know. Mama called me from her bed and told me to get the post surgeon.”
He clung to her and Susanna held him close, forgetting every slight, every humiliation that still made her turn her face away when she passed the Dunklin quarters.
“She won’t die, will she?” he asked finally.
Two months ago Susanna might have wondered that any boy could love the vindictive woman she remembered from that awful night. She didn’t wonder now. “Bobby, she has the most wonderful post surgeon in the army looking after her,” she murmured into his tangled hair. “She couldn’t be in better hands.” Please, Joe, she thought, do your best.
When Bobby Dunklin slept, she carried him into the parlor and made him comfortable on the packing crate settee. Quietly she pulled a chair from the kitchen and sat there as another hour passed.
She was about to doze off when she heard the door handle turn quietly. She was up in an instant, tiptoeing across the room to open the door and step outside into the warm June night.
“He’s sleeping on the settee,” she whispered, her lips close to Joe’s ear. She kissed him for good measure.
Joe shook his head and sat on the bench by the front door, tugging her down beside him. “A miscarriage. I hate those! She lost a lot of blood and she’s weak. No telling how long she called for Bobby before he woke up.”
“What should I do?”
“I cleaned up what I could, but can I ask …”
“You know I will.”
“I thought so. I’ll wake up Katie and take Bobby there after I talk to him.”
Susanna opened the door quietly and looked back at her husband. “I don’t even know her first na me.”
“Lavinia.”
He had sent for Mrs. Hanrahan, who waited by the Dunklins’ door. They completed the work Joe had begun, washing Lavinia Dunklin, her face a mask of sorrow, and easing her into a clean nightgown. Mary Hanrahan made up the bed with clean sheets, carefully rolling Mrs. Dunklin from side to side while Susanna held her steady. When they finished, Mary went downstairs and came back soon enough with a cup of tea.
“Works wonders,” she whispered, and set it by the bedside. She touched Susanna’s shoulder and left the house as quietly as she had entered it.
Mrs. Dunklin slept and Susanna kept watch over the woman she should have hated, in a house full of terrible memories. She remembered what she had told General George Crook’s back as he had walked away: Just let it go. As the sun rose and the bugler attempted to play reveille—the good buglers had gone with Crook—Susanna Randolph let it go.
Like most boys, young Joe Randolph had had his heroes. From Washington to John Marshall to James Madison, most were Virginians, as he was. He had admired Robert E. Lee for years, until his own adult leanings kept him in the Union army when Lee followed the South. General George Thomas, another Virginian and Union exile like him, became his hero then, being all that an officer should be.
Joe had a heroine now, his wife. Until Lavinia Dunklin was safely out of the medical woods, Suzie had sat by her bed, holding her hand, cleaning her, feeding her, crying with her. She did it without complaint or much comment, keeping her own counsel even at night in bed, when other officers’ wives took over night duty, and Suzie was released to sleep beside him.
She curled up beside him as always. He used to think he wouldn’t care for that much closeness during summer, when it was hot and two people could get sticky being together; he was so wrong. Suzie just naturally went into his arms when the light was out. So what if they sweat? He didn’t want her any farther away than his fingertips.
He knew how tired she was, but she hesitated not a second when he wanted her, loving him and letting him know with a gentle sigh—as if he needed a prompt—just how deep her own pleasure was. He had never met anyone remotely like Susanna Randolph. If word ever got out what a lover she was, what a friend, he’d have been stabbed and dumped in a borrow pit.
She continued to amaze him. He asked her if Lavinia Dunklin had apologized for her reprehensible behavior.
“No. I think it’s too hard for her. I let it go” was Suzie’s serene reply.
He also knew she cried as quietly as she could as the sun rose, mourning a beloved