A Promise to Love (29 page)

He bit into a delicate sandwich made of butter and cucumber. He would have preferred two thick pieces of Ingrid's bread and a slab of roast beef, but this would do. The next sandwich contained some sort of cheese. Next to the sandwiches, there was what looked like a fourth of a chocolate layer cake. He took Delia at her word, and as she pored over his figures in the second ledger, he finished every crumb.

Finally, she took off her glasses and slid them into her pocket. She closed the ledger. “It is in perfect order,” she said, “but you knew that, didn't you?”

“Yes, ma'am. I did.”

“Now that that is over, and you have rested and eaten, I'm afraid that I have some very bad news.”

A chill went through him. She had said his family was fine as of a week ago.

Many things could happen to a family in a week.

“I received word via telegraph, a few minutes before you and Robert arrived, that both Holland and Manistee have been destroyed by a great forest fire. Hundreds of lives have been lost. Nothing is standing.”

He was genuinely sorry to hear of such devastation but selfishly grateful that it had occurred on the western coast of Michigan. Far, far away from his family.

“Has that fire been the source of all this smoke?”

“Partially.”

The way she was looking at him made him think that there was more—something she was reluctant to say.

“What is it?” he asked. “What are you holding back?”

“The wildfire did not limit itself to the western coast.”

“My family.” His heart felt like it would pound out of his chest. “Have you heard word of my family?”

“I know nothing about your family at this time. The information is spotty, but from what little we can gather, it is believed that White Rock, like Holland and Manistee, was completely destroyed by fire yesterday.”

He had to get out of here. He had to act. He had to find his family. He jumped to his feet, crammed his hat on his head, and turned toward the door.

“Stop,” Delia commanded.

He had already opened the door and was halfway out.

“Please stop, Joshua,” she said. “I have not yet told you everything. There have been reports that there are survivors—I don't know how many. There is a very good chance that your family escaped.”

He should have never left them, never have gone into the camps. They could have survived without the logging camp income. His stomach twisted as he thought of Ingrid, alone in that cabin with all those children and an elderly mother. Ingrid might be able to save herself, but how could she escape with all of those people?

Had she been wise enough to get out early?

Just then, there was a crack of lightning and a volley of thunder. And then it sounded as though the heavens opened and poured every drop of water they had been saving up all these months upon their parched and dying land. The rain that they had been hoping and praying for had finally come—one day too late to save the towns and forests and people.

He started, once again, to leave, but Delia grabbed his arm with a firm grip.

“You don't know where you're going or what you're going to do when you get there. Unless I miss my guess, you have not slept, except in snatches, for more than two days. If you have any sense at all, you will wait out the storm. You will go upstairs to one of my spare bedrooms and get some rest until the storm wears itself out. You cannot help your family if you get struck by lightning while you're hunting for them.”

“Begging your pardon, ma'am, but whatever made you think that I have any sense? I'll figure things out along the way.”

“And your family will have no help at all if you get struck by lightning. Go upstairs, choose any bedroom except mine, and at least try to rest. I'll wake you when the storm is over.”

“Do you think I can rest with my family out there trying to survive in this?” He flung his hand out toward the heavy rain. “Where's the nearest livery stable?”

“Men never, ever listen to reason!” Delia sighed. “That's why I waited until you had eaten before I told you.”

“The livery stable, ma'am?”

“You don't need a livery stable. I was fairly certain what you would say. While we were chatting, Lizzy looked into the possibilities of getting you on a steamboat headed toward White Rock. Under normal circumstances, the trip would be simple. Board the steamboat at our dock and step off onto the wharf at White Rock. But from what we can tell, practically all the steamboats and ships have stopped running.”

He could not keep the impatience out of his voice. “Then what do you suggest I do?”

“I've had one of my strongest horses saddled for you. She is young and has the most endurance. While you were eating, Lizzy packed provisions and basic medical supplies. Although there will probably be no opportunity to use it, I also put a small pouch of money in there.”

