The Roswell Legacy by Frances Statham (ebook pdf reader for pc .TXT) 📕

He cleared his throat. “We’re going on a pilgrimage—to put a ghost to rest, once and for all.”

“What are you talking about?”

He reached out and took her hand. “Allison, for as long as I can remember, I’ve been fighting with that same ghost for your love. And through the years, whenever I felt I’d made some headway, July would roll around again and I could see you withdrawing from me.”

“That’s not true.…”

“I don’t think you’ve even been aware of it. And I never said anything about it. It was a part of you that I had to accept.

“But from the day Charles reappeared in our lives, I knew that we were both in for a rough time. Because you’d never really given up your feelings for him in the past.”

He had not finished. Allison could tell that he had more to say and she did not interrupt him.

“It’s not just your mental picture of a dashing young husband going off to war that you still carry around in your mind. It has just as much to do with the tragic things that happened to you because of the war.”

“I suppose nightmares die hard, Rad.”

“Unfulfilled dreams, too, Allison. For when we think we’ve done with them, we find that they’re like weeds cut off level with the ground. They sprout again because their roots are still deep in the soil.

“I’m taking you back to Roswell, Allison. For if you and I are to have any sort of life together from now on, then you must choose what to do about your past life. Either see it as something that has little to do with us in the present or else embrace it totally, now that Charles Forsyte is free to remarry you.”

“Do you mean you would actually stand aside and allow that to happen?” An incredulous Allison stared at the husband she had thought she knew so well.

“If that’s what you want. It’s one or the other, Allison. You can’t have both.”

The conversation was over. Rad had delivered his ultimatum and he had no more to say. And even though Allison could number a dozen or more retorts to make, none would serve to do anything but widen the breach already between them. And so she, too, remained silent.

A mixture of dread and excitement stayed with her during the ensuing miles. And the hot gusts of air coming through the windows served to remind her that she was traveling south, where the July heat bleached the earth and sapped the strength of plant and animal alike.

Languidly using her lace fan, Allison finally said, “Are we traveling all the way by train?”

“No. Only as far as Marietta. There’ll be a carriage waiting to take us the rest of the way to Roswell.”

“But that’s sixteen miles,” Allison protested, “over difficult roads. Do you realize how uncomfortable such a ride is?”

“Not nearly so uncomfortable as an army wagon, I’m told. But we don’t have to be that authentic. A carriage will do just as well.”

“I can’t believe you’re going to such lengths.…”

It was early morning when the train reached its destination, and with a giant shudder, the engine released its great billow of steam as it settled on the track before the Marietta depot.

Outside, the panorama of the station was far different from the way Allison remembered it. No soldiers swarmed over the yard; no army wagons loaded with military supplies waited for loading. The depot seemed smaller—a little shabbier, perhaps. And the sun was shining, with dazzling light playing upon the rails.

“It was raining hard that day,” Allison commented, as Rad helped her down from the train and walked beside her to the waiting carriage. “Lightning struck a wagon and two of the animals were killed.”

Allison heard her voice, dredging up the memories of so long ago, when she had been a young mother with a three-month-old baby.

To each comment spoken aloud, Rad merely nodded. He did not intrude. Besides, he could tell that Allison had still not forgiven him for forcing her to take this trip into the past.

They traveled steadily through the town, with two pieces of luggage strapped to the back of the carriage. And when they had gone some distance, the last vestiges of civilization vanished and the land became a wilderness of trees, shrubs, and the ever-present passion-flower vines encircling the ruins of chimneys where houses had once stood.

Up hill and down, the road toward Roswell twisted and turned, with the horses laboring in the heat. And Allison, deep in memory, forgot Rad at her side. It was Rebecca’s presence she felt, the black woman who’d been both friend and servant to her in those disastrous times, sharing the nightmare when Allison had been rounded up with the other women and accused of treason by General Sherman because of her sin of seeking a job in the Confederate mills to keep from starving.

Each mile traveled brought back another memory. And Allison struggled to draw out all the pain and indignity that had lain buried in her for all these years.

They stopped and rested, ate their noonday meal in a shadowed glen, and then continued their journey. By late afternoon, as the carriage reached the square of the little manufacturing town, the pilgrimage was half completed.

Seeing the bandstand in the square and the same white clapboard Presbyterian church beyond, where Coin’s memorial service had been held, Allison expected the rush of emotion that had begun to build the moment she’d stepped onto Georgia soil. But she felt no sudden surge of emotion.

She climbed down from the carriage and walked to the empty bandstand. There she stood, surveying the town in all directions: the long row of shed-roof buildings across the street, the wide lane to Bulloch Hall, the meandering dirt road that led into the mill village. She waited, but no great feeling of homesickness welled up within her. Surprised, she realized that she was viewing her surroundings as a detached visitor would, much the same way