Among the Fair Magnolias Read online

“It’s what led you to me,” she whispered, touching his face, silently marveling at God’s quiet orchestration of lives and realizing she’d likely never know how often the Almighty did this. How often He interlaced such painful parts of this earthly journey with such joyous ones, weaving them together with such skill and grace. And beauty.

  And she’d be forever grateful He did.

  EPILOGUE

  Almost three months later

  “TOSS ME THE BALL THIS TIME, AIDAN!” ANDREW YELLED.

  “No!” Carolyne called. “Toss it to me.”

  Aidan grinned. “I’m going to toss it to the one person who isn’t yelling at me right now!” He lofted the baseball in the air to Savannah, who caught it one-handed, then threw it back—right between her brother and sister down the road leading to the house. Carolyne took off running for it, but Andrew in his newly fashioned boots and leg braces gave quite a respectable chase.

  Savannah laughed, watching them.

  Aidan came up from behind and slipped his arms around his wife. She leaned back into him, and he felt as though he had the world in his embrace. A breeze stirred the trees overhead, and leaves of burnished gold and crimson fell like snowfall in autumn.

  Savannah sighed against him. “Mrs. Eleanor Geoffrey at the Widows’ and Children’s Home said to thank you again for the draperies. She told me she never dreamed they’d ever have draperies so lovely.”

  “She’s welcome to them. I’m just grateful you’d saved the ones from our house.”

  “Our house. I love the sound of that. Though I still can’t believe you had me continue to sew the curtains even after you knew you didn’t want them.”

  “I had to have some reason to keep you coming back out here. Until I was ready”—he kissed her left hand, looking at the gold wedding band and band with companion diamond—“to give you this.”

  She turned in his arms and kissed him, which earned a wince from her younger brother and a smooching sound from her little sister. Which didn’t bother him or Savannah in the least.

  Mrs. Pruitt rang the bell beside the front step, signaling lunch was ready, and they ate at the table on the porch, Mrs. Pruitt included. The older woman adored Andrew and Carolyne and was happier than he’d ever seen her. He looked around the table at the faces and knew that no amount of human orchestration could have brought together what had happened here—and on a faraway battlefield in North Carolina.

  Jake Darby . . . Nashville.

  His throat tightened, thinking about that young soldier, and he pledged again—as he did every day—that he would not only live this life to its fullest, but that he would live it for the One who had given him life.

  He and Savannah had looked up the scripture reference scribbled on the back of the sketched likeness of her grandparents. Deuteronomy 29:29: “The secret things belong unto the Lord our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law.”

  The verse had become even more touching when they’d discovered the note Merle Darby had written beside it in the margin, almost hidden in the binding of the Darby family Bible. Along with the verse, Aidan had committed it to memory. “May what is hidden within the covers of this book bring life to the souls of my children and also serve as an inheritance, both in this life and in the one to come.”

  And the date written beside the note, April sixth, eighteen hundred and sixty-three, was the same as on the back of the drawn likeness of her grandparents. As best they could piece together that was the date Mr. Darby had finally told his wife about the land Savannah’s maternal grandfather had left to their oldest child years earlier.

  Aiden realized they’d likely never be certain, but they guessed that Melna Darby had refused the land due to the rift between her and her father. But Merle, in wisdom and love for his wife and children, had accepted it, then had held it in trust all those years.

  Thinking again of the scripture and note, Aidan intended to do all he could to make good on Merle Darby’s petition for the Darby family. His family now.

  Savannah disappeared and returned minutes later. “Be careful. It’s hot!”

  “Ooh!” Carolyne swooned. “Peach cobbler! That’s my favorite. It’s heavenly.”

  The golden-brown juice from the cobbler had bubbled over and baked onto the sides and looked every bit as good as Aidan knew it was. Savannah spooned the flaky crust and savory fruit into dishes, serving him first, then Mrs. Pruitt, then her siblings.

  And with every bite, he thought of Nashville. And of home. Both this one and the better one to come.

