A Time for Everything

by Mysti Parker

Published by esKape
Press

www.eskapepress.com

Smashwords
Edition

All Rights
Reserved

Copyright © 2015 MYSTI
PARKER

ISBN-10:
1940695686

ISBN-13:
9781940695686

Cover Art Design by For the
Muse Designs

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Dedication

To the men, women and children who
suffered and died to knit our divided country back
together.

Brentwood, Tennessee —
December 25, 1865

The angels are
coming.

Portia lay on the frozen ground
between her husband and daughter. Snow fluttered softly toward the
earth in delicate flakes, each one melting on her face with a
pleasant sting. She wouldn’t have to wait much longer.

The sunrise, hidden by
snow-laden clouds, gradually lit the gray sky. With numb fingers,
she traced her husband’s name, carved into the stoic slate.
Jake McAllister
, but let
her hand drop to the ground before she touched that wretched
date.
December 16, 1864
— the day her whole world began to fall
apart.

It had been a day as cold
as this one when Jake returned. Portia had stood on their porch,
holding Abigail, both of them wrapped in shawls and a quilt. Yet
the cold had managed to seep inside, wrapping icy fingers around
her heart. Her husband lay
lifeless in the
back of a wagon. H
is once-rosy face had
turned ashen. Blood caked his Confederate jacket. His hands, large
and strong, yet once so gentle, were posed across his belly. His
fingers were stiff and claw-like, wrapped around a phantom gun. He
did not look like Jake. It had to have been a mannequin with a wig
the same dusty red shade of his hair.

“
That’s not
him
,
”
she’d repeated to the men who’d so methodically
carried him into the house. Jake would pop out from somewhere,
still the jokester he had always been, and she would slap him for
playing such a cruel prank. Then she would laugh with him and hold
him tight because he had finally returned to her and
Abby.

But the longer her eyes absorbed the
wretched sight, the more evidence she had discovered. Little
freckles and scars she knew so well. The pea-sized patch on his jaw
where his beard never grew. The missing end of his middle finger,
taken by a vicious dog when they were children.

It wasn’t a joke. Jake was
dead.

She would never again feel the comfort
of his arms around her, the warmth of his skin against hers, the
precious nights only the two of them had shared. She would never
again see him toss their giggling daughter into the air, hear his
hearty laughter in return, or sit with him hand in hand on their
front porch, listening to the katydids and tree frogs
sing.

The December wind whistled across the
ground and reminded her of the bitter truth. The only man she had
ever loved now lay cold and dead under six feet of dirt.

Portia stared up at the
swollen clouds rolling above the cemetery. Snow clung to her
eyelashes. She blinked it away and touched Abby’s stone.
Abigail E. McAllister — Born Feb 12, 1863 Died
Aug 19, 1865.
The
ground before it had not yet settled and still formed a small
dome above her daughter’s coffin. Brown winter grass and dirt
peeked beneath the thickening layer of white.

Since that hot and hellish day in
August, not a minute passed that she didn’t recall every moment of
her baby’s death. Even now, as the cold pumped along her veins and
turned her consciousness to ice, her final hours with Abby charged
through her mind in vivid detail.

For weeks, Abby had deteriorated.
Everything Portia had tried to feed her, typhoid had thrown back
out. On that final day, her body had jerked with one spasm after
another, each one more agonizing than the one before.

Portia rocked her baby and
kissed her flushed, clammy cheeks.
“Please, please don’t take her. You took my husband. Please
don’t take my baby. I’ll do anything. Please, please,
God…”

Abby’s eyes, when she could open them,
begged for mercy. Within their hazel depths were supplications her
two-year-old mouth couldn’t speak.

Why is this happening to
me?

Why won’t you help
me?

I’m scared…

She drew in a shallow
breath, and whispered her last word. “
Mama
.”

“
I’m so sorry, Abby.
Mama’s so sorry!”

Her hazel eyes, once so bright and
happy and curious, turned dull as her soul fled its broken vessel,
dragging memories of her short life with it.

“
Did you feel that, Jake?
The baby kicked!”… “Just one more push. You can do it.”… “It’s a
girl!”… “Abigail Ellen McAllister — I think it has a nice ring to
it, don’t you?”… “You, me, and our baby girl — we’re a family now,
Po.”

