The Vacant Chair (16 page)

Chapter Seventeen

Waking up the next morning was the hardest thing Justin had ever done. He opened his eyes to find the unfamiliar scenery rolling like a green carpet outside the windows of the boxcar he occupied. In an instant, he remembered why he was there. Accompanying his brother’s body back to Michigan for burial. 

For a moment, time stood still as he struggled to breathe. He held Mitch’s hat in his clenched hands, the pain more than he could bear. Fragmented images swept past him, of screaming shells, Mitch’s agonized expression, the feel of him convulsing in his arms in the throes of death.

Angry tears pricked his eyes and he plunged shaking fingers into his hair. The pressure in his chest was suffocating, grief crashing over him in relentless, pounding waves. Mitch’s pleading voice echoed in his head.

 
Justin…help me…

He couldn’t bear knowing he would carry that anguished sound of his brother’s voice inside him forever. Sobs clawed at him. He fought them back, along with the urge to smash everything in that boxcar to vent his fury, his hopelessness. Mitch was gone. Never coming back.

Justin doubled over, covering his face with his hands as the tears came, scalding in their agony.
I can’t take this.
The thought was loud in his head. Clear.

He gagged, choking on the bile that rose in his throat. He wanted to scream from the pain, his heart writhing in agony. The agony drained away all too soon, replaced by empty despair. With an exhausted sigh, he slumped against the seat and closed his eyes, hoping for the oblivion of sleep.

Maybe sleep would obliterate the smell of the blood and those hideous, gasping breaths.

It wasn’t Mitch’s face he saw burned on the inside of his eyelids, though. It was Brianna’s. A different kind of grief blasted through him.

In desperate need of distraction, he conjured up memories of her at the hospital when she had changed his bandages. Her smile, the feel of her hands stroking his hair, the softness of her lips and the reassuring comfort of her embrace. He ached with the need to see her again, just to have her arms around him. She would understand the suffocating torment inside him and somehow help dull the pain.

But he hadn’t heard a word from her in so long and had no idea where she was. If something had happened to her too—

No, he wouldn’t even allow himself to think it. He closed his eyes as another wave of pain hit him.
Brianna, where are you?
He needed her more than ever.

Justin stepped off the train two days later into a world enveloped in gloomy, spiritless gray. Detroit welcomed him with a blast of cutting wind, his damp uniform chilling him to the bone. The leaden sky released torrents of rain on him, and a dense blanket of fog covered the ground. The air seemed dull and polluted; all the buildings and mills he passed were crumbling.

Hunching his shoulders, he drove the wagon through the muddy streets, while the horse’s hooves sucked at the ooze with each step. No one looked at him, no one gave him a friendly smile or nod of acknowledgement. Not this time.

He kept hearing his mother’s words on the day he and Mitch had left for the front the first time.
He’s your responsibility now. Guard him well
. She’d said it in the study, with his father’s eyes staring down at him from his oil portrait above the mantle. Christ, how was he going to tell her?

The wind slashed at him, shards of freezing rain stinging his face, but he barely felt it. Even the horse seemed mournful, its gait lethargic.

His mother might not survive this loss. Not after the way she’d been when his father died.

He was so tired, more exhausted than he’d ever been in his life. He felt removed from himself, mechanically going through the motions of living. If each day meant reliving the horrors of Cedar Creek—the wrenching, scalding agony, Mitch’s panicked voice and this terrible emptiness—he didn’t know how he’d go on.

All the misery honed into sharp focus when the house finally came into view. The imposing brick mansion had always filled him with pride, but now it filled him with dread. He stopped the horse at the foot of the front steps. Like a condemned man, he swung down from the buckboard and dragged his feet up the stairs, forced his stiff fingers to curl into a fist and rapped on the front door.

