Leaving Independence Read Free Page B

options.
    Her father stood leaning on a rail of his expansive white porch and watched her approach. “That’s a sorry horse you’ve borrowed,” he mumbled as she came into earshot.
    Leo Walstone had never been one to soften sentiments, not even for Abigail, his only daughter.
    “What brings you out here?” he wanted to know as she dismounted and tied her horse to the porch rail.
    She walked up the steps and kissed his cheek before answering. “Mimi baked you a pie.”
    “Blackberry?” He accepted her kiss but didn’t offer one in return.
    She nodded and went inside, setting the pie on the kitchen table, then returned to the parlor, the room he most often inhabited. “The banker came to the house yesterday.”
    “I knew it! I knew it as soon as I saw you coming from Arlon and Annie B’s without your family. He wants his money back?”
    Abigail looked at him—this man she had once loved above all others. He had not wanted her to marry Robert Baldwyn and had shown his displeasure by withdrawing his love for the past seventeen years.
    “Yes. I’ll have to sell the house if I can’t find another way to pay him back.”
    “If you’re here to ask me for money, I can’t help you. If damned idealists like Robert Baldwyn had left well enough alone and stayed the hell off my land and away from my horses, I wouldn’t be left with nothing but worthless bonds!”
    Abigail crossed her arms and tried to avoid looking at her brother’s bloodstains on the floor. Seth had bled out here after being wounded at the Battle of Franklin. That had been the beginning of the end for the Confederacy and had sealed her father’s hatred for all things Federal.
    “You can have all the Confederate bonds you can carry,” he said. “I got a trunkful—but the only thing I have that the bank would see as collateral is my land, and I’ll be damned if I give those Northerners a single acre!”
    Abigail shook her head. “Why can’t you let go of your hatred, Daddy?”
    He scowled and pointed at the parlor floor. “How can I, Abby? I have to look at that every day, thanks to men like your husband. For all we know, he’s the one that shot your brother.”
    Abigail had reached in her pocket for Major Talbot’s letter, intending to tell her father about it, but now she stuffed it back down. What good would it do? She had long ago grown tired of hearing her father criticize Robert, and before that, of hearing Robert criticize him. So without mentioning that Robert might still be alive, she reached for her wrap. If Robert ever did come home, she wasn’t sure he and her father could ever mend their broken bonds. She ought not to have come. Every time she came her father managed to stamp out another remnant of her love. Soon, there’d be nothing left.
    “Give my best to Thad and Nathan,” she said, trying to quell the tide of emotions that had stirred her heart since her decision to ride out and ask her father for help.
    She was outside, mounted, and had pointed the horse toward Marston when Mr. Walstone called from the porch, “Wait! I have something for the children.” He walked back to her minutes later from his barn, a black puppy in his arms.
    “Name’s Rascal.” He lifted the dog up. “In memory of Robert.”
    Abigail leaned over to kiss the bald of her father’s head as she took the puppy from him, heartsick at the events that had changed him into the acidic stranger who stood before her now. “I guess I should be glad you didn’t name him Damned Idealist.”
    “I’ll give you land, Abby—tried to give your husband land but he never would take it. You can come back here and your brothers will build you a nice house.”
    Abigail’s throat tightened. She wanted to protect the good memories she had of him and her upbringing, and she didn’t want his venom infecting her children. “We have a nice house now, Daddy. I’m sorry you’ve never accepted my invitations to see it.”
    She held her tears to the end of the