And then she was gone, just like
Jake.

Days and weeks had passed. Fall came
and went. The sun rose and set, while the world kept spinning.
Portia kept breathing somehow, kept going through the motions of
life when she wanted no part of it.

Until this morning, when she woke with
a plan.

The death angels had been
surreptitious, plucking first Jake, then Abby from her life,
ignoring her pleas to let her join them. They would not ignore her
now. The burning cold had already rendered her numb through the
thin barrier of her nightgown.

She no longer shivered but closed her
eyes and smiled at the heavenly realms. Any time now, the angels
would carry her home. On Christmas morning, no less. Every sound
and sensation around her faded into peaceful silence… until she
woke up, wrapped in a quilt, lying at the foot of a blazing,
familiar hearth. Her best friend Ellen attacked the logs with an
iron poker, sending orange sparks on a flight up the
chimney.

Ellen’s husband, Frank, leaned over
her. “I promised my little brother I would take care of you. I plan
on keeping that promise.”

Tears stung her cold-burned cheeks.
The angels would have to wait.

April 6, 1866

Worn and wrinkled
from her constant handling, Portia picked up the
paper and read it for the hundredth time:

Feb. 15, 1866 —
Housekeeper and Tutor Needed

Apply If Interested to Mr.
Beauregard Stanford

101 Stanford Lane,
Lebanon, Tennessee

Frank and Ellen would be there any
moment to pick up the few belongings she was taking. The surveyors
were out there now, with their compasses and chains, ready to turn
her land into profit. Tobacco was all the rage. Those with the
means were snatching up land as quick as they could from abandoned
plantations and those who needed money. Some of that money was now
tucked into an envelope, ready to be given to Frank and Ellen,
minus a little Portia had kept for herself. It was the least she
could do for them so they could stay where they belonged. Whoever
was now king of everything in Brentwood had demanded tribute from
the Confederate sympathizers who wished to remain.

But she would
not
remain there, where
memories lurked in the shadows and lingered on every surface. The
emptiness — that horrible hollow ache within her chest — had not
subsided since Jake and Abby died. Suicide sang a tempting song in
her head every day, but she didn’t want her death hanging over
Frank’s head. He had enough to worry about.

Since her conscience wouldn’t let her
end her own life, and since they needed the money more than she
did, she had to say goodbye.

Frank came bursting in like he always
did, along with a draft of fresh spring air that helped to dispel
the gloom. He was a big bear of a man who reminded Portia a lot of
Jake, though Jake had been scrawny compared to his older brother.
She used to joke that Frank should stop putting his mule to work
when he could just strap the plow to himself to work the
fields.

“
I guess you’re ready,” he
said in that quick, gruff way he had when he wasn’t particularly
happy about something.

“
Yes.” Unexpected tears
welled in her eyes, even though she had promised herself they
wouldn’t.

Not paying any heed to her emotional
state, he spied her bag on the floor and yanked it up like it
weighed nothing. Seven-year-old Jimmy stepped inside, and Frank
tossed the bag to him. The boy was a spitting image of Jake at that
age. He slumped under the bag’s weight but managed to drag it out
to the front porch. Frank grabbed the worn-out cedar chest and
tucked it under his arm. He frowned and strode out, letting the
screen door slam behind him.

Ellen came in next, holding little
Louise on her left hip.

“
It’s not too late to
change your mind, Po.” Her eyes were puffy and red and had been in
that state ever since Portia made her decision. She rubbed her
pregnant belly and held a crumpled handkerchief in her
fist.

“
We’ve already talked
about this.”
Portia couldn’t keep from
touching her own belly, now flat and plain as though Abigail had
never thrived and tumbled in it at all.
She hugged a small patchwork bag to her bosom. It held
nothing practical, just things that mattered only to her, like
Abby’s baby spoon, some letters from Jake and one of his old
shirts.

“
Stay with us. We’ve got
room.”

Her imminent departure proved to be
much harder than she had thought. But Portia reminded herself of
this past winter, when Ellen had sacrificed her own supper just to
keep her fed. She had to go — she wouldn’t be a burden to them any
longer.

“
I can’t. I just… can’t.”