On Julia’s last night in Washington, Congressman Rhodes hosted a dinner party for her and her family. It was a beautiful, elegant affair, with music and fine food and plenty of laughter—as if joy had finally returned to everyone’s life now that the war had ended. It reminded Julia of the party she’d attended here three years ago, the night she’d met Hiram Stone—except that tonight her escort was Nathaniel. She saw the love and admiration in his eyes when she descended the stairs in her beautiful new ball gown. And when he seemed reluctant to leave her side for a single moment, her doubts about their upcoming marriage slowly began to evaporate like melting snow.
Late in the evening, as she sat at the dinner table finishing a seven-course meal, the congressman’s servant tiptoed into the dining room and tapped Julia on the shoulder. “Excuse me, Miss Hoffman. There is a gentleman at the door asking to speak with you.”
“Did he give his name?” Nathaniel asked before Julia could reply.
“Yes, sir. James McGrath.”
Julia rose to her feet in alarm. “I hope nothing has happened to Phoebe!” Nathaniel followed her as she hurried to the front hallway.
James stood alone in the foyer where the servant had left him. His auburn hair was neatly combed, his clothes pressed and tidy for once, as if he’d come to attend the dinner, too. Something inside Julia stirred at the sight of him, and she felt an ache that she didn’t understand. She moved closer to Nathaniel, fighting the urge to run to James. She didn’t trust herself to speak.
“What can we do for you, Doctor?” Nathaniel asked.
James hesitated. “I’d like a word with Julia, if I may.”
“Miss Hoffman and I are engaged to be married,” he said pleasantly. “Anything you have to say to her can be said in front of me.”
“I’d prefer to speak to her in private.” James gestured to the congressman’s study.
“Your manners are sorely lacking, Doctor. In polite society, young ladies don’t speak to gentlemen behind closed doors. And gentlemen don’t barge into private homes unannounced and uninvited at dinnertime. Is this an emergency?”
“No, but—”
“Has something happened to Miss Bigelow?”
“No.”
“Then kindly be brief. You’re interrupting Julia’s dinner.”
“All right,” he sighed. “But I’m not entirely sure whom I should address.” He looked from Nathaniel to Julia and back again. “I once took my daughter to see a puppet show, and while it appeared that the characters were having their say, in reality the puppet master was doing all the talking for them.”
“I beg your pardon,” Nathaniel said.
“You do Julia a huge disservice by speaking for her, Reverend. Believe me, she does very well speaking for herself. She has told me exactly what she thinks on several occasions.”
“I find your attitude and your conversation extremely insulting. Please leave.” Nathaniel gestured to the door, but James didn’t move.
“The war is over, Greene. Times have changed. Women have conquered new territory and have found new roles for themselves— besides as our ‘helpmeet.’ They’ve led the abolition movement, raised thousands of dollars for relief agencies, worked as nurses, run their families’ farms and businesses. Several women even became successful spies because men were too dense to believe a woman could pull the wool over their eyes. And I know at least one brave woman who put on a uniform and fought as a soldier. The war changed these women. They proved that they are more than pretty faces. How can they be content to let us order them around again?”
“Are you finished?”
“No. Let me ask you this—have you given any thought to what Julia’s role will be after she becomes your wife?”
“Of course I have, and so has Julia. We’ve discussed the duties that a minister’s wife is expected to perform, and—”
“What if she doesn’t want to perform those duties? What if there are other things she’d rather do?”
“Don’t be absurd. What more could she possibly want? The war is over; there is no longer any need for nurses.”
Julia heard Nathaniel speaking for her, putting words in her mouth as James had accused him of doing, but she was too confused and shaken to think clearly.
“I had expectations for my wife, too,” James said. “She was to fill the role of a doctor’s wife. But Ellen was very unhappy playing that part. She wasn’t cut out for helping me treat patients. She did it, of course, because I expected her to. Our marriage vows demanded that she obey me …and my expectations caused her death.”
His words rocked through Julia like a bomb blast. “Your wife is dead?” she breathed.
“Yes. She helped me treat typhoid patients during an outbreak. She became ill herself and died.” James had been speaking calmly, matter-of-factly, until now. For the first time, his voice faltered. “Ellen didn’t want to help me. She was always afraid that she would become ill, especially after Kate was born. But I made her do it. After all, the husband is the head of the household, isn’t he, Reverend? The wife must submit to his authority, isn’t that right?”