Moments later, Aggie appeared in the open doorway, tall and thin in a brown calico dress, her lined face so dear to him that a lump formed high in his throat. Welcome rays of warm lamplight caught on her pinned-up salt-and-pepper hair and spilled out into the murk. Her pale green eyes widened at the sight of him, soaking wet and shivering, the rain pouring off his hat and down his back. “Justin!” She grabbed his arm and pulled. “Come in, lad.”

She guided him inside without another word and removed his hat and poncho. Her eyes were worried, but she didn’t say anything. God, he couldn’t even bear to tell Aggie about Mitch. How the hell was he going to say it to his mother?

The familiar walls seemed to close in on him. For a moment he swayed on his feet. Being home was like sucking flames into his lungs, because Mitch’s absence was even more acute. He cleared his throat. “I need to speak with my mother in private.” His voice was raw, hoarse.

Wide-eyed, Aggie hurried off to find her and left him to stagger into the study.

Ignoring the depressing tableau across the room, he reached for a glass and the brandy decanter, fingers shaking so badly the liquor sloshed over the mahogany sideboard. He gulped it down and finally stared at the oil portrait of his father hanging above the mantle, the permanently empty chair beside it.

Now there would be another empty chair in the house.

Staring up at the portrait, he looked into his father’s eyes.
I’m sorry, Father. I’m so damned sorry.

His head throbbed and the room tilted. He steadied himself over the hearth, wishing he was anywhere but here.

“Justin?”

Flinching at his mother’s anxious voice, he turned to face her. She stood in the doorway, a frail, diminutive woman in widow’s weeds, with huge blue eyes and a graying head of once black hair, wringing her hands. “What…what are you doing here?” she asked, gaze scanning the room fearfully.

Looking for Mitch. 

With a sinking heart, Justin closed his eyes. She knew. With a mother’s instincts, she already knew.

He didn’t move, didn’t know what to say. He plunked the empty glass down and raised haunted eyes to hers. Finding no words, he nodded. “Gone,” he whispered finally, his voice barely audible. “He’s gone.”

Her eyes went wild, her mouth opening and closing, hands flying to her throat. “No,” she whispered, then started screaming. “No, no, no! Not my
son!
” She bolted into the hallway and ran for the front door, throwing it open before he could stop her. Her disbelieving gaze locked on the lone casket in the wagon bed. “Oh, dear Jesus—
Mitchell!
”

With that bloodcurdling shriek, she raced down the steps, stumbling and falling to her hands and knees in the mud before she clambered to her feet and plunged headlong for the wagon. Before she could reach it, Justin grabbed her around the waist and swung her off the ground. She fought like a wildcat, clawing and beating at his chest, screaming. Her hysteria pierced him to the core. Barely able to see through the tears in his eyes, he pressed his mother’s face tight against his chest, ignoring the pain of her blows.

“Why,
why!
” she howled, hitting him with her clenched fists. The heart-wrenching sobs made his skin crawl.

He held her tighter, carried her beneath the shelter of the porch roof. “I don’t know,” he whispered, wishing he could trade places with his brother. It should be him lying there in that box, not Mitch. Never Mitch.

She took a long time to calm enough for him to release her. Trembling and weeping pitifully, she turned her eyes to the coffin. “Let me s-see him,” she pleaded.

Justin blanched, his stomach knotting. Christ, he was going to throw up. “
No
.”

“Why n-not?”

Because he’s lying in there with his guts torn out, and he’s probably half rotted!
he wanted to shout at her. “No, Mother, don’t do this.” He prepared to restrain her if she tried to climb in and pry the lid open.

“Come inside the house, loves,” Aggie said gently from behind them. Tears tracked down her face as she took their arms and led them back inside. She seated them in the parlor and left.

The ensuing silence was suffocating.

“When?” his mother demanded, grief etched on her ashen face. Then she glanced away as though she couldn’t bear the sight of him.

Because he looked so much like Mitch.

He swallowed the bile in his throat. “October nineteenth. At Cedar Creek, Virginia.” Maybe he should have sent her a telegram first. Why had he thought telling her in person would be better?

