The Widow's War by Mary Mackey Read Free Book Online

not call him that, but he was five years younger than I am, you see, and during the time I was taking care of him, I came to think of him as the younger brother I never had.” He rises to his feet. “Now, with your permission, I’ll take my leave. I imagine you want to be alone.”
    Carrie finds herself reluctant to part with him. He’s the last connection she’s ever likely to have to William, and there’s something he should know, something she hadn’t intended to tell him until the moment he called William “the younger brother I never had.”
    Folding the shawl, she puts it on her writing desk next to the piece of paper that contains William’s hair. “Mr. Presgrove, are you returning to the States any time soon?”
    “Yes. I plan to leave in a few weeks after I have finished my business in Salvador. Frankly, I’ll be glad to go home. There is too much death in the tropics.”
    She is surprised to hear him utter the same thought she had been entertaining only a few hours earlier. “Could you carry a message to your stepmother for me?”
    “It would be my pleasure. Would you like me to wait while you write it?”
    “I do not need to write it, Mr. Presgrove. It’s a very short message, and I doubt you’ll forget it. Please tell her—” She pauses, trying to gauge what his reaction will be, then decides it doesn’t matter because she will probably never see him again. “Please tell Mrs. Presgrove she’s going to be a grandmother.”
    Mr. Presgrove looks at her in bewilderment. Suddenly he smiles. There’s not a hint of censure in his face. “A grandmother! You are carrying William’s child? Miz Vinton, this is the best news I have heard in . . . My stepmother will be overjoyed. Her health is frail, and I have been dreading the moment when I must face her and tell her of her son’s death. Now I can bring her good news as well as bad. I think your announcement may well save her life. You are an angel, Miz Vinton.”
    “I am not . . .” Carrie says, but he waves away her protest.
    “An angel, I say. Do not deny it.” He looks as if he is about to weep with happiness. Carrie is moved by his reaction. For the first time since he arrived, she likes him. It’s not his fault that he was forced to bring her the news of William’s death.
    “What a gift you are giving us,” he continues. “I love children, Miz Vinton. I have always adored them. I have none of my own, you see, not being married, so to be told that I am about to become an uncle . . . well, I can’t tell you what great joy this brings me. Thank you.”
    “You don’t condemn me then?”
    “Condemn you? How could I? Children are a gift from God, Miz Vinton. Now that we are to be related, I must call you ‘Carolyn’ and you must call me ‘Deacon.’ Would you mind that? I am sorry. I am being too familiar and probably not making sense. But a child! How wonderful! When is the happy event to take place?”
    Again Carrie is touched. Overwhelming joy over the birth of a baby isn’t a trait you often find in a man who isn’t the father. She examines Mr. Presgrove’s face and sees signs of tenderness and sympathy she missed earlier. He’s a good man , she thinks. A decent man.
    Later she will realize that she should have looked at his face more closely, but now in this parlor with her grief newly minted, she only sees a stranger with William’s warm heart who looks something like William.
    “I will have my baby in June,” she says. My baby . The first time she has ever uttered those words aloud. William’s baby, too , she thinks . Suddenly she experiences a passionate hunger to be held and comforted, and an ache so deep all she wants to do is run from it. Unable to meet Mr. Presgrove’s eyes, she looks toward the garden and sees a hummingbird stabbing its beak into a purple and white-petaled flower. Passiflora edulis : maracujá in Portuguese; passionflower in English. The unspoken words fall on her tongue like dust. She chokes on