“I’m very sorry for your loss,” Nathaniel said stiffly. “But I hardly think a minister’s wife will be exposed to the same risks—”
“You’re not nearly as sorry as I am,” James said quietly. “You know what the worst part is? I never bothered to ask Ellen what she wanted to do. I saw her the same way you and every other man sees his wife—as an extension of himself. We believe that women couldn’t possibly want anything more than to be married to us, to live in our homes, to take care of us and support our careers. Sound familiar, Reverend? Before you ask Julia to give up all of her own desires to fit into your life, why don’t you ask her what she really wants to do?”
Nathaniel didn’t reply. He seemed too angry to speak—or perhaps too afraid of losing control. As Julia had listened to James, she felt as if she were running several yards behind him, trying to catch up. She still hadn’t absorbed the truth that he had been a widower all this time. The feelings she’d had toward him hadn’t been shameful at all.
“I thought I loved my wife,” James said, “but it was a very selfish kind of love, based solely on what she could give me. That’s what you have for Julia. You want to make her into what you want her to be, then keep her all to yourself, possessing her as your very own, using her to complete yourself. But believe it or not, I know Scripture, too—it says that husbands should love their wives in the same way that Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. You’re not giving up anything for her. Julia is making all the sacrifices— and you’ll end up killing her.”
Nathaniel seemed to vibrate with the anger he was struggling to control. “I would never harm a hair on her head—”
“Maybe not physically, like I did, but you’ll destroy that wonderful stubborn spirit that’s uniquely hers. She’s strong-willed, outspoken, obstinate at times—hardly ideal qualities for a minister’s wife, wouldn’t you say? So rather than seeing these as good qualities, you’ll try to control them and snuff them out, the way you’re silencing her right now.”
James took a step closer to Nathaniel, challenging him. “I wish you could have seen Julia scrubbing laundry with her head held high. Or helping me perform surgery, seeing bone and muscle and blood, but never flinching because she knew that lives depended on her. That’s the strength of character she has. And that’s exactly what you want to destroy in her. I’d hate for that to happen.”
Nathaniel finally seemed to have reached his limit. He planted his hand in the middle of James’ chest and shoved him backward. “What gives you the right to barge in here and interfere in our private affairs? What makes you think Julia’s marriage is any of your business?” He shoved him again.
“Because I’m in love with her.”
“How dare you!” Nathaniel shouted. Julia was too stunned to speak.
“That’s what I came here to tell her—in private. But you insisted on hearing it, too. It’s because I love her that I want what’s best for her. If she decides you’re the best husband for her—fine, so be it. But you’d better make sure you treat her right, Greene. She deserves it. She is one of the strongest, most unselfish women I’ve ever met.”
Tears came to Julia’s eyes as she remembered standing in this very hallway and hearing Nathaniel describe her as shallow, spoiled, and unbearably self-absorbed. She wanted desperately to say something to James, but Nathaniel was so furious with him that she was afraid they would come to blows if this went on much longer.
Nathaniel shoved James backward once again. “Leave!” he shouted. “And don’t you dare come near Julia again!”
James’ eyes met hers. “Is that what you want, Julia?”
She didn’t have time to answer him. Nathaniel grabbed James by the arm, yanked open the door, and shoved him through it. “Julia is in love with me. She wants what I want, and I want you to get out!” He slammed the door closed behind him.
The commotion drew the congressman, Julia’s father, and two of the other men into the foyer. “Is everything all right?” Rhodes asked. “What in heaven’s name is going on out here?”
“Nothing,” Nathaniel said. “Everything’s fine, the caller is gone. He was an obnoxious fellow, and I’m afraid I had to be a bit forceful in order to get rid of him. Please assure the women that everything is all right. We’ll join you in a moment.”
Julia had never seen Nathaniel so angry. She stared at him as if he were a stranger. “I’m glad you’re going home tomorrow,” he finally said. “That man is dangerous. The safest thing to do is to stay far away from him.”
Julia couldn’t erase the image of Nathaniel shoving James backward, throwing him out the door, and she wondered which man was more dangerous. “You didn’t have to treat him so badly. He wasn’t trying to hurt me.”
