Circle of Love
1
JENNIFER COLLINS SETTLED into the plump cushions that lined her wicker chair as Grandma Briley began to read from Frances Mary Kelly’s faded blue journal.
Jennifer’s brother, Jeff, who had been lying on the floor, propped himself up, chin resting on his hands, and interrupted Grandma. “Wait a minute. You just said that the date of this story was July 1866. Was the Civil War over then?”
“Officially.” Grandma brushed a damp strand of gray hair back from her face and took a sip of iced tea “General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant in April of 1865. That brought an end to the War Between the States.”
Jennifer did some quick mental arithmetic. “Frances was thirteen when the Kelly children were sent west by the Children’s Aid Society. That was in 1860. So in July 1866, Frances Mary would have been nineteen.”
“That’s right.”
Jennifer sighed. “I remember that when you first began to read Frances’s entries, she said her dearest love had given her this journal and told her to write her stories in it.”
“If this is a love story, I don’t want to hear it,” Jeff said, and made a face.
Grandma’s eyes twinkled. “There’s been love in every story Frances Mary has told. There are many kinds of love! I’m going to read about love, and then you’re going to hear a surprising story of adventure and danger. I just said that the war was officially over. It had a terrible effect upon some people’s hearts and minds. The wounds took a long time to heal.”
“Whose hearts and minds?” Jeff asked.
“Oh, be quiet, Jeff,” Jennifer said impatiently. “Let Grandma read so we can hear what happened.”
Grandma smiled and began with Frances Mary’s own words:
Early this morning, I brushed my hair in pale sunlight. As I tucked two silver-edged combs into my hair, I remembered my nineteenth birthday, when Johnny Mueller gave them to me.
And gave me this journal.
“Write the stories you have been carrying in your heart,” he said. “Begin with your family. Begin when you were very young in New York. Begin with your own story.”
I did. I wrote about my parents and my brothers and my sisters, who meant so much to me. The words and tears and love spilled out together, capturing our stories forever on these pages.
By this time I should have written about the one I love most of all—Johnny. I should have written about our wedding day—a day of dreams come true. Sadly, though, there has been no wedding.
I’m sure that I loved Johnny from the moment I first met him, when I came to Kansas on an orphan train. I have always known that Johnny loved me. During the war I kept up my spirits by reminding myself that as soon as Johnny returned from his service with the union Army, we’d marry. But Johnny’s one-year internment in a Confederate prisoner-of-war camp took its toll on his health.
Under the strong Kansas sunlight his face has regained most of its color, and his cough no longer shakes his entire body. But the farmwork he once did with strength and ease exhausts him, and the dark depths of his eyes seem to mirror horrors that haunt him like demons.
Since I’m a woman, it would be unseemingly of me to propose marriage, but I have hinted at it in many ways. Each time, Johnny’s mouth tightens. He absolutely refuses to talk about marriage.
Over and over I have asked myself: Can’t he see what a good wife I’d make? Doesn’t he want to know the joys of raising a family together?
It has been a week since I laid down my pen. Tears came to my eyes as I reread what I wrote about Johnny and the questions I asked myself. If I had known the answers, perhaps I would never have let my temper run away with me. Johnny and I wouldn’t have had such a terrible argument on our way to town, and I wouldn’t have plunged into a sudden course of action that changed my entire life.
2
FRANCES MARY KELLY rode on the front seat of the Muellers’ wagon next to Johnny. Hot July air from the Kansas prairie, fragrant with the sharp scent of newly cut grasses and freshly turned earth, swirled around them. Plowed ridges lay to their right, grazing land to their left. In the distance a snaking line of scrubby trees marked the presence of a stream, and close to the stream stood a house.
The door opened and Frances caught a flash of blue. She knew the woman who wore the blue dress—Elvira Reading.
“El-mer! Come right this minute!” The high and low notes in the woman’s voice carried through the stillness, as did the voice of the child who answered, “Coming, Ma!”
Frances held a hand to her chest, pressing against a growing ache. That is what I want for Johnny and me, she thought. Marriage, a home, children. Why can’t it be?