“Well, good morning—actually, good afternoon,” Evelyn said from her chair by the bed as Daisy rubbed her eyes.
“Hey, Evelyn.” Daisy looked around. “What time is it?”
“A quarter after twelve. How do you feel?”
“Like a train hit me. I think . . . I think I’m done . . . with that morphine.”
“Well, I imagine we should consult Reed about that.”
“Is he . . . is he here?”
“Yes. He’s in the kitchen. The others are at church.”
“Is it Sunday?”
“That’s right. May I do anything for you—some water perhaps?”
Daisy nodded and let Evelyn help her sit up and take a drink. “I think I want to . . . stay up for a while,” she said when Evelyn tried to help her back down.
Evelyn fluffed Daisy’s pillows and put an extra one behind her back for support.
“Thanks,” Daisy said.
“Do you feel as if you might become nauseated again?”
“Again?”
“Oh, yes, dear. You’ve had quite a time with nausea.”
They heard a car in the driveway, and soon the church group was surrounding Daisy.
“How do you feel?” Anna asked, sitting down on the bed.
“Wonderful,” Daisy said. “How do I look?”
“Gorgeous.”
“Liar.”
“Miss Daisy, it’s mighty good to see you awake and full o’ mischief again,” Si said.
“Oh, honey, we’ve been so worried!” Dolly shook her head.
“I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have nothin’ to be sorry for,” Si said. “Where’s Reed?”
“Cooking lunch for everyone,” Evelyn reported.
Dolly and Anna said it at the same time: “Reed can cook?”
“Yes, he can,” Reed said as he stepped into the bedroom. “But nothin’ like Miss Dolly, so don’t expect too much.”
“Hey, I’ve got an idea,” Dolly said. “Let’s all go fix us a plate and bring it in here with Daisy. Reed and Daisy, I’ll fix both o’ yours. It’ll be just like a picnic, only without the bugs.”
“Why, that’s a fine idea!” Evelyn agreed.
“If y’all will excuse me from the festivities, I promised Dolly I’d carry a Sunday plate up to Lillian,” Si told them. “Think I’ll take one for myself and keep her comp’ny for a little while.”
“Joe and I can deliver Ella’s lunch and look in on her,” Harry said.
Everybody else headed for the kitchen as Reed sat down by Daisy. “How we doin’?”
“My whole foot . . . kinda feels . . . like it’s on fire.”
“You’re about due for a shot.”
“That morphine just makes me so . . . so crazy-headed. Are you gettin’ any sleep at all . . . havin’ to doctor me every four hours?”
Daisy stared at him for the longest time. “I might be dead if it wasn’t for you.”
Just as he was about to answer, they heard the others coming.
“Here you go,” Dolly said. “Anna, honey, how ’bout pullin’ that little table there by Daisy’s bed.” She set two plates down on the table as Reed brought in some chairs.
Anna brought tea for everybody and climbed into the bed next to Daisy, propping against some pillows and holding her plate in her lap.
“I prob’ly don’t smell so good,” Daisy said.
“That’s okay—I’ll stay upwind.”
Daisy looked around the room and pointed to something on Reed’s chest of drawers. “Hey, what’s that doin’ in here? Y’all been rereadin’ Catherine’s journal to pass the time?”
“I’ve been dying for you to wake up so I could tell you,” Anna said. “That’s not the same journal we all read together. It’s the next part of Catherine’s story—her second journal.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“Well, that’s the really strange part. It just appeared on Dolly’s front porch, wrapped in brown paper with my name on it.”
“But . . . where’d it come from?”
“We don’t know, honey,” Dolly said.
“Did y’all read it?”
“We did not,” Evelyn said. “We all agreed that we would not read one word until you could enjoy it with us. We entrusted the journal to Reed to keep us honest.”
“Did you read the rest of it?” Daisy asked him.
“Just a little bit.” Reed handed the journal to her. “I think it’d make me blush, though, to read it with you ladies.”