“I treated him badly? Did you hear the accusations he was making?”
“James would never hurt me.”
Something in Nathaniel’s attitude seemed to shift. He looked at Julia as if he’d suddenly decided that she was the enemy. “Did you know he felt this way about you?”
“He …he has never declared his feelings before tonight,” she said. But that wasn’t the whole truth. She’d known exactly how James felt about her since the night he’d kissed her. She couldn’t meet Nathaniel’s gaze. He noticed.
“Look at me, Julia,” he said, lifting her chin. “How does it happen that he has these feelings for you? A man doesn’t fall in love without a reason.”
“Are you accusing me—?”
“You must have done something to make him think he’s in love with you.”
“What are you saying?”
“This isn’t the first time, remember? There was that coarse fellow in City Point who wanted you, too. Whether you realize it or not, you are doing something to attract a very unsavory type of man.”
“James is not unsavory. He—”
“Perhaps you aren’t aware of his past, but that man is a suspect in a murder case.”
Julia opened her mouth to defend James but knew that if she did, her feelings for him would spill out into the open. Nathaniel was glaring at her, accusing her. If she stayed with him a moment longer she would end up saying things she was sorry for, things she hadn’t finished thinking through yet.
“I don’t care at all for the way you’re speaking to me,” she said, her voice trembling. “Please give my apologies to Mrs. Rhodes. I don’t feel well. I’m going to bed.”
“Julia! We are not finished!”
“Yes, we are. Good night,
Nathaniel.”
It took Julia a long time to stop shaking. When her mother came upstairs to check on her, Julia told her she had a headache. She allowed the servants to help her take off her party gown and unpin her hair. Mrs. Rhodes offered her some laudanum to help her sleep. Julia accepted the pills just to get rid of her, but she didn’t swallow them.
She lay on her bed in the dark for a long time, listening to the sounds of the party below and thinking about everything that James had said. She understood now why he no longer wore his wedding ring. He was free to tell her that he loved her. She remembered the tender expression on his face when he’d spoken the words tonight, and she knew that he’d been about to tell her the same thing in City Point last summer before she’d stopped him.
He had called her strong-willed, outspoken, obstinate. She was all of those things. And in the end, those words touched Julia’s heart more than James’ declaration of love. He didn’t want to change her, the way Nathaniel did. James saw her for what she was, and he loved her regardless.
Julia climbed out of bed and put on one of her plainer dresses, without hoops. She heaped pillows beneath her covers to make it appear that she was asleep, then took the servants’ stairs down to the back entrance. She hurried outside to the stable in the dark to find the Rhodes’ coachman.
“I need to go to Fairfield Hospital right away,” she told him. “Kindly get a carriage ready for me.” Her voice and her demeanor carried authority. The man never questioned the unusual request or the lateness of the hour.
The hospital looked dark and deserted when she arrived. “Wait here,” she told the driver. “I’ll be right back.” Julia didn’t expect to find James at the hospital. She had no idea where he lived, but she assumed that someone had to know where to find him in case of an emergency. The front door had been locked for the night. Julia pounded on it as hard as she could and was very surprised when Phoebe opened the door.
“What are you doing here?” Julia asked.
“I live here. Dr. McGrath fixed me a room because there wasn’t no place to rent in the whole city. What are you doing here?”
“I need to talk to Dr. McGrath.”
“He ain’t here. He’s probably at the shantytown, where Belle and Loretta used to live.”
“Thanks.” Julia turned to hurry away, but Phoebe grabbed her arm to stop her.
“Whoa! Hold on! He’s fighting a typhoid fever epidemic. He don’t want me helping him for fear I’ll catch it—and he sure as shooting won’t want you there. You’d better come back tomorrow.”
Julia knew she could never wait until morning. She had let Nathaniel throw James out of the house without saying a word to stop him. James had no idea how she felt about him. “Okay, Phoebe. I’ll come back tomorrow,” she said. But she hurried down the steps to the carriage and gave the coachman directions to the shantytown.
The driver hesitated. “That’s a pretty rough part of town, miss.”
“I’ll be perfectly safe. I’ve visited there before. Kindly stop arguing and drive.”