  A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  DEAR READER,

  Thanks for taking yet another journey with me. Your time is precious, and I appreciate you investing it with me.

  The idea for To Mend a Dream came while I was writing To Win Her Favor (a Belle Meade Plantation novel) and when I first met Savannah Darby on the page. Savannah is a secondary character in that novel, but her story and all that she’d been through and endured in her young life spoke to me—and demanded its own story.

  I love stories about hidden things. A hidden letter, message, or treasure. A trinket with a special meaning that’s discovered only once the mystery is solved. But I’m so grateful that in Christ nothing is hidden.

  He sees everything. Both the good and the bad in all of us. There’s no use pretending with Him. In fact, pretending with Him is really only pretending with yourself. I firmly believe in God’s master plan in our lives and in how He weaves our lives in and out of one another’s, like He did with Jake, Aidan, and Savannah.

  If you’re hurting right now and are wondering if Jesus sees you, rest assured that He does. And He not only sees you, He’s working for your eternal good this very moment, working in details of your life He has yet to reveal to you, and that you may never know about until we reach Home. But trust Him. He’s working.

  As Proverbs 16:9 says, “We can make our plans, but the Lord determines our steps” (NLT). And aren’t we grateful He does?

  For you baking enthusiasts, I’m including the recipe for Savannah’s Truly Southern Peach Cobbler featured in the story. This really is like the “good ol’ days” cobbler my granny Agnes Preston Gattis used to make. Hope you enjoy!

  I’d love to hear from you! Let’s connect through one of the venues listed on my About the Author page.

  Until next time . . .

  Tamera Alexander

  LOVE BEYOND LIMITS

  Elizabeth Musser

  With much love

  for my precious daughter-in-law,

  Lacy Elizabeth Musser,

  and for my nieces,

  Sadie Rosebud Wren

  Lynnette Musser Haizlett

  Rachelle Ashley Granski

  Leighanne Michaelee Nichole Granski

  Emily Joy Musser

  Hannah Kaye Musser

  Rachael Katherine “Katie” Goldsmith

  All of you are beautiful young women who are finding your place in this world. Hold tight to Jesus as you move forward with all the strength and exuberance that I admire in each of you.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Wilkes County, Georgia

  April 1868

  THE ROCK SAILED THROUGH THE OPEN DOORWAY OF THE one-room schoolhouse, landing near Emily’s feet. Startled, she bent down and saw that a piece of parchment had been tied around the stone. She removed it and read the words, printed in childlike block letters: KLAN IS ON THE WAY.

  Emily stepped out into the encroaching darkness, gathered up her dress in one hand, and took off running toward the cabins of the freedmen, calling out, “Sam! Sam!”

  An elderly Negro met her in the middle of the road, and she thrust the note into his hands. Sam had only learned how to read last year, but he deciphered the words quickly, then looked up at Emily and said, “Get outta here now, Miss Emily. Go on!”

  “I’m not afraid of the Klaners, Sam. I’m staying with you.”

  Sam looked at Emi
ly with wide eyes and shook his head. “You ain’t never been afraid a nothin’, Miss Emily. I knowed that. But you ain’t goin’ a stay here. Git yourself on upta the Big House now.”

  “The Klan’s never killed a white woman.” Emily lifted her head and squared her shoulders. “I’m staying.”

  The look on Sam’s face changed from surprise to something dark, so dark it jolted Emily. “I done seen you come into this world, Miss Emily, and I don’t aim ta see ya taken from it jus’ now.”

  “They won’t kill me!”

  “They’ll do worse. They’ll make you wish you was dead. They’ll make you watch while they kill us! Go on now!”

  “But I care. There must be something I can do.”

  “You is young and brave, Miss Emily. But the only way you can help is ta git yourself back up to the house and fall on your knees and beg our Creator for mercy.”

  She saw both fear and anger smoldering in Sam’s eyes. And then she heard the thunder of hoofbeats pounding the ground far in the distance. It sounded like death approaching.