He was speechless. This was not a woman he would have expected to show such kindness. He would have assumed that her years of working in a bordello would have hardened her.

“Why are you doing this for me?”

“I am not doing this for you, Mr. Hunter,” she said. “I have a soft spot for children. If yours are still alive, they desperately need their father.”

“I am in your debt, ma'am.”

“Just go find your family, Mr. Hunter,” she said. “Your horse is right outside the back door.”

Delia's maid was waiting beside the kitchen door holding a large, black raincoat.

“This old macintosh belongs to our handyman,” Lizzy said, “but you need it worse than him right now. He said you could have it. We'll get him another one.”

“Good thinking, Lizzy,” Delia said.

He shrugged into the macintosh, grateful for its protection. Was his family out in this storm with no shelter? Could they survive if they were?

If he lost his family, he would no longer want to live.

He noticed that the tempo of the storm had changed. It sounded as though the thunder and lightning had rolled further out over the bay, leaving behind a heavy, steady rain. He could only wonder why God had not seen fit to send this yesterday.

The horse Delia was lending him was a young, black Arabian mare. He ran his hands over her. She was well-conditioned and sound. He was impressed with Delia's choice.

“The employee I sent to White Rock to investigate you rode this horse.” Delia was watching from the porch with Lizzy hovering nearby. “He said that if you pace yourself, fight the urge to race all the way there, and give her a break now and then, she should be able to carry you the whole seventy miles in about twenty-four hours.”

He slung his leg over the horse and settled into the saddle.

“If you find your family,” Delia said, “they are welcome here until you can find a better solution. My house has many empty bedrooms and I would not mind in the slightest if they were filled with children.”

He closed his eyes at the impact of her words. From the moment he had heard that White Rock had burned, his mind had been searching for a place where he could shelter his family. With the rain pouring down upon him, he tipped his hat to the two women standing on the porch.

“I will never forget this.”

“We shall be praying for you and your family,” Delia said. “Godspeed.”

Joshua's horse trotted through the solid sheet of rain as they headed out of town. As a cavalry officer, he was accustomed to riding through inclement weather. He buttoned the top of his macintosh and tugged the brim of his hat lower to keep the rain out of his eyes.

“You are leaving without me?” His brother-in-law, astride a large palomino, blocked his way.

 28 

He had forgotten about Hans.

“The only thing in my head was getting to my family.”

“What is in my head is to find my sister. You know the way?” Hans asked. “In the dark?”

“Yes.”

“We ride to White Rock.” Hans fell in beside him.

“Whose horse?” Joshua asked.

“Foster's.”

“Ah.”

As they headed eastward in a loose, swinging trot, Joshua—not knowing what hazards the burned-over landscape might have—wondered if the horses would be able to make it through. If not, he would send Hans back with the horses, and he would continue on foot.

The rain seemed to have settled in—which was a blessing. Hopefully every burning coal and ember would be quenched. As they entered the blackened areas south of them where the fire had been, he despaired of finding grass for their horses on their way there—but they soon discovered a strange thing. The fire had been capricious—in some places it had bypassed whole houses and sections of farms, while completely obliterating the surrounding countryside for miles.

Several hours into the trip, at daybreak, they saw a neat, white-frame house that had been miraculously left intact—a small oasis in the middle of a blackened land.

A girl-child, about the age of his Trudy, sat on the porch. She was rocking back and forth, hugging herself, her face streaked with smoke and tears.

“Are you all right, child?” he asked.

She did not acknowledge his presence. She just kept rocking.

While Hans held the reins of both horses as they rested and cropped grass in the rain, Joshua knocked on the front door, hoping an adult was alive in there. If not, he would have to take responsibility for the silent child—a time expenditure he could ill afford. One by one, a father, mother, and three more children wandered out—showing no surprise or even much interest in him. The mother's face was expressionless and her eyes were dull.

All of them seemed listless. He had seen the same behavior and lack of facial expression in some soldiers.

“Is your family all right, sir?” he asked.

