Perhaps this is just as well, Rosalie thinks, now that John is in the house. It’s always best if he and John stay away from politics.

vi

The storm moves from Gettysburg to New York City. In its aftermath, the summer heat is unbearable. Rosalie goes about the large house opening every window at night, closing them and pulling the drapes every morning. She’s sitting in the parlor, holding her book to her face in the dim and curtained room, when Edwin comes to talk to her. She closes the book with her finger inside. It’s The Wide, Wide World, which Rosalie has taken from Mr. Putnam’s shelves. She’s read it before, but never in such a handsome edition. The book’s main message is to meet life’s troubles with Christian faith. There’s also a romance, which is the part Rosalie is rereading.

“I’ve asked Adam to come and stay while he recovers,” Edwin tells her. “He can take my room.”

Adam Badeau was wounded in the foot in the Battle for Port Hudson. When Edwin first heard, Rosalie had found him oddly dismissive. She’d said so and he’d turned those haunted eyes on her. “Which is deeper,” he’d asked, “my wound or his?”

“Don’t say that to him,” she’d said, but too late; the deed is done.

A letter later and Edwin understands that Adam’s injury is serious. His foot was shattered and has had to be surgically reconstructed. He will walk again, but not for many weeks. “Ad should be with people who love him,” Edwin says and Rosalie can’t say no—the house is Edwin’s. Besides, no one should stand in the way of friendship and charity. She does worry that Edwin will get the friendship while, as a woman, the charity will fall to her. That she’ll be the one expected to play nurse.

She doesn’t love Adam. He’s too obsequious where Edwin is concerned. Also quite vain for such a stout little man. And will John behave himself with a Union soldier convalescing in the house? John’s the one Edwin should be asking.

“The world is still beautiful to Ad,” says Edwin wonderingly.

—

Adam’s carriage arrives. His foot is an