot Tom Barkley, Mother? She remembered how her Mother’s eyes had seemed to be seeing beyond the room where they were snuggled together in front of the fire.

Her mother hadn’t spoken for a long moment. I hated them. Maybe, if they’d been standing in front of me, and I’d had a gun, I could have pulled the trigger. I don’t know, Kate, and I’m glad that I never found out.

It would have been justified, Mother.

Would it? Would killing the men who raped and murdered Catherine have been justified?

I think so.

If either of us had done something like that, your Papa or I, something would have died inside us, I think. How could we have then deserved our miracle—deserved you, Kate? Life has its losses, but if we lose ourselves—if we lose ourselves, my darling, then there is no life—only existence.

Katherine slipped a piece of paper into the typewriter.

The Journey Home: January, 1908

Her fingers paused slightly above the typewriter keys. Was she about to lose herself? Was this justice—or revenge?

Chapter 10

When I left Stockton that January morning, I thought I’d done everything I came to do. First, of course, I’d buried Papa with the dignity he deserved. Then, I’d found as much of the truth about my origins as still existed. I questioned what had happened in Orland, but I couldn’t change it. Perhaps, as Dr. Fuller had said, it was God’s mercy, however undeserved, for that pitiful old man.

My thoughts were mostly on Teddy that morning. Finally, we could be married. Not many men would have been as patient, so willing to wait, as Teddy had been, and I loved him even more for that.

The train seemed to move at a snail’s pace, and I grew impatient to get home. Just before we reached St. Louis, I was eating lunch in the dining car when an older man sitting several tables away began to choke. I rushed to him immediately and discovered that he had a fish bone lodged in his throat so that it was blocking his airway—and would die if it wasn’t removed.

His wife, a much younger woman, stood there as if she didn’t understand what was happening. I send a waiter to find the conductor to get my medical bag from my compartment. It seemed an eternity before it arrived, and the man was hardly breathing. He was a big man, and it was taking all my strength to hold him at an angle where he could get even a small amount of air. None of the other passengers seemed to be able to do anything but stand there and gape.

Using a pair of long forceps, I managed to move the bone slightly. It was a large one—why he hadn’t detected it in his mouth and spit it out, I don’t know, but he’d swallowed it—or tried to. No matter how hard I worked, however, I couldn’t bring it out—and there was always the possibility of puncturing an artery and having him bleed to death.

Finally I realized I had two choices—hope the man would live long enough to get to the hospital in St. Louis, still two hours away—or open his airway surgically. I’d never done a tracheotomy before, but I’d watched it done several times and felt confident that I could perform it successfully.

Using a medicine dropper from a bottle in my bag, I made an airway that was adequate to sustain life, at least temporarily. The man had lost consciousness before I inserted the scalpel in his throat—and as soon as I did, his wife fainted dead away. I remember telling someone to get her out of my way.

There was a telegrapher on the train who wired ahead for an ambulance to be standing by. I went with the man and his wife—now recovered and seemingly calm—to the hospital and explained to the doctors there what I had done and why. Then I checked into a hotel so that I could follow the man’s progress overnight.

When I arrived at the hospital the next morning, one of the doctors I’d spoken with the day before told me that the man was resting comfortably and would recover completely. “You performed a perfect procedure,” he said. “We were all most impressed.”

I knew that I’d done it right—but there was also that tiny nagging doubt, normal for any conscientious physician determined to ‘do no harm’—so I was quite relieved. “The man and his wife would like to meet you,” the doctor continued. “He can’t speak yet—we’ve replaced the tube with a more conventional appliance until we’re sure that the site won’t become infected.”

He led me to a room at the end of the hall—and as my eyes fell on the slot for the patient’s name, I realized that I had saved the life of Richard Wright—Catherine’s younger brother—the man whose family had taken most of Papa’s tangible memories of his wife and had broken his heart further with their blind hatred and blame.

Then, despite the passing years, they had refused to let go of their unreasonable prejudices so that an aged man could die in peace. And because of that, I felt they had given me no choice but to forge the letter that brought Papa such release. Yet, in creating a lie, I’d gone against everything he had taught me, everything he stood for. Only then did I really understand what Mother meant when she talked about something dying inside.