She stared into the flames that snapped in the hearth, arms wrapped around her fragile body. “How did he die?”

He eyed her, teeth clenched. If she expected all the grisly details, she had another thing coming. “Shell fragment. I was with him.”

Her lips quivered, eyes closing in despair. “Did he suffer long?”

Yes.
He stared down at the carpet. “No, not long.” 

She started crying into her handkerchief, leaving him to wallow in his own grief. Aggie returned with the tea tray and poured his mother a cup. From past experience he already knew it was laced with something to help his mother sleep. Aggie forced it down her.

Justin thought he couldn’t feel worse, but he’d been wrong. It was history repeating itself—the beginning of the same process his mother had undergone after his father had been killed. Sleeping drugs, followed by days of lying in bed, which stretched into weeks. Months of endless, heartbroken sobs coming from her bedroom. Night after night he’d lain awake, listening to her grieve. Thank God he would be gone in another few days. He couldn’t stand watching it again.

When the drugged tea was gone, she spoke at last, her voice already taking on a slurred edge. “I shall send for Father Kirkpatrick this evening. We will have the funeral tomorrow afternoon.”

“All right.” He rose and walked out into the heavy rain, leading the horse behind him, and put the wagon in the stable. He hated to leave Mitch there, but he wasn’t going to have the coffin moved inside in case his mother got it into her head to try and view his body.

The stableman took the horse, his eyes moist. Word had traveled fast. He patted Justin on the shoulder in sympathy.

When he came back into the house, the parlor was empty. His mother was probably already in bed, half knocked out by her medicine, and rather than going upstairs to subject himself to the torture of her tears, he stripped off his wet coat and shirt to stretch out on the chaise lounge to sleep. Aggie woke him sometime later when she covered him with a blanket, tucking it around his cold body. He hadn’t realized he’d been shivering. She rubbed his tense shoulders and back and smoothed his hair, the gesture reminding him of Brianna. His throat closed up.

“I hurt for ye, lad,” Aggie said, her pale eyes full of sorrow. “I know how much ye loved him. But don’t give up on us now, boy-o. We all love ye very much. And we need ye.” 

Justin lay awake for a long time after she left, assaulted by more memories. Drifting off at last, he had one final thought. He wished Brianna was snuggled close against him and running her hands over him, helping him cope with this pain, helping him forget for just a little while. Shutting his eyes, he imagined pressing her down into his bed and making love to her, banishing death and sorrow as he lost himself inside her, forgetting everything but the warmth of her body and the healing balm of her love.

****

They buried Mitch the next afternoon while the rain poured down. A small crowd gathered around the grave that Justin had dug beneath an ancient oak in a far corner of the property. His mother wanted her boy to stay on their land, so Justin had chosen his brother’s final resting place. He was exhausted and more than anything wanted this whole thing to be over. 

Raised a Catholic, he had no doubt his devilish little brother had somehow charmed St. Peter into giving him a harp and a pair of wings up there at the Pearly Gates. He almost cracked a smile at the notion, but his brother being entombed in that coffin was enough to bring the numbness back.

Father Kirkpatrick droned on through the eulogy, while Justin’s eyes remained on his mother as she cried into a handkerchief, her shuddering shoulders supported by Aggie. She would never recover from this blow. And he didn’t blame her for not noticing he was in the same state. There was nothing he could do for her now. He had the feeling she blamed him for Mitch’s death. Maybe that was why she wouldn’t look at or speak to him. He only wished she wouldn't forget that he was still her son, and still alive.

Gradually his brain registered warmth and that his fingers weren’t quite so cold anymore. He glanced beside him and found Laurel there, staring into the grave with damp eyes. She rubbed his fingers while water dripped from the umbrella she tried to shelter them both with. Through an odd sense of detachment, Justin realized he was soaked to the skin.