“What are we waitin’ for?” Daisy said. “Here, Anna—let’s make Reed blush.” She passed the journal to Anna, who began to read.
Dear Self,
My wedding was everything I knew it would be—wholly orchestrated by Father for Father. Andrew and I said our vows immediately following the Easter Sunday sermon—
“Anna, read that date again,” Daisy said.
“April 20, 1844.”
“You know what that means?”
“No, what?”
“The last time she wrote was at the end o’ March, and she said she was gettin’ married in a week. She’s writin’ this on April 20.”
“Then they didn’t drown on their wedding day!”
“Bingo.”
“Oh, I just knew it!”
“We’re real happy for you, honey,” Dolly said. “Now keep a-readin’.”
Andrew and I said our vows immediately following the Sunday sermon—which Father mercifully cut shorter than usual. I wore a frock I didn’t like, to marry a man I didn’t know, so we could both pretend to be happy as all the church ladies fluttered around us and insisted we have some of this cobbler or that pie. I could barely swallow.
There was one moment, though, that Father couldn’t control. Nor could I. After he pronounced us man and wife, he nodded to Sister Phipps, the organist, to begin the recessional, but she wouldn’t do it. Instead she began gesturing to Father—no doubt trying to get him to say, “You may kiss your bride”—when Andrew, in one smooth motion, took my face in his hands, bent down, and softly kissed my mouth. The congregation applauded, and Sister Phipps began her recessional. I was so stunned that my new husband had to offer his arm and lead me out of the church just to get me moving again. I had never been kissed before—except on the cheek by cousins and aunts and uncles. Never by a man outside the family. And never on the mouth. It was so warm. And fleeting. Did I like it? I don’t know. I think so. It happened so quickly. This much I’m sure of: it did not feel like hoeing the garden.
The women laughed with delight.
“Now I did read that part,” Reed said. “What’s hoein’ the garden got to do with anything?”
The women all looked at each other and burst out laughing again.
“That’s it,” he said. “I’m not man enough to stay in here with y’all.”
They all laughed once more as he fled to his porch.
“We were mean to scare him off like that,” Daisy said.
“Isn’t it just so romantic?” Anna said.
A collective sigh went around the room.
“We’re gettin’ distracted, y’all,” Dolly protested. “Keep a-readin’, honey.”
Anna turned the page and continued.
When the fellowship finally ended and we prepared to leave, Andrew escorted me to his carriage, took my hand, and helped me in. It was so confusing. All this time, I had been half drawn to and half terrified by the man being forced upon me, yet whenever he touched me, whenever I felt the warmth of his skin against mine, I wasn’t afraid at all. It made no sense.
The congregation threw their rice when we left the church, and then . . . silence. Not two hours ago, the man sitting next to me on that carriage seat had kissed me—his mouth and mine touching, sharing breath—and now we were strangers again. How can that be? How is it possible for the space between a man and a woman to expand and contract so?
Andrew looked down at me as if he had heard what I was thinking. “If I ask you a question, Catherine, will you tell me the truth?” he said.
I couldn’t find my voice just then, so like an idiot, I only nodded.
And then he asked me, “Is it anger or fear that you’re trembling to contain right now?”
Never in my life had a man asked me what I was feeling or thinking. I looked down at my hands, which were indeed trembling in my lap, and considered my answer. For whatever reason, it was important to me, in that moment, to tell my husband the truth.
Finally, I looked into his chocolate eyes and said, “I thought I might die of both at the church. But my anger is all for Father, not for you. I am afraid, though, of what I don’t know. That’s it, truly—I’m afraid of what I don’t know.”
Andrew stopped the carriage and looked at me, searching my face as if he needed more information and would eventually find it there. In that moment, I had to ask him why, with every pretty girl in the church flirting with him, he had chosen me.
“Men are forever trying to kill or cage the most beautiful things they find,” Andrew said. “I’d rather set them free.”