My first impulse was to turn away, but somehow I found myself inside the room. The man sat propped up in his bed, his wife hovering at his side. “We want to thank you for what you did,” she said immediately. Her words were sincere enough, though she seemed nervous. “Dr. Samuelson tells us that he couldn’t have done a better job himself. It was so fortunate that you were there, doctor.” She paused, and I realized that she didn’t know my name.

“Dr. Wardell,” I said. On hearing the name, recognition flickered in the man’s steely blue eyes. “Dr. Katherine Barkley Wardell of Nashville.” The man’s jaw tightened, and there was a look of near-hatred in his eyes—hatred like I’d seen in Luther Jimson’s eyes—and yet there was fear there, too.

“You saved his life, Dr. Wardell, and of course, we want to compensate you,” the wife said.

I almost laughed. The expression on the man’s face was compensation enough, but in that moment I resolved to exact the last measure from him. I stepped closer to the bed.

“I asked you for a favor once,” I said, looking directly into those cold blue eyes. “It was such a small thing to do for such a good, decent man as my Papa was. But you refused. I wonder what Catherine—what your sister would think of that, Mr. Wright? I wonder how she would feel about the lifetime of hatred that you and your brothers expended on the man she loved —the man whose life was so important to her that she put her own at risk.”

I could tell that he was becoming agitated, but I pressed on. “He wasn’t responsible for her death, you know, and yet you made him grieve all alone without the comfort of others who’d loved her, too. You wouldn’t even return the pitifully few things they’d managed to accumulate in their years together—Christmas decorations, the small, inexpensive gifts he’d managed to buy for her, even the locket with their pictures that she cherished. You gave him her wedding ring because, you said, it was what killed her—and you wanted him to remember that for the rest of his life.

“Did you know that he spent five years of his life hunting down the men who brutalized her? Oh, yes, he found them, but he had to stand by silently and see two of them hang and the others sentenced to life in prison for other crimes—not for what they did to his beloved Catherine. Then for years after that, he struggled with the feeling that he’d failed her yet again.”

Everyone in the room seemed frozen into silence, but my words echoed like an unleashed torrent of floodwater. “He had to deal with his grief and bitterness all alone, but he conquered both of them and went on with his life. He felt my mother was a gift, and he knew he could love her because he’d loved Catherine. When they adopted me only a few months after they married, they wanted my name to reflect the best of both their lives—so I’m name for her—for Catherine—Barkley came from my mother’s first marriage.

“I know all about her—how beautiful she was—how gracious, how well-educated. And I know about you, also. You were just a boy when she died—born after she married Papa. He told me how much she loved you—how you were almost like her own child—a child, I think, that would have broken her gentle heart with your hatred.

“Oh, no, Mr. Wright, he never forgot her, just as my mother never forgot Tom Barkley. But while your family continued to live with past hatreds, my parents lived with present joys. There was so much love in our home! Mother and Papa were devoted to each other and to me as well.”

His eyes were blazing with rage now, and an evil satisfaction stirred inside of me.

“ Well, Mr. Wright, you refused to grant me a favor, but I’ve done you the greatest favor one human being can do for another—I’ve saved your life. I just buried my Papa, but you’re going to live—perhaps for a long time yet. And I want you to remember—every single day that you live, I want you to remember that Royce Wardell’s daughter gave you that day.”

Then I turned and walked out of the room.

Before I arrived in Nashville, shame had replaced satisfaction in my heart, and I determined never to tell anyone what had happened, not even Teddy. Somehow I’d begun to feel that I hadn’t lived up to Papa’s example—in my heart I suspected that I’d gotten revenge instead of justice. I could have accepted the woman’s thanks and simply walked away, but I didn’t.

It is the surpreme irony that the man lived to father a son who would one day marry my daughter. I’ve asked myself many times if— had I known who he was— would I have worked so hard to save him? Then I look at Vicky and Richard and their beautiful children, and I know that something more than skill guided my hand that day in the dining car. Fate? I don’t believe in it. Providence? Possibly that.

But I still hear Papa’s words—“Justice, Kate precious, not revenge. One is life-giving—the other rots the soul.” So which did I pursue? I suppose I’ll never know for sure.

Kate rolled the last page from the carriage and slipped it beneath the others.

* * * * * * * *

“Mother! Mother, where are you?”

