Rosalind went from bed to bed, offering water, offering her time, offering whatever it took for one of them to be Roger. Every once in a while, someone would tell her they had seen him. Weeks ago. Or was it months? Maybe a year. They all told her incredible stories in which Roger had been a hero and saved hundreds of lives, but still, none of them ended with him coming home.
It was a busy day at the plantation house she and her husband had shared, which had become a make-shift hospital. There wasn’t much to set this day apart from every other day since she had offered her house up for the wounded soldiers. Not much, except for a man with a pair of the most intense eyes she had ever seen.
They had found him in the fields, badly injured, but not quite dead yet. He was placed with the others who had little to no chance of recovery, as nobody expected him to ever wake up. They were letting him die in peace in a bed, until he surprised them all. He had barely stayed awake a minute, just long enough to look up at her intently, as if he’d known her forever. He had said, “Annabelle?” questioningly before slipping back into the comatose state he had been in since his arrival. She knew it was more likely that it was a spasm, or a last moment of strength before he would die and hopefully be reunited with this Annabelle. Still, the intensity with which he had spoken to her made her believe that maybe he was one of the miracles who was going to pull through.
It wasn’t until late the following morning that he woke up and managed to take a small sip of water. When he kept down a few bites of porridge, they decided it was time to move him into another room, with other men who were not on their death beds. He wasn’t entirely out of the woods yet, but they no longer expected to walk into the room and find him dead.
Once he was able to sit up in the bed, Gabriel took to watching her; the nurse who looked like Annabelle. He had been watching her for a couple of hours, without letting anyone know. She hadn’t recognized him, so this couldn’t be what Annabelle had meant when she promised to come back to him. But the women were practically identical, so he needed to find out everything he possibly could about her. So far, he had learnt that her name was Rosalind, this hospital was her house, and the little monster who kept trying to ‘kiss people better’ was her daughter.
The girl, for one, looked nothing like Annabelle, or Margaret, or even Margaret’s daughter, Adaline. Her hair was a pale blond, the color of straw, and her eyes were a deep, dark grey. Gabriel found himself wondering what the father looked like, or if this Rosalind had simply taken in a stray. Although he had made sure that no one had seen him watching the woman, her daughter made no effort to hide that she was watching him. Ever since Rosalind rushed off to treat a new arrival, the girl had been sitting on a desk in the corner of the room, her eyes fixed on him.
He did the mistake of returning her stare, which got her giggling, and apparently implied that she was now allowed to walk over, sit on the edge of his bed and start a conversation.
“What is your name?” she asked, curiosity winning over her shyness.
“Gabriel,” he shared, deliberately giving her a thorough once over. “And who might you be? You’re much too young to be my doctor.”
“I’m not a doctor.” She laughed, one of those innocent, childish laughs that he hadn’t witnessed in years. He had been traveling a lot, but always came back to Massachusetts to check on Annabelle’s descendants. This was the first time he had been this close and interacting with them, rather than just making sure everyone was safe and happy from a distance. “I’m Molly,” she told him, looking around. “This is my house.”
“I appreciate you letting me stay,” he told her, deciding that although her looks were nothing like Annabelle’s, the way her boots were covered in mud and her fingernails caked with dirt hinted that she might enjoy the same pastimes at least.
“We let everybody stay,” she told him. “At first it was just daddy’s friends, but then they brought their friends and now we have all kinds of people. My mommy helps them,” the little girl said before looking around again.
“Your mommy is…” he pretended he didn’t know exactly who her mother was.
“Her name is Rosalind, but daddy always calls her Rosie. He says she’s beautiful, like an angel. I think so too. Do you?” Talking about her mother gave him back her full attention.
“Maybe more so,” he said, thinking of Annabelle. “I haven’t met your daddy.” He hoped the girl wouldn’t realize he was prying for information.
“He’s not here,” the girl shared, her smile disappearing for the first time. “They lost him. But we’re trying to find him. That’s his picture. Have you seen him?” She pointed to the small lithograph on the desk she had been sitting on.
“I have not, but I can keep my eyes open for him.”
“Do you normally keep them closed?” she inquired.
He was about to explain that it was an expression when Annabelle walked back into the room and his heart stopped in his chest. Rosalind, he had to remind himself. This wasn’t Annabelle, although he couldn’t wait to get her alone to figure out what was going on.
“What is going on?” Rosalind asked her daughter. “I hope she isn’t bothering you.” When she turned to him, for a moment he couldn’t speak.
“She’s been lovely company,” he assured her.
“The doctor tells me you’re making an impressive recovery,” she told him. He could tell the way he was looking at her now was making her nervous, but she was too polite to comment on it, and as hard as he tried, he couldn’t help himself. “I was here when they brought you in. None of us thought you’d even last the night.”
“Guess I had something to live for.” He made sure to smile instead of sounding bitter. He had lived the first few years convinced Annabelle was coming back to him, but after he buried Margaret, and Margaret’s grandchildren, he believed it less and less. He was still too good of a catholic to do the act of killing himself, but he didn’t see the harm in joining the army and brazenly rushing into the thick of it. Unfortunately, his suicidal heroism only brought him trouble and pain. He kept waking up after the bullets ended his life, and then he would have to change towns. It got to the point where he couldn’t tell if he had died and come back to life while he was there, or if he simply recovered. He had recently developed a phantom wound syndrome, where he could still feel the bullet holes and stab wounds, even after he came back. He would have to check under the bandages to be sure, but until he was ready to leave, he didn’t want to reveal himself.
“Well, I’m glad you pulled through,” she told him, and he was sure she didn’t like people dying in general, but the way she looked at him made him think she had especially wanted him to make it.
“I had an excellent nurse,” he smiled.
“You should get some rest,” she suggested, beckoning for her daughter to leave his bedside.
She wasn’t Annabelle, because there was no way she could have gone through that conversation without revealing herself. Still, it was incredible how much she looked like her. He had known Annabelle’s face better than he knew his own, as hers was the one he saw every night as he fell asleep, and Rosalind’s face was an exact copy, without even a freckle out of place.
That was the last time Gabriel had woken to the face of an angel and believed he would finally be with the woman he loved again. He had died many times and woken to many faces, both friends and foe, but it wasn’t until he woke up in the dim light of the drawing room to Lucy saying “You’re okay now. You’re back.” That he finally felt that relief again, that at least for a moment, he could believe her. That everything would be okay.