Alias Dragonfly by Jane Singer

again pausing to stop before a painting, exclaiming, criticizing, admiring in murmurs as though they were in a church. The war is invisible here, I thought.
    Before I could pause to take it all in, Webster swept me to yet another large oil painting to the side of the gallery.
    Across the broad canvas, Indian braves rode in silence, scouting, watching in all directions, for what? Even the horse was vigilant, looking away, perhaps an impending attack? And the colors—
    Within minutes, Webster grabbed my arm and walked me hurriedly through the gallery and out the door. I blinked hard in the sunlight, my mind a jumble of images.
    “Don’t speak, Miss,” he said. “Just remember.”
    We passed through the daisy meadow and left the spires of the fantasy castle behind.
    “What now, Mr. Webster?” I asked, sensing this excursion was a kind of test.
    “I’m taking you back to your aunt, for now. Be patient.”
    Patient? Back to that solitude, the endless chores, for how long? I thought as Mr. Webster bid me farewell at the boardinghouse door.
    Two long days passed without any sign of Mr. Webster, or any word from my father. The papers had the lists of the missing and the dead in Papa’s regiment. His name was not among them. But where was he?
    Late in the afternoon of the second day, I was resting after my chores. To keep my mind busy, I kept going over the Indian painting in my mind. I could almost taste the dust, and feel the sweat of the Indian horses, their bodies slick with it. I remembered all I had seen in that remarkable museum. Details and colors skittered in my head.
    The door of my room opened slowly. A hand held out a china doll with pink lips and bright, azure eyes frozen open. Her blonde ringlets were swept up in a rose-colored ribbon. A high-pitched voice came from behind the door.
    “I jumped straight out of the toy-store window, just so I could be yours.” The doll head bobbed, and her eyes closed.
    My heart leapt for joy!
    I knew it was my father, and I was beyond relieved, but I wasn’t going to let on.
    “Okay, Papa, you can come in,” I said.
    My father opened the door wide. I threw myself into his arms, the doll crushed between us.
    “I couldn’t come or write, Maddie. I’m so sorry.”
    “You are safe!” The doll dropped to the floor.
    Now I’ve never had a doll so fine, and didn’t have the heart to tell him that at that moment, I couldn’t have cared less. I picked up the frozen-faced thing.
    “I wish you were a little girl still wrapped in your mama’s arms by the fire,” he said. “I wish this terrible war had never started. I watched men I’d come to love die in front of me.”
    “Oh, Papa.”
    I held him like he was the child and I was the adult. In that moment as I watched my father weep, how could I tell him I was waiting for . . . something? And for the first time in my life, wishing him to leave?
    He drew back, wiping his eyes, and looked at me, at the different me.
    “My regiment will remain here, Maddie, at one of the forts that guard the city. I don’t know how often I can get away, what with rumors of a Rebel invasion, and—”
    “The doll is really pretty, Papa.” I didn’t know what else to say.
    “Maddie, you must promise me never, never to run off again. Salome said you gave her such a fright.”
    “I can’t promise that, Papa,” I said.
    “Maddie! What has happened to you? Where is my good little girl, my darling?”
    “She’s gone, Papa!”
    I went to the window and looked out at the alleyway below. I was trying to think what else to say to my father when I saw two large, white men in overalls hovering at the doorway to the kitchen. One carried a rope, the other a shotgun. They were slave catchers, I was nearly certain.
    I had to warn Nellie. And if Isaac was about? My God!
    I had to leave right then.
    “Papa! I forgot! I have to finish helping Aunt Salome. She counts on me, she—” I pushed past him. “Leave me alone!”
    I raced through the