Surrender at Orchard Rest (11 page)

“There are other thoughts. You may have changed your mind, but I still love you. I won’t love anyone else after you. It’s too hard to go on losing people. Almost everyone we know is dead and gone. I can’t keep doing this, Sawyer. I can’t learn to love the next man. I’m tired of grieving for so many people. Just say yes to me.”

“I can’t say yes, Somerset. I’m leaving.”

“You’re leaving? Why? Where are you going? I need you to stay here. I need protection.”

“I know. Maybe you and Joseph can figure something out. I’m going after Phillip’s party. I made all the arrangements weeks ago. I planned to tell you when we met at your and Eric’s house, but I was too ashamed. It’s another part of why I didn’t show up that night.”

“Where?”

“I’m going to the Dakota Territory. My cousin has a homestead claim out there. He’s a bachelor and could use all the help he can get.”

“Dakota Territory?”

“He’s a wheat farmer. I’ll be far enough from you that both of us can move on. I’ll have back-breaking work to do, but I’ll be learning plenty of new things. It’s an unforgiving country up there. I guess I’ll be like Joseph and rely on heavy labor to make it through each day.”

“It’s weeks from here, Sawyer. There’s nothing out there.”

“The journey there won’t be safe, my dear. The place is inhabited by the Sioux tribes and they aren’t peaceful at the moment. There’s a conflict taking place right now called the Powder River War. I wouldn’t put it past you to show up there. Don’t. Don’t risk everything to come be with a yellow-bellied coward like me.”

“You could be killed. The journey, the weather, the animals, the Indians—it never ends, Sawyer. Stay. I’ll go. I promise to go and marry anyone if you’ll stay here and keep safe.”

He leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. She saw the first hint of warmth in his eyes since she arrived at Riverside.

“Better the devil you know than the one you don’t? I can’t stay, Somerset. You haven’t heard why I’m going.”

“I don’t need to know.”

“You do need to know.”

“I don’t want to know then.”

“I have dreaded this moment in a soul-sickening kind of way that I think only you can understand, and you already have and will have again the right to hate me forever. I need you to listen to me. I need you to be patient. Above all, I need you to believe me. I’ve practiced this conversation a million times over the slow weeks that have passed, and I know there’s no way to tell you this with gentility. You need to know the truth. It will give you the strength to move on.”

Somerset stared out at the river, feeling unmoved. She thought chivalry would prevail in such a case, and he would yearn to save her. At the very least, she thought he would be glad to take her up on her offer of a convenience marriage to a quality wife while he slipped out and did whatever he needed to be happy. She wasn’t the least bit interested in hearing about the price of wheat that he couldn’t turn down or how he’d fallen in love with a girl at a bar and gotten her into trouble and must marry her or how his new life’s work would be restoring Riverside piece by piece as he toured the country. Nothing he could say was worthwhile. She only knew that she would still love him in the morning and that he loved her but was leaving anyway.

The eyes she turned on him when she was ready to hear his answer were clear, resolute, and devoid of emotion. He scooted along the bench until he was across from her and, with an effort that was painful to behold, he lifted his eyes to hers. His face was as white as the snow Victoria painted in landscape portraits and his chin trembled from the effort of holding back. He cupped her hands in his.

“I’m waiting,” she said.

“I killed Eric.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I killed Eric.”

“You—”

“Killed him.”

“Oh, Sawyer. No!”

“I did it, Somerset.”

“You aren’t going to goad me into hating you so that you can leave with a clean conscience. For the love of—”

“Somerset, listen—”

“No, you listen! It is deplorable and despicable that you would use Eric’s death in order to free yourself from this relationship. I can’t believe that you of all men would stoop to such a level. You think so little of me that you’ll use the most agonizing event in my life to free yourself? What did I do that was so displeasing? I’ve never once thrown it in your face, but I will now: you begged me to love you!”

“Please listen to me! Do you think any person in their right mind would want to say these sordid things out loud? Don’t you think if I was tired of a life here that I wouldn’t just tell you and invite you to go with me? If I wanted one of the other girls here, don’t you think I would respect you enough to sit down and tell you? Because if I fancied Ivy Garrett or Frances Buchanan or Lorena Hall, wouldn’t you find out about it in the end when I married her or when we appeared at the next social? Think! Is there any reason that I would tell you such terrible news if it weren’t true? Somerset, I killed him.”

Somerset jerked back her hands and jumped to her feet. Sawyer wore the same look she had seen on hundreds of hospital patients who lost their minds and realized it, trapped in an in-between place that was full of terror. She noticed how his square chin quivered like fat under a surgeon’s scalpel and how his nose crinkled like the shell of a tortoise as he fought his tears. Then her vision narrowed down to a tunnel and all she could make out at the end of it were the little diamonds that made up the air, the grass and the lake.

“So what you’re telling me is that you loved me from the first moment you saw me, just as you’ve always said, but you got rid of Eric so you could have me because you never stood a chance?” She was aware that she was blubbering but could not control it. “Because you were present for the whole thing, Sawyer! You wrote me when he disappeared. You met me in Atlanta and helped me look for him. It was all part of an elaborate plan!”

“No. No! That isn’t what happened. Please, I told you I needed you to be patient and I told you I needed you to listen. I beg you, Somerset. I do. Please sit down! Please let me finish. I’ll do anything you require if you’ll only hear me out on what happened that day.”

“It doesn’t matter what happened. You robbed me of my entire life.”

“It was never my intent. I love you. I loved Eric, too. He was my best friend and more a brother than the one I have in the house now. You have to believe me.”

Somerset winced.

“You murdered my love and you have taken advantage of me. You can’t expect me to trust you.”

“Did Theodore or Joseph ever give you their accounts of what happened that day?”