“We climbed into the well.” The father stared off into the distance. “But the heat was nearly unbearable. We stayed down there for hours. My oldest child”—he glanced down at the little girl Joshua had first seen—“has not spoken since.”

“I am so sorry,” Joshua said.

“That was my brother's house.” The father pointed at a desolate field where nothing but black debris remained. “It's gone now. He had a wife and six children. We could hear them screaming—and I could do nothing to help.”

“Is there anything we can do to help you before we go?”

“No,” the father said, a small flicker of life coming back into his eyes. “But I thank you kindly for asking.”

Without saying another word, the family wandered back into the house and shut the door. The little girl on the porch continued to rock back and forth.

This only intensified his desire to run Delia's horse flat-out, as fast as it could go, all the way to White Rock, but not only would it be inhumane to their horses, it was impossible. Their journey was greatly complicated by the fact that not everything had been burned into ash. In one area, giant trees, acres of them, looked as though they had all been felled by a giant mowing scythe. The force of the wind had laid them down, all falling in the same direction.

In other places, trees were tangled, lying this way and that, as though a giant hand had played the child's game of pickup sticks. The old nursery rhyme “five, six, pick up sticks—seven, eight, lay them straight” got caught in his mind and played over and over to the rhythm of his horse's hoofs, nearly driving him mad when he began to hear it being sung singsong in his girls' voices.

They made their way past a partially burned farm where they saw the farmer dead, lying beside his horses, as though he was trying to rescue them at the moment they were overtaken with fire.

They did not stop to bury the dead. There was too much urgency within him to find the living. They continued east through a forty-mile swath the fire had burned, passing farm after farm where people had lived and loved and hoped—their lives snuffed out in an instant.

Hans was thoughtful and subdued. Joshua was grimly determined. Neither of them had any appetite. The food Delia had packed for him went untouched. Ironically, they had plenty of water because the rain had never completely ceased—all he had to do was hold out his cupped hands to have water to drink.

They were surprised when they came upon a middle-aged man, unharmed, digging in the remains of a house.

“Do you need help?” Hans asked.

“No.” The man turned to them, his eyes swollen and red. “This is my job to do alone—I want no one's help.”

“What are you doing?” Joshua asked.

The man gave a shuddering sigh and wiped the back of his hand over his eyes. “My wife developed a hankering for a mess of fried fish. Wouldn't let up till I rode over to the lake and tried to catch her some. I had other things to do and was half-aggravated at the woman. We had words right before I left.” He picked up a bucket sitting on the ground and cradled it in his arms. “This is all that is left of her.”

The man's words hit Joshua like a fist and doubled him over. For a few moments he could not breathe.

Hans, beside him, grabbed his arm as though to steady him.

“Were you fishing anywhere near White Rock when the fire came?” Joshua asked.

“I was.”

“My family was living on a farm right outside of it.”

“Then I pity you, sir,” the man said and went back to his digging.

As they neared the lake, Joshua recognized his home, but only because of the configuration of the land and creek. The barn, the fences, the cabin itself were piles of ash. The fire had incinerated everything he owned, everything he had worked for—except for the very earth itself.

His hope for the future—the cherry orchard—was a field of blackened twigs and twisted stumps. He was surprised how little its loss meant to him. The goal that carried him through the second half of the war, the image of Diantha strolling beneath the white blossoms of his own cherry orchard, had been nothing but a young man's daydream, a place in his head where he could retreat while the memories of battles and bodies piled up in his mind. As he stared at the burnt and broken orchard, that daydream dried up and blew away just like the white blossoms had withered and died during the dry, hot spring.

What mattered—the reality, not the fantasy—was the vivid memory of his precious wife trudging along beside him, day after day, week after week, carrying those heavy buckets of water to keep his orchard alive—and doing it without a word of complaint.

She had healed all of them, bringing peace and order into their lives, building a life in which his children could grow and blossom. He remembered the night she had brought little Bertie home—and how from that moment on, she had cared for the baby as tenderly as if she had given birth to him.

