The letter was postmarked two months after he’d left for
the East. It had taken a full extra month to get forwarded to her in
her new home in St. Joe where she’d moved to be closer to Jeremiah and
Teresa. At one point she’d almost decided not to leave a forwarding
address but in the end, she’d told the postmaster in Rock Creek how to
reach her. Just in case.
And now she had a letter from him. Lou considered not even opening it. He had left in the middle of the night without even saying goodbye—he didn’t deserve to be heard now via words on a piece of paper.
Still she couldn’t help herself. Her curiosity got the better of her and she had to know what he had to say for himself. Saddling her horse, Lou rode out to her favorite thinking place—far enough from town that she would have some privacy. Ripping the envelope open, she pulled out a single piece of paper covered with Kid’s scrawling script.
She’d expected an apology but, after reading the letter twice, realized he wasn’t apologizing for anything. His words said nothing about being sorry for the way he left her for all intents and purposes standing at the altar. He didn’t even mention that they were to be married.
Our lives have been torn apart, our dreams are on hold? He was the one who’d torn them apart! He was the one who’d put them on hold!
Reading the letter a third time, Lou began to get angry.
It’s not the way we planned it, but it’s something I must do Why hadn’t she seen before that everything in Kid’s life revolved around him. He was right—they had planned their lives, starting with their marriage. And those plans had been destroyed by something he had to do. Her dreams, her needs hadn’t even been considered.
“How dare he!” the woman said aloud. “How dare he not even be sorry for what he’s done to both of us!”
“’Until fall’, he says,” she continued. “He really thinks this will all end with a “Take care and stay in touch” from the Union? He’ll be lucky if we see an end to this craziness by the end of the decade!”
Lou’s pacing grew more intense as she considered the rest of Kid’s words. “Sure, he ‘leaves his heart’ with me,” she said plaintively. “I don’t want just his heart, I want all of him!”
She already missed everything he claimed to miss in his letter. The warmth of his touch, the thrill of his kiss—they meant something to her too. If he missed them so much why did he go? Why didn’t he at least give her the option of going with him as his wife?
Oh, she knew the answer to that one. He wanted her to be “safe.” If anything that thought made her even angrier than the rest of his letter. What good was being “safe” if she worried herself to death over him?
She’d proven herself as good as any man—more times than she could count. She would be just as safe at his side as she was here in Missouri where the border raiders were probably more vicious than any soldier would be. He hadn’t thought about that, she was sure. More than likely, he was more concerned about his own having to worry about her in a battle if . . . when it came to that.
“At least if something happened to either of us, we’d be together,” she whispered as the tears began to stream down her cheeks. “At least we wouldn’t be hundreds of miles away, sick with worry that we’d never know.”