“But you bought me,” I said.
“No,” he said, “I paid your ransom.”
Once we reached the edge of his property, he drove the carriage off the main road and stopped before a tall iron gate. He jumped down from the carriage, opened the gate, and gave the horses a command I couldn’t understand. They dutifully walked through and stopped on the other side of a fence that began a few yards north of us and stretched as far as I could see to the south. Andrew climbed back in, and we followed what looked like a new road through the woods.
In a clearing on the banks of Tanyard Creek, he stopped the carriage again, turned to me, and said, “You have nothing to fear, Catherine—least of all me.”
And then he told me the most incredible story. A year ago, there was a great convention of Presbyterian ministers held in Montgomery. Our family traveled there with Father. As he and the other ministers held camp meetings on the Alabama River, Andrew had passed through on a paddle wheeler bound for Mobile. It dropped anchor just a stone’s throw from Father’s camp.
I remember walking along the riverbank, enjoying a rare moment of freedom and wishing with all my might that I could board that beautiful boat. All the while, Andrew was watching me from the upper deck. Something about me caught his attention, he said, and he had called to a porter to fetch him a telescope. He was looking at me through that lens as I sat on the bank, tossing rocks into the water and watching the ripples roll out to nothingness, before Mother interrupted my reverie. She was carrying a small bowl of turnip greens, which I loathe. She had noticed, she said, that I hadn’t taken any during the afternoon meal. Did I want to appear ungrateful to the hands that prepared them? Did I think myself above eating them? She handed me the bowl and said she intended to stand there and watch me swallow every bite.
Mercifully, one of the ladies called to her about then, and she had to leave me to my own devices. I waited till she was out of sight and then threw the horrible greens into the river.
Andrew watched the whole silly scene from the upper deck of that fine boat. He said he made up his mind, watching my face as I threw those greens into the water, to learn my identity—which wasn’t difficult, given Father’s position in the church. Andrew had already decided to leave the “vagabond life,” as he calls it. And so he thought he might as well settle in Blackberry Springs—and find me.
Can you imagine? The whole time Father was trotting me out to the supper table, trying to convince Andrew of my worth, my suitor already knew what he meant to do. He had known all along.
Now here we were, a year later, two strangers on our wedding day, making our way home.
“You know everything about me, but I don’t know anything about you,” I said.
That’s when he said the strangest thing. He said he didn’t think anyone knew me because Father hadn’t allowed me to show myself. He told me bluntly that he despised Father for that.
I admitted that I despised Father too, and that I was praying about it. He said I should devote my prayers to a worthier subject. I told him I believed he had secrets—a specific one, actually—something I could feel but could not name.
For a moment, he looked not so much at me as inside me—as if he were probing my heart and soul to determine whether he could trust his own wife. Abruptly, he stood up and climbed down from the carriage, then held his arms up to me and asked me to walk with him.
He lifted me down and took my hand. We began following the creek deeper into the woods. Never in my life had my heart raced so. Was he about to tell me everything or nothing? Had he truly ransomed me, as he said, or was he about to murder me in the woods? I had just married this man without knowing enough about him to gauge whether he might actually do away with me. But he was holding my hand, and I loved the strength of his long fingers around mine. I loved the height of him and the way he looked down at me. I only wished that I knew what was about to happen.
“Daisy?” Anna stopped reading. Daisy had become restless, moving around in the bed as if she couldn’t get comfortable, and pulling the covers up tighter around her.
“We’ve tired her out,” Dolly said. “Ever’body, come on and let her rest. Daisy, honey, don’t you worry. We’ll send Reed right in.” She ushered Evelyn and a reluctant Anna out of the bedroom.
“Don’t you think I should go in there and see if I can help?” Anna asked Dolly in the kitchen.
Dolly shook her head and smiled. “Let’s see what comes o’ lettin’ the two of them get through this together.”