  With a sweep of his hand, old Sam grabbed her and pushed her toward the little white clapboard church. “You cain’t git back to the Big House now. Get into the church and don’t make a sound, Miss Emily. I beg you.”

  His hands were trembling so hard that Emily grabbed them in hers. “I’ll stay here, I promise,” she said. “You go on home.”

  She watched Sam leave and felt her heart breaking. He was the oldest of the Derracotts’ former slaves, now a freedman. All of their slaves had stayed, trying to eke out a living on the thousand acres of farmland. Sharecropping was the word Father used. The slave quarters were gone, and now two dozen or more independent cabins formed a small community. With Father’s reluctant permission, the Negroes had built a church and a school on the property.

  Even the adults were going to school, educating themselves right along with their children. Every day Emily stood before them in the little schoolhouse they had erected two years ago and taught them to read and write.

  And now horrible men, driven by hate, were terrorizing plantations, seizing the freedmen, beating some, hanging others, committing sheer butchery for no reason at all except the one that had plagued their little part of the world for so long: the need for white people to believe they were superior in every way to Negroes.

  The hoofbeats grew louder, closer, and Emily fell to the floor, her heart hammering in her chest. Lord God, dear Lord, please protect them. Protect us.

  The freed Negroes were not the only ones who lived in fear of these night riders. Many white Republicans were now picked out by this demented group, the Ku Klux Klan, for punishment—beating and even murder. But Emily did not fear for her father. He was a sworn Democrat through and through. Still, he was a fine man who had treated his slaves kindly on the plantation.

  Before the war.

  Emily collapsed on the floor, brushed her black ringlets of hair from her eyes, and wept. “Before the war!” she said out loud. Her whole life had made sense before the war. Now the plantation was practically in ruins, her two brothers were dead, and Mother looked frail and old. Father was a fine, good man, but he was weak. And afraid.

  In 1867 Congress had divided the South into military districts and registered only voters who could take a loyalty oath to the United States and swear that they had not aided the Confederacy. These conditions had resulted in many white Southerners—including her father—being disenfranchised.

  Emily brushed her fists across her face to swipe away the tears. For all those antebellum years, she’d been naïve and young. But at twenty, with three years of caring for dying soldiers behind her and two years as a teacher at the schoolhouse for the former slaves, she was no longer naïve and she no longer felt young. She wanted the freedmen to have all that was due them by the Constitution. Their rights. With the new Reconstruction Act passed in 1867, black men were granted the right to vote. They could learn and own property and even hold political office.

  And die simply for being free.

  She’d read the stories in the papers, heard the whisperings of raids in nearby Greene County and the horrible beating that Mr. James Corley had undergone, in front of his wife and daughter. Sixty-five assailants, hooded men, some of whom were the aristocrats of the town, had brutally beaten him to within an inch of his life. He would be forever scarred physically and in ways that went much deeper. The Klan had chosen James Corley because he was a black legislator from Georgia.

  She felt the bile rise in her throat. And now the Klan was here in Wilkes County, on her father’s plantation. As she knelt on the wooden floor of the church, she wondered who had delivered the warning.

  Why had she stayed so late at the schoolhouse? She knew it wasn’t wise to be out alone after dusk. But she loved the stillness after the adults and children headed to their cabins. Alone in that room, she could prepare lessons for the next day . . . and, if she was lucky, get another glimpse of Leroy.

  There. She admitted it even as she heard a horse whinny, then the tramping of dozens of hooves. Light from burning torches glowed and blurred in the window as the angry mob rushed past the church toward the freedmen’s cabins. Emily knew the Klaners were enraged at the thought of the black men on the plantation exercising their new rights to vote or hold a legislative office. These changes were making the South into something that was anathema to the hard-line Democrats, who were intent on taking the South back to antebellum days. Perhaps the black man was free, but he would live in terror of the white man’s power.

  How true it was.