“Yes. They both gave me the same tired facts. I know all about how you all tracked a pair of scouts through the hills only to get ambushed in the end. Joseph told me twice and Theodore many times over. It’s always the same story of pride and tenacity that nearly gets all of you killed.”

“That is the way that it was.” Sawyer took off his bandanna and wiped his face clean of dirt and tears. “We had gotten so good we wouldn’t let anything go. Those two little scouts—oh, I can see them now plain as day. The way the sunlight glinted off their uniforms, the way they sketched battle plans—it’s right before my eyes. We would have spared you and each other a world of trouble if we had just walked away once. Just one time. We never walked away from anything.

“Well, Theodore went up on the ridge. His eyesight was the best of all of us, and he could see things that were only blurs to me. He wound up in dire straits and none of us knew it. He could see Joseph and me stuck in our posts, unable to move, and he could see Eric crouched in the brush with the enemy approaching, but he could also see plain as day that someone was tracking him. There was nothing he could do. He always talked at night in camp about all the possibilities that ran through his mind when he saw we’d been trapped. Well, Eric ended up in bad shape. He tried to coordinate a kill before they walked right over the top of him, and Theodore hid up on the ridge, trying to stay out of the tracker’s hands. It was horrendous.

“Eric acted. He had no choice. It was kill or be killed. He and Joseph took the pair out together, and the resulting action worked to Theodore’s advantage in getting rid of the fellow who followed him up there. Eric thought he was in the clear. I watched him back out from under the brush. Then I saw it all. I saw it before a single shot was fired. There were two Union officers right behind him. They were dressed to blend in with the terrain. I panicked and I raised my gun and I—

“I fell out of the tree from the recoil. I hit my head and broke my shoulder. When I came to there was blood everywhere, and Joseph was almost gone. Theodore was just getting down, and we had to rush Joseph off for medical help. Eric was gone.

“I didn’t mean to kill him. I was trying to save him. I’ll be honest, Somerset. Out of the four of us, I was the worst shot. It was noble of Theodore to let me come along for the adventure, but I wasn’t in the same caliber as your family. I missed targets in practice all the time. I had my doubts for the longest time about what actually happened, but I know the truth now. I saw him go down after I fired. I fired well before anyone else did, and I saw Eric go down bleeding. I heard the rest of the gunfire start up after I fired, as I fell. Joseph was the only one who saw Eric when he was wounded. Joseph said he was shot in the neck. I almost always got the neck whether I aimed for the head or the heart, and the pair of men was on top of him so you may as well say that I was aiming right at Eric. My aim is that poor. So there you have it.

“It was me. I killed Eric. I tried to protect him when I should have let it alone. I took everything away from you, and I won’t saddle you with a marriage to the man who did it.”

“It’s been years.” Somerset’s voice was hoarse. “Why are you telling me now?”

“I didn’t remember a thing. Joseph’s accident sparked something deep inside of me. When the tree hammered him down and I saw him lying on the ground bleeding, well—it came back. I tried to fight it. I tried to deny it. I tried to believe anything in the world other than what happened. I thought about begging you to run away with me, get married before I accepted the truth of that day. I’m relieved I didn’t.”

“Does Joseph know?”

“No, and he won’t if you don’t tell him. You’re the only person I’ve told this secret to. You don’t deserve to have to live with the burden, but’s it’s better that I tell you what I did than to go on living the same lies day after day. You should be free of me, Somerset. I hope something happens to me in the Territory. I deserve it.”

Sawyer went on talking but she stopped hearing him. She heard water running over rocks in the distance and the hitching of her breath. She was aware of her relative outward calmness but inside of her there were long wails and guttural screams. She felt the distancing of emotion and self within her body. It happened when Eric died. It happened when she got to the barn minutes too late to help Victoria and was completely unarmed.

Sawyer shook her shoulder and she gasped, having forgotten he was there.

“Did you hear me?” he asked.

“No. I have to leave now.”

He grasped her fingers.

“No, I need to finish. I’ll never have another opportunity to tell you these things.”

“I don’t feel well. I have to get back to Orchard Rest.”

“I’ll leave you alone after today. You’re my best friend in this world. If I don’t tell you, there’s no one else to tell.”

He tugged at her arm and her body seated itself, although her mind didn’t agree. The racket in her head faded to whispers and hisses.

“I want you to know that I hate myself more than you hate me. I didn’t even want to be a sharpshooter. I just went along because the boys asked me to. Why ride in the cavalry when I could be with my friends? But, the killing does awful things to a man. It changes you in a slow, unalterable way, and I live with those changes. I automatically map out anywhere I am. I always have a strategy in mind in case the enemy presents himself. What is that verse about a little leavening working on the whole lump? I haven’t shot a gun since the war, Somerset. Now I know why.

“I never would have approached you, never courted you had I figured it out sooner. You are right, Somerset. I begged you to love me. I was never good enough. I may be a gentleman by any set of standards, but I’m not Eric Rutherford. I’m just some country boy who got ahead of himself. I never had the right to ask you for your heart or your hand. It’s blasphemy that I ever touched you, knowing what I’ve taken away from you. You’d be living in that very fine house with Eric and maybe have a couple of children if not for me and my inept ways.

“Anything you require for retribution will be granted. I just won’t stay here. If you asked your pa or Joseph to challenge me that would be fair. I haven’t handled a weapon in so long that I’d be sure to lose. That would be good for both of us. You and Eric would get justice, and I’d go where I really belong.”

She pulled her hand away from him and wiped it on the table.

“That’s why you came back from your trip to Nashville early,” she said in a faraway voice. “That’s why I caught you in the cemetery.”

“Yes. I’d figured it out. I went to Eric’s grave. I told him what I did. I prayed about what to do. The answer is to protect you from me, from any more mistakes that I might make.”