The jumbled cluster of shacks and lean-tos had tripled in size since Julia had last seen them. In the dim light of a few flickering campfires, the piles of wreckage that served as houses looked like a vision from a nightmare. The stench of death hit her as soon as she stepped from the carriage.
“You may return home,” she told the driver. James would have no choice but to let her stay and work.
“Miss, I never should have brought you here in the first place,” the coachman said. “Please, get back in and let me take you home. I’ll lose my job for sure.”
“Go home, put the carriage in the stable, and go to bed. No one will know I’m missing until morning—and I won’t tell a soul that you drove me here.” She turned and strode toward the camp.
The first people she stumbled upon were three young Negro men hunched around a smoky fire, sharing a bottle of whiskey. They eyed her from head to toe, then one of them stood. “Lady, you must be lost for sure!” She knew by the way they laughed that they were all drunk.
For a terrible moment, Julia felt the same paralyzing fear that had seized her when Otis Whitney had grabbed her from behind and clamped his hand over her mouth. She had been helpless, un-able to fight him off as he’d dragged her down into the bushes and tried to rape her. This time there were three men, all much stronger than she was. She had been a fool to come here.
“I’m not lost,” she somehow managed to say. “I’m a nurse. I’m looking for Dr. McGrath. I’ve come to help him.”
The stranger stared at her as if she had spoken a foreign language and he was struggling to translate it. Then he pointed to a nearby shack built from packing crates. It was lit from inside by a lantern. “He’s in there, taking care of Ida and her little ones.”
“Thank you.” She walked toward the shack on rubbery legs.
Inside, a half dozen feverish children lay sprawled on the floor beside their mother. James knelt in the dirt with a limp toddler in his arms, pounding the child’s back to break up the phlegm in her lungs. He looked up and saw Julia.
“Don’t come in here!” he yelled. “Get out! Get out!”
Still shaken from her memories of Otis, Julia lashed back. “What gives you the right to order me around? This isn’t your hospital. I have as much right to work here as you do.”
“Please, Julia, it’s too dangerous. This is a typhoid epidemic.”
“It’s my life,” she said quietly. “I have as much right to risk it as you do to risk yours.” They stared at each other without speaking. But Julia knew that they’d reached an understanding, just the same. “Tell me what to do,” she said.
They worked side by side all night. James showed her how he diagnosed typhoid by the characteristic red skin lesions on the patient’s chest and abdomen. She helped him dispense calomel to help stop the diarrhea, and potassium nitrate and Dover’s powders to induce sweating and bring down their fevers. In some cases, the typhoid had developed into bronchitis and pneumonia. Julia helped him hold feverish children over pans of steaming water to ease their breathing. Neither of them mentioned Nathaniel Greene or spoke of what had happened earlier that evening. It seemed like a lifetime ago.
At dawn, James lifted a sleeping infant from Julia’s arms and helped her to her feet. “Come on,” he said gently. “We’ve done all we can. It’s time to go home.”
Neither of them spoke as they picked their way through the debris of shantytown. As she walked down the alley toward the main street beside James, Julia felt as if she was returning to another world. The smell and the despair still clung to her, and she longed for a hot bath and several hours’ sleep. James looked just as weary. He had opened his heart to her at the congressman’s house, but now his carefully constructed walls were back in place again. She knew it was up to her to help him dismantle them.
“What are your plans now that the war is over, James?”
He took a moment to reply. “I’ve accepted a staff position at another army hospital here inWashington. There are a lot of soldiers who still face a long rehabilitation. And the prisoners of war are in terrible condition, too. Then there are the former slaves. … I’ll still be needed here for a while.”
“Will your hospital need nurses, by any chance?”
He stopped walking. “Why?”
She smiled slightly. “It seems I’ve just broken my engagement— again. And my father will probably disown me, too, when he learns that I stayed out all night. I could use a job.”
“Why would you stay here in Washington? Your home is in Philadelphia.”
“The doctor I’m in love with is here in Washington.”
He closed his eyes for a long moment, then started walking again. “You came to my hospital inWashington with your chin held high, so stubborn, so determined to be a nurse. I did a cruel thing to you, using that patient with gangrene. Yet you stayed, even though I did my best to get rid of you. I think I knew I would fall in love with you if you stayed. And that’s exactly what happened. The night your first patient died and you gave up your elegant evening to come and sit with him …I watched you from the hallway. You looked so beautiful, spoke so tenderly to the boy. … Then you flew into my arms, and I held you close, and I was sure my heart would break from loving you.”
