Her mother had never been much for family history. Gen knew less about her own grandmother than about the Renaissance artists she’d studied in college. But she had to ask. She had to know before she slipped back into the dream, that same damn dream that had plagued her every night she slept under the roof of O’Shea’s Seven Oaks.
She had to have an answer to the question of why she didn’t grieve more for her own husband than she did for a man she’d never met, who lived only in her imagination.
“Okay, Mom. Thanks.”
They talked for a while longer, but Gen could keep her mother on the line for only so long. So she signed off and hung up, and looked around at the house she’d fought to save.
Silence. Such a comfort, usually, an isolation that countered the intensity of her job as a securities broker. Old, worn walls that had withstood everything from hurricanes to negligence. A potpourri of furniture left by succeeding generations. History.
Maybe too much history. Maybe that was what was plaguing her. She’d had the dream when she’d come here before, but only occasionally. Not every night. Not following her into the day, nudging at her during phone calls and walks on the beach, as if the fantasy was more warning than escape. As if it was a portent.
Gen shook her head. That was ridiculous. She was a businesswoman, not a fortune-teller. She’d rescued the house from family indifference for the escape, for the wonderful soothing comfort of the sea. Not because it had any special meaning or message for her.
Certainly not because it had any kind of ghost to commune with.
Even so, it took her two glasses of wine to get up the nerve to go to sleep. Outside the wind notched up another key, and the grass sang like a violin section. Far in the distance, thunder muttered and the ocean answered. The house groaned, as if it resented the newest onslaught. Gen pulled up the covers and tried her best to relax.
As always, the dream began in hell.
She heard it first, smelled it, saw it. A long, large building with worn wooden floors. An old warehouse, maybe, with high, grimy windows and bare white walls. Nothing to dull the echoes, no shield to hide the sights.
But Gen didn’t really notice them. Not the rows and rows of cots swathed in mosquito netting, not the sighs and whimpers and cries of the men stretched out there, lined up on the floor, staining the old wood with their blood. Not the stench of death that permeated the very walls until it couldn’t be scrubbed clean. She didn’t take the time to stop for them, this once, even though her apron was stained and torn from her efforts. She lifted a hand to brush damp hair out of her eyes and hurried on.
Looking. Desperately searching before it was too late.
“Rafe,” she muttered to herself again and again as she looked into each soldier’s gaunt face and then ran on. A plea, a prayer. “Rafe, please be here.”
Genevieve O’Shea Carson Mallory knew nothing about the Civil War. But the Genevieve in this dream knew that she was in Richmond. She knew it was 1864 and Lee and Grant had been fighting over a stretch of woods that began at the Wilderness and marched inexorably her way. She’d seen the bodies, the horrific wounds suffered there, heard the unbelievable stories of dead carpeting the beautiful woods along the way. She knew that the South, her South, would soon die. But right now, she didn’t care.
“Rafe, my God, please...”
Her eyes filled with tears. Her hands clutched the full skirts of her dress, and she ran on, her heels clattering, her heart stumbling with dread certainty. She knew he was here. She was terrified she wouldn’t find him in time.
“Gen...”
Genevieve shuddered to a stop. He was there, propped against a wall in the corner. Not even afforded a bed. Not needing one for long. Gen cried out, an incoherent rasp of grief that seemed to rend her in two. She bent to him, gently, and held his ashen face in her hands.
“Oh, my love...”
“Thank God, Gen,” he managed with a weary smile. “It is you.”
She smelled the gunpowder and grime on him, the sweet stench of the whiskey they’d given him to ease the pain. She heard the terrible rattle of his breathing. But she saw only his eyes, those sweet sky blue eyes that had so enchanted her. The grim set of that proud jaw, the tumble of raven black hair that she loved to sweep her hands through. She sobbed and bent to pull his emaciated body into her arms, knowing there was nothing else she could do. Knowing that her world had ended.
“Don’t die,” she begged, nestling his head against her breast, stroking that hair that was now so dank and limp. “Please, my love. Don’t die.”
“Oh, Gen,” he whispered, really smiling, even with his hands at his belly to hold his life in for just a little while longer. “It won’t... be so... bad…”
Her tears mixed with his and stained the floor. “I can’t live without you.”
“You... won’t, girl. I’ll never... really leave….”
“You will. Oh, you will, and I can’t bear it.” She pulled him tighter, protecting him against death, rocking him to ease the terrible pain.
“I won’t... ever. It’s a... promise... a solemn...”
And he was gone. Her husband. Her life. Deserting her when she needed him the most.
“No, Rafe, no! Come back!”