How he had railed at her the evening he had discovered her trying to “give back” the diary and pills by burying them beneath the surface of Diantha's grave. Then, in spite of his cruel words, she had held and comforted him as the full impact of what Diantha had done, and who Diantha was, had hit him.

So many memories packed into such a short space of time. The night she had taken in his mother without a moment's hesitation. How she had brought health and happiness back into his mother's life.

How much she had loved them all—this incomparable woman—and how little he had given back.

The thought that caused him the most pain and shame was remembering the night she had prepared herself for him—how she had tried to make herself pretty. How she had been sitting up, waiting for him, in the new nightgown that Hazel had bought, her golden hair spilling over her shoulders. The light of hope and love and welcome in her eyes.

He had extinguished that light with four words, “I can't do this,” and turned away because he was still in love with his deceased wife, because Ingrid was different from what he was used to, because she could look him straight in the eye and match him step for step in endurance. Because—God help him—all she had to wear when he first met her were two worn-out dresses and an old pair of men's shoes.

If by some miracle he found her alive, he would spend the rest of his life cherishing her.

As he looked around at the ruined farm, he could not imagine mustering enough enthusiasm to ever rebuild it. All he saw when he looked at the burnt acreage was what a waste the terrible struggle they had gone through during these past unending months had been. No longer did he care about his farm, his crops, or his vanished livestock. He cared even less for his own life unless he could find his family.

“This is yours?” Hans glanced around at the devastation.

“Yes.”

“You have a wagon?”

“A small one.”

“Where is it?”

Joshua looked around him. Although in ashes, the shapes of everything were still discernible. He even saw two grease spots near the pigpen that he surmised was all that was left of his pigs, but there was nothing resembling a wagon. He knew that even if the wagon was ashes, the metal would be left. He studied the ground closely. No such thing littered his yard.

Ingrid had taken the farm wagon and had gotten his family out of there!

Oh, dear Lord, how he loved that valiant woman!

“It's only two miles farther—let's go,” he said.

He had not slept in three days. He had rarely been out of the saddle in the past twenty-four hours, except when he needed to lead his horse through a particularly tangled mess. Both he and Hans had eaten little except a handful or two of jerky, had drunk nothing but rainwater. He should be completely exhausted—but this new reason to hope gave him strength. He no longer had the discipline to hold back. They took the last two miles to White Rock at a dead run.

He slowed momentarily at Richard and Virgie's. Here, too, there was little left except ashes, but those ashes included the remains of their wagon. Unless they had ridden with Ingrid, they were gone. He saw where Richard had plowed all around the house and barn, trying to protect his property from encroaching fire. If he knew those two people at all, he would wager that they had stubbornly tried to hold their own.

A few moments later, they saw the lake. A steamboat had stopped and it appeared that the people were trying to rebuild a portion of the long wharf where the boats had always unloaded supplies in the past.

The first person he recognized was George, who was carrying a toddler in his arms.

“Have you seen my wife?” Joshua dismounted and grabbed the man by the shoulders. “Is my family safe?”

George looked as though he had aged twenty years in the short time since Joshua had seen him.

“I don't know, Josh. Everything happened so fast. One minute I was in the middle of a bucket brigade, and the next minute we were all running for our lives.” The man's eyes were red-rimmed. “It took eight hours before the fire died down enough that we could go back on shore. I didn't see any of your family the whole time I was in the water.”

Joshua, who had felt a great hope when he saw that his wagon was gone, felt that hope crushed. Had Ingrid waited too long? Had they perished back there in the woods—and in his haste, he didn't see?

“You have shelter?” Hans asked.

“No, not yet.”

“I'm surprised that steamboat is here,” Joshua said. “I was told the ships had all stopped running because of the poor visibility.”

“Not the
Moffat
. Captain James Moffat is a brave man and an experienced skipper. I hear he's been using every trick he knows to find his way up and down this coastline without wrecking. He's been dropping off provisions for those who are able-bodied, and taking those who are badly burned to Port Austin.”

“How many are having to be transported?”