“You did a very good job of pushing me away.”
“Sparks and gunpowder, Mrs. Hoffman. I believed you were a married woman.”
“Would you have hired me if I’d told you the truth?”
“Never.”
“That’s why I lied.”
He stopped walking when they reached the corner and looked down at her. “I have very little to offer you, Julia. I inherited a modest sum of money from Eldon Tyler—compensation, I suppose, for ruining my life. But other than that …I know I’mnot as goodlooking as your minister, and I’ve been told that I’m rude and disagreeable and mean-tempered. I have a shady past and an uncertain future as I try to start all over again and build a new practice. I also have a seven-year-old daughter I barely know, who’s a little frightened of me, I’m sorry to say. I was not a very good husband the first time—”
“Does that mean there might be a second time?” she asked.
“Only if you’ll say yes.”
“Yes.”
He set his medical bag down on the sidewalk and pulled her into his arms, drawing her close. He didn’t seem to care that they were on a Washington street at dawn or that a handful of people and carriages were scurrying past.
“That night in Fredericksburg,” James said, “when the sky was on fire and we kissed …I believed you were married, and I wanted to die of shame afterward.”
“I thought you were, too.”
He gently caressed her face as she looked up at him. “But there’s no need to feel guilty this time, is there?”
“None at all,” she whispered.
Bone Hollow, West Virginia
July 1865
Phoebe walked all the way down the long, dusty road from Bone Hollow to her family’s cabin, wondering what she would find. Nobody in town had paid her any mind, so she’d walked straight on through it and headed home, hoping that at least one of her brothers would be there. When she got within sight of the place and saw Jack sitting on the front steps, her eyes filled with tears. She was so happy to see him that she wanted to run, but the sun was hot and Phoebe was tired from the long walk home. She lifted her hand and waved instead.
Jack stared at her as if he were seeing a ghost, then grabbed his crutches and scrambled to stand up, hobbling down the road to meet her. His left pant leg was empty below his knee. “Can that be my baby sister …Ike…?”
“Yeah, it’s me, Jack. How you doing?” They hugged each other awkwardly, Jack’s crutches getting in the way. It was the first time she could ever recall having her arms around him when they weren’t wrestling or fighting with each other.
“We thought you fell off the edge of the world.” Jack’s voice sounded husky.
“What do you mean ‘we’? Is Junior here, too?”
“Yeah, he’s out plowing. He came home from the war all in one piece, which is more than I can say for myself. Hey, are you crying, Ike?”
“So what?” she said, wiping her fist across her face. “I’m a girl, in case you ain’t noticed. And girls can cry if they’ve a mind to.”
“I can’t believe you’re really home,” Jack murmured. “Wait ’til Junior sees you. He won’t believe his eyes. You’re all grown up …and you’re a girl!”
“What’d you think I was?”
Jack shrugged. “One of us.”
Junior seemed tickled to see Phoebe when he came in at noon for his lunch. He grinned from ear to ear at her and gave her a sweaty hug. They sat down to the lunch Jack had fixed, and Phoebe told them where she’d been for the last few years and what she’d been up to. They all grew quiet when she told them about Willard and how she’d been with him when he died at Chancellorsville.
“The doctor couldn’t do nothing for him,” she said. “But at least he didn’t have to die all alone.”
They ate in silence for several minutes, then Junior said, “Speaking of doctors, one of them come by a couple times looking for you.”
“For me?” Phoebe asked in surprise.
“Yeah. What was his name again, Jack?”
“I don’t know …Morgan …Morris…?”
Phoebe nearly dropped her fork. “Daniel Morrison?”
“That’s him. Nice fella. Only I gotta say, he looks like somebody built him out of spare parts and kindling wood.”
Phoege remembered the gangly Rebel doctor she had met in Gettysburg. But he couldn’t have been wearing his Confederate uniform or her brothers would have run him off with the shotgun. Why on earth had he come here to see her? She could feel the heat rushing to her face and hoped her brothers didn’t notice. They would tease her from now until next Christmas.
“What did he want?” she finally asked.