  The first shrill cry made her jump. Then the night exploded with terrifying, gut-piercing screams and the sound of the horses dancing in their places. Emily huddled in terror for perhaps ten minutes, though it felt like an hour. Then came boisterous shouts of victory from the men on the horses, and the hoofbeats again sounded past the church, going in the opposite direction. As Emily cowered in the corner, a lit torch crashed through the church window, landing only a few feet away by a stack of weathered hymnals. Before she could fling the torch out of the church, the hymnals had caught fire and her dress was singed.

  She threw open the church door as the flames spread to the makeshift wooden pews, igniting them like kindling. Emily ran outside, watching through her tears as the white-hooded riders galloped into the night. In the distance she saw three cabins lit up on fire, and the families scrambling out into the open. Crying, choking on the smoke, she started toward them.

  Then she stopped. Emily screamed, and her whole body began to shake. Washington Eager was swaying from a rope tied around a tree not ten feet away.

  “Cut him down! Cut him down!” She heard Leroy’s voice over the hysterical crying. He was beside her, then climbing on another man’s shoulders, and with a wretched grunt, Leroy sliced the rope in two. The body fell in a heap to the ground. Washington, Leroy’s older brother, was dead.

  Emily stood riveted in her place. Leroy’s face was covered in sweat and blood. He bent down, picked up Washington’s lifeless body, and held it in his arms, sobbing and screaming to heaven.

  Dizzy and nauseated, Emily forced herself to run to the Eager cabin. She was halfway there when she met Sam and his wife, Tammy, coming toward her.

  “Where did they take our boy? What they done to Washington?”

  Emily grabbed Tammy in her arms and held her tightly. Tammy had been her nursemaid, confidante, and personal slave for many years. It was Tammy whose strong black arms had held Emily when the soldier had appeared on the doorstep of the Big House with news of her brother Luke’s death in some valley in the North. Tammy had held Emily again when, only four weeks later, another soldier had come to announce her brother Teddy’s death.

  And now Emily held her friend, her friend, and wept with her as Leroy walked the long path back to the cabins, his dead brother in his arms.

  CHAPTER TWO

  August 1868,

  four months later

  EMILY LEFT THE SCHOOLHOU
SE FEELING ONLY SLIGHTLY reassured. No warning note had been thrown into the room. Still she felt wary, even full of dread, because of the news she had received that morning.

  Before she turned to go to the house, she walked far out into the fields, fields that were fast turning white, as if it were snowing in the middle of August. King Cotton! That was what they called it throughout the South. Harvest time would soon be upon them. She loved the feel of the downy cotton in her hands; from an early age she had taken pleasure in sitting with the slaves and passing the cotton through the cotton gin.

  Emily did not think much of Eli Whitney. Maybe he was famous for inventing the cotton gin way back in 1793, but to Emily he was infamous. It was his invention that had caused more slaves to be brought to Wilkes County, more slaves to be needed all throughout the South. The soil here was good for the special short-staple cotton foreign to the Sea Islands. Better soil, better cotton, bigger plantations—and that equaled more slaves.

  More slaves. And now, here on her father’s plantation, they were freedmen. Freedmen who still picked cotton. Tammy and Sam and Leroy and seventy-five other freedmen, women, and children would soon head out to the fields to pick King Cotton and share the revenue with her father. If there was any revenue.

  Oh please, Lord. Don’t let the crops fail again. For all of us. And please, Lord, keep the Klan away.

  “Emily Joy!” Her father’s voice startled her as she entered the parlor. “Where have you been? Your mother’s been beside herself looking for you.”

  She moved quickly to her father and hugged him tightly. He looked old, his black hair tinged with gray, his shoulders slumped, his suit ill-fitting. She had always considered him strong and determined. Before . . .

  “I was down at the schoolhouse preparing lessons.”

  Her father’s face went pale. “At this hour? After what happened in the spring?”

  “The time got away from me. And then I went out to the fields. It will be a good harvest this year, Father.”