A Heartbeat Away: Quilts of Love Series by S. Dionne Moore Page A

away, almost drowned out by the moans and screams that pummeled from every direction. Men lay in the yard of her grandmother’s house now. An able-bodied assistant she’d seen earlier came from the springhouse bearing a yoke of water pails. At some point, a fire had been started, the snap of the blaze and the heat added to the misery of the men sprawled nearby. Her stomach clenched as her gaze collided with the spectacle of the surgeon’s table, a pile of amputated appendages drawing flies. Bile coated her throat and mouth, and she staggered, oblivious to the moaning and the clutching hands that reached for her as she passed. A groan rose in her throat. It was too much. Her town. The men. Rebels who had come to destroy, and yet they had been destroyed, one by one.She rushed up the road as fast as her throbbing ankle would allow. Confederates clogged the road. Wagons, horses pulling cannons. She turned and went east, where the stain of darkness limned the horizon.
    Her heart slammed pain into her chest. She stopped, a hand to her throat, seeing nothing familiar about the town, though in another way everything was familiar. Teresa’s flag was gone, and she wondered if it had survived, if Teresa and her family had left or stayed, were dead or alive.
    Heat from the blazes stroked her cheeks, some fresh and just getting started, others, starved for fuel, dwindled and smoked. A choking haze laced her every inhalation. At the crest of the east end of Main Street she saw the worst and halted in abject horror. A dark shape shifted to block her view.
    “Go back, ma’am. You should have left with the rest of them.”
    “You’ve killed us,” she whispered, her voice ragged and hoarse. “All of them . . .”
    “Get back, I tell you.”
    A wagon creaked up beside her. “Elizabeth Bumgartner?”
    “I’ve ordered her away,” the soldier stated flatly to the man. “If you can take her on . . .” He walked away, a stripe down his hazel trousers and linen shirt showing his rank. He was used to being obeyed.
    The man on the wagon was beside her. “I thought you’d be with your parents. Come with me and I’ll take you back.”
    The words were a hailstorm. She tried to collect the loose threads of her thoughts, staring again at the field in front of her, the cannons to her right and left. The milling about of soldiers, the shouts. All Rebels. Ragged, dirty Rebels. And in front of her, nearly at her feet, bodies. Blood, moans, screams.
    “Come with me, Elizabeth.”
    The name jolted her, and she pulled against the man’s hand, tilting her head to see his face. She knew him. He knew her. And despite the shock of what she’d seen, she recognized the face of Riley Mercer. The soft edge of a boy’s jaw now hardened by maturity. Riley had loved her once. Before Leo and the injury . . .
    “Yes.” The word sounded wooden and dead, like she felt.
    He said not a word as he helped her into the wagon. Erect, she could see into the bed, the tangle of limbs, heard the same low moans of pain. Blood. Her knees gave out and she sat, staring straight ahead, this view not much different.
    Riley was talking. She tried to focus on his words. Closed her eyes and wished she could close her ears to the roar of the fires and the distress of injured men, screams and gunfire and . . .
    “. . . school days. Never prepared us for such as this.”
    “No.”
    She hadn’t heard anything about Riley since returning to Sharpsburg. Why was he here and not with his wife in Mercersville, where he belonged?
    “Where’s your wife?”
    He stopped talking and she didn’t care how harsh the words sounded. Lina had been her best friend. Before the injury. They’d talked of Riley’s desire to court her, and his shyness.
    “She’s home with the children.”
    “Children.” This time the bitterness saturated her word.
    He took up the reins, and the wagon lurched forward. “Where would you like to go?”
    As if they were out for a Sunday