Jeremiah, as well.
The casket was closed. A bone-rattling chill, one even colder than the dreadful January weather, shivered through him. The minister offered a final prayer, and when it was over, David and his fellow mourners stood.
Across the way, Elizabeth did the same. She wiped her eyes, tucked her black-trimmed handkerchief in the cuff of her sleeve and prepared to greet each of their guests. David was confident she would do so with respect and grace, no matter what she may be feeling inside. She would execute the duties of this day. He would do the same.
In a few hours he would place his brother’s casket on the northbound train. When he reached Boston, his family would then conduct a second service at their home, followed by internment in the Wainwright plot. All honors would be paid to Jeremiah for his service to the Union.
In the weeks to come David would help settle his brother’s affairs, then do his best to reenter civilian life. In all likelihood he would never see Elizabeth Martin again, but he knew what he had done to her and his brother would haunt him for the rest of his days.
* * *
Elizabeth mustered her strength and stood. She’d told herself she could get through this. She would get through this. Her determination, however, was immediately tested as Jeremiah’s older brother approached. Elizabeth had managed to avoid him all morning, but now there was no escaping his presence.
The sight of David made her heart squeeze. He wore the same blue uniform, had the same dark, wavy hair and lean yet muscular build. Were it not for the neatly trimmed mustache and chin whiskers, he could have easily been Jeremiah’s twin.
What can I say to him? What can he possibly say to me? Even if he were to apologize, he could never undo what has been done.
She would never forget the day her fiancé came to tell her the wedding would be postponed.
“You want to wait until you finish with the army?” Elizabeth had asked.
“I spoke with David and he had a good point. One never knows what the army may do. I shouldn’t want you to be carrying our child if I am sent to battle...”
Elizabeth had blushed ten shades of crimson. How dare David discuss such intimate details of her and Jeremiah’s life! Her embarrassment had only been surpassed by the fear invoked by the validity of the statement. The thought of Jeremiah leaving the safety of the hospital, of him lying wounded in some blood-crusted field, had made her tremble. Her beloved had immediately realized her distress and taken her in his arms.
“Come now, don’t think of such things... Besides, you know that hospital can’t get along without me. Why, I heard a rumor that next week they are planning on making me chief of surgery!”
The words had been so ridiculous that she’d laughed.
But the merriment could not last for long.
A cold, wet November had brought sickness to the hospital. The army had suspended all liberty passes as pneumonia and other ailments ravaged the wards. Jeremiah had soon fallen ill himself. Elizabeth, frantic with worry, had begged to tend to him. She knew the hospital was short on nurses and her help was surely needed, but because of her brother’s involvement in the Confederate army, and her refusal to disavow him, she wasn’t permitted to step foot on hospital grounds.
It hadn’t been until dear old Dr. Turner, the physician she had once served, pleaded her case to hospital command that she’d been allowed to see her fiancé. David had come to fetch her the night Jeremiah lay dying. By then he’d been too ill to recognize her, let alone speak.
Elizabeth had held his hand those final hours and watched helplessly as he’d slipped into eternity. Her faith had slipped away that night, as well. She felt cheated, in every sense of the word. Cheated by God.
Cheated by him...
David stood before her quietly. His eyes were as blue and clear as Jeremiah’s had once been. Elizabeth didn’t want him anywhere near her, but she forced herself to display customary courtesy. She had to focus on his chin whiskers in order to keep her voice steady. “David, I must thank you for your assistance... I appreciate your willingness to allow a funeral here in Baltimore.”
“It was the least I could do,” he said. “Considering...”
Her heart squeezed again, and she was grateful he didn’t finish the sentence. Instead of claiming the place beside her, he moved to the far end of the receiving line, putting Elizabeth’s mother, Jane, and her sister, Trudy, between them. Her mother tugged on her hand. Elizabeth knew it was both a gesture of comfort and direction.
“It is time, Beth,” she whispered.
Turning to the left, Elizabeth began the difficult task of greeting her guests. All of her closest friends had gathered—Julia and her husband, Samuel Ward, Sally Hastings and Rebekah Van der Geld. Even Emily and her new husband, Dr. Evan Mackay, had come. They had arrived by way of the Washington train early that morning.
Dr. Mackay was first in line. “Your fiancé was a good soldier,” he insisted, “and a fine Christian man.”
Both the compliment and the man’s presence brought a quiver to her chin. Elizabeth fought hard to keep control. Jeremiah had once served in his ward. Dr. Mackay was skilled in treating lung ailments, and Elizabeth had no doubt her fiancé would have survived his illness had this particular physician not been transferred just weeks before to the hospital in Washington.
“May God comfort you in your loss,” Dr. Mackay added.
She had been told by others previously that He would, but so far she was still waiting.
Emily then moved to embrace her. “Don’t concern yourself with anything in the kitchen,” she whispered. “The girls and I will see to everything.”
“Thank you,” Elizabeth managed. She was grateful for her friends’ assistance, as well as for the food they had supplied. A proper funeral demands a proper meal. Today should be a day of dignity and respect.
As Emily and her husband moved to her mother, Elizabeth glanced to her left. The queue of mourners stretched throughout the darkened parlor. She willed them to disappear. She did not want their condolences. She did not even want their prayers. What she wanted drove an ache so deep through her body that she feared for a moment her knees were going to buckle. She wanted Jeremiah back.
Get a hold of yourself, she commanded. You must not cry.
She tried to steel her resolve by reminding herself she had but only a few more hours to endure, then she could retreat to the solitude of her room. There she would not be forced to make polite conversation. She could be alone.
“This world will not be the same without him,” she heard Dr. Mackay say to David.
The finality of her fiancé’s death seemed to wrap her in a tight-fitting shroud. It is not just these few hours I must endure, she realized. It is a lifetime. I will never again hear the sound of his laughter, feel his kiss upon my lips. I will never claim his name as my own or hold his child in my arms. My dreams have died with him. I will mourn his loss the rest of my days.
* * *
When the last person had paid their