Katherine closed her eyes in resignation. “I’m in the library, Victoria. Where else would I be? You know I always write in the mornings when I’m fresh.”

Vicky appeared in the door. “Mother, you’ll never guess what’s happened!”

Katherine waited.

“Richard just spoke with a printer about your book—he designed the building for the company, you see,—and they said they’d love to work with you on a cover—and even adding pictures! You have lots of pictures, don’t you, Mother? Aren’t the albums in that cabinet. . .” She began to rummage behind the glass doors.

“Vicky—this book is for the family—that’s all. Why would we need to go to the expense of printing pictures when the albums are available?”

Vicky chewed her lip. “But that’s not all, Mother. Richard spoke with a publisher, too—I didn’t want to mention it until it was certain—you see, I took your first five chapters to him. . .”

“Without my permission?”

“He loved them, Mother! He says that people are buying nostalgia these days, and. . .”

“The book is for the family, Vicky. You asked me to write what I remembered for my grandchildren and eventually my great-grandchildren. Our family isn’t the business of the public.”

“But, Mother. . .”

“No.”

“Will you at least talk to the publisher’s representative? He’s—he’s coming for dinner tonight.”

Katherine shook her head. “Oh, Vicky!”

“Please, Mother?”

“I suppose I can’t very well be rude to someone in my own home.”

Vicky dropped a kiss on her mother’s hair—finally completely gray but not the beautiful silver that Katherine had hoped to have like her mother’s hair. “You’re wonderful, Mother!” She glanced at the stack of pages beside the typewriter. “Did you write the last chapter like you said you were going to do?”

“Yes.”

“May I read it?” Vicky reached for the pages as if permission was a given.

Katherine swatted her hands. “Leave those alone. I need to re-read them.”

Vicky laughed. “All right, Mrs. Hemingway—I’m going to leave you alone. But isn’t it exciting—you’ll be a published author! People all over the country will know what a fascinating family we are!”

Katherine watched her daughter go. She hadn’t counted on this. She wasn’t a bad writer. Perhaps she’d come by it naturally—hadn’t Caroline Fuller said that Annie wrote the best essays in the whole school? Still, she hadn’t intended on having her little tales go beyond the family. And then there was the question of this last one. Should it have been written at all? Oh, it wouldn’t affect Richard—he had a realistic picture of the family whose name he bore. But more to the point, was this something he—or Vicky—or anyone—really needed to know? By telling it, was she perpetuating the anger and division for yet another generation?

She picked up the pages and gazed at them thoughtfully. Was it the story she didn’t want told—or was it her own part in it that she wanted to keep secret because she was ashamed? She’d always known that the words she’d spoken in that hospital room had been unworthy of her upbringing. Was that the legacy she wanted to leave to her children and grandchildren and to generations to come?

Justice, Kate precious, not revenge. Not revenge.

Papa’s face rose up before her—so kind, so full love whenever he looked at her or at Mother. They’d been so happy, the three of them. From her parents’ griefs and experiences had come her own security. It really was a miracle that she’d been rescued from that line shack—but even more miraculous that Royce and Victoria Wardell had taken her to their hearts and made her their daughter. All her life she’d striven to please them, to make them proud. In the twilight of her life, could she do less?

Katherine turned the pages over in her hands. It was out at last, this secret that she’d kept for over half a century. And because it was her secret, she’d felt no need to share it with anyone. Anyway, Mother always said that a lady kept her own counsel.

She leaned across the desk and gazed at the picture in the gold filigree frame—Mother’s and Papa’s wedding picture. The love shining out of their eyes seemed to brighten the room. They had been happy—and they had brought her up with the expectation that she would be happy, too. Sad things will come to you in life, Kate, Mother said, holding her close and stroking her hair as she sobbed over the loss of one of her dogs. But sadness is part of life. If we were never sad, then we’d never know when we were truly happy.

She touched the glass—wishing she could reach through it, reach back over the years to feel their arms around her. Then, though the glass was cold, a sudden warmth began in her fingertips and spread through her hand to her arm. She sat very still, smiling back at the faces in the frame. “Thank you,” she whispered. “You’re always there—thank you!”

Then, with confidence, Katherine began slowly and deliberately to tear the pages in half—then in half again—and again—and again—and one by one, she dropped the ragged pieces into the wastebasket beside her desk.

THE END