Beauty for Ashes Page 0,100

he and Philip had grown apart as adults, he still retained fond memories of Christmases in Charleston or at River Place. He especially remembered the year he turned fourteen. That year, with Philip away visiting cousins, his father had presented Griff with his own Thoroughbred, a beautiful little chestnut mare. On that crisp December morning, he tacked her up and rode with his father along the trunk-gate road past the brick rice mill and the clapboard winnowing houses. Even now, if he closed his eyes, he still could see Spanish moss swaying from the branches of the ancient oaks and flocks of birds wheeling over the silvery river.

That day his father had tried, not for the first time, to instill in his elder son a respect for the duties incumbent upon one of his station, for the nuances of Southern honor. Absorbed in getting to know his new mount, Griff half listened, determined not to spoil the day for himself or for his mother. Like other mothers of her social standing, she chose not to interfere with her husband’s efforts to mold her firstborn into a younger version of himself. But behind the scenes, she encouraged Griff to follow his heart, listen to his own instincts. Finding her own choices severely limited, she wanted something more for her son.

The barn door slapped in the wind. Griff turned over on his mattress and closed his eyes. Was Carrie still awake? He couldn’t forget the look of utter desolation in her eyes, the sag in her shoulders when he delivered the news. He felt terrible for her, for all of them. He hoped that somehow she and Mary could forge ties that would keep the remnants of their fractured family together. Because watching Carrie’s relationship with Mary and the boys, fractious as it was at times, had changed him. Made it clear that, in the end, family and God were all that counted.

He listened to the mice scrabbling in the barn and the gruff purr of the resident cat. How was his father getting on? There had been no word from Philip since his brief visit to Hickory Ridge last summer. For all Griff knew, his father might well be dead. The thought chilled him far more than the wind seeping into the barn.

Delilah, restless as he was in the unfamiliar barn, nickered and stirred. Griff quieted her with a soft word. He couldn’t leave Hickory Ridge now, not with his business proposition to the banker still pending. Not while Carrie, immersed in grief, needed someone to steady her. But one day soon he’d make a trip to Charleston, try to salvage whatever was left of his family.

He hoped he wouldn’t be too late.

THIRTY

Snow began falling around midnight, thin flurries that grew into fat, wet flakes that stuck to the windowpane and piled up on the sill. Cupping her hands to the glass, Carrie peered out at the night-blued snow, listening. Mercifully, Mary and her sons seemed to be asleep.

In the seven long weeks since Christmas, none of them slept very well. Nearing the end of her confinement, Mary was often too uncomfortable to stay in bed and roamed the house all hours. Caleb and Joe, still reeling from the news of Henry’s death, woke from nightmares with endless requests for a story or a glass of water. Carrie found their need for constant reassurance exhausting.

She’d dreaded telling them that their new papa would not be coming home, even to be properly mourned, but they’d absorbed the news better than she imagined. She expected tears from Joe, but it was Caleb who cried inconsolably before running out of the house. Joe crawled back beneath his bedcovers with his illustrated book. And now they’d returned to their daily routine and their noisy, rough-and-tumble rivalry. Except for the nightmares, they seemed to have forgotten their grief. Perhaps they hadn’t lived with Henry long enough to realize how much they had lost.

But Henry’s death was an ever-present source of sadness for Carrie. Tucked into the back of her Bible were two letters from Patrick Sullivan, Henry’s foreman, expressing deep regret at her loss and confirming that in the absence of information about Henry’s family, his body had indeed been donated “to medical science.”

“You may take comfort,” one letter said, “in knowing your loved one will contribute to increased knowledge and better medical care for all.”

What comfort was there in having no place to go to mourn Henry? No grave or marker to remind the living