“I dunno,” Jack said. “But he said he’d be back. Said he’s gonna see about getting me a leg made out of cork. Can you picture that?”
“I’ve seen stranger things,” Phoebe said.
By the end of the week, Phoebe was feeling restless again. She’d promised Ma Wilson that she’d come back for a visit, and now that she knew her brothers were okay, she was eager to be on the move. Jack was fixing to drive into Bone Hollow later that day, so she packed her things and got ready to hitch a ride with him.
She was standing on the cabin steps with her satchel in her hand when Dr. Daniel Morrison drove right up to her cabin in his own horse and buggy.
“Good morning, Miss Bigelow,” he said, sweeping off his hat. “Are you coming or going?”
“I’m fixing to go. I promised someone up in Pennsylvania I’d go see them.”
He jumped down from his rig and stood in front of her, his hands on his hips. “Well, how am I gonna court you if you go running off again?”
“You come here to court me?”
“I sure ain’t here to court your ornery brothers.”
Phoebe knew that she was blushing, but she couldn’t seem to do anything about it. “There’re plenty of other girls in Morgan County to court,” she said. “Berkeley County, too, for that matter.”
“I told you, I’m partial to pretty gals with yellow hair.”
Phoebe couldn’t speak. He had called her pretty. Her heart began to pound just like it used to do sometimes when she was with Ted. She wished Dr. McGrath was here so she could ask him what was wrong with her, find out if she had something fatal. She looked up at Daniel Morrison and remembered that he was a doctor, too. But the thought of asking him made her heart beat faster still.
“Tell me something,” Dr. Morrison said, interrupting her thoughts. “Did you like being a nurse, or are you all through with that now that the war’s over?”
“I liked it real fine. I don’t know what I’m gonna do with myself now.”
“Well, I watched you at Gettysburg, and you were real good at it. I think we’d make a good team, me being a country doctor and all. I could use a good nurse. And I think I’d probably grow on you once you decide to forgive me for being a Rebel and give me half a chance.”
Phoebe looked away, gazing into the woods beyond her cabin for a long moment. “I fell in love with a fella during the war,” she finally said. “He got killed.”
“I’m sorry …I really am,” he said softly. “Does that mean you’re never going to fall in love again?”
“I don’t know. He would want me to. Ted would tell me to live my life and be happy.”
“Well, do you think I could ever measure up to him?”
Phoebe glanced up at Dr. Morrison and couldn’t help smiling when she pictured Ted standing alongside him. “You already got him beat by about twenty inches.”
Daniel hitched himself up straight so he would stand even taller. “That’s real good news for me, then, isn’t it?”
She wanted to smile, to let down her guard, but she was afraid. She frowned and gestured to her satchel. “Listen, I promised Ted’s mother I would come back and see her, let her know I was okay. And then I was planning to go look up his grandmother who lives on a plantation down south. It might be a couple of weeks before I get back.”
“Want some company?”
“You want to come with me? You don’t even know where I’m going.”
“Don’t matter. Maybe we can get to know each other better along the way.”
Phoebe felt afraid. It was safer being alone, safer not to risk falling in love with someone and losing him again. “I been taking care of myself for a long time, you know. I’m used to traveling alone.”
“Well, I can see that plain as day. But that isn’t why I want to tag along.”
“How come, then?”
“The war showed me how short life is. I just wasted four years of it, and I don’t aim to waste any more. I aim to live.” He grinned, and his smile was so warm and friendly that something inside her melted a little. She thought of Ted’s grin.
Then she thought of Dr. McGrath and knew she was wrong to close herself off to people the way he had after his wife died. He had finally found love again with Julia. Maybe she could find it, too.
“You know, you’re like a tick on a dog,” she told Daniel. “Awful hard to shake off.”
“That’s the nicest thing a gal ever said to me,” he teased.
“If you want to tag along, I don’t reckon I can stop you,” she said, trying to sound gruff.
“You keep sweet-talking that way, Phoebe Bigelow, I’ll be falling in love with you before we cross the state line.”
He made her smile again, in spite of all her efforts not to. “You ain’t half bad for a Rebel,” she told him.
Dr. Daniel Morrison started to laugh—and he laughed so joyously that Phoebe just couldn’t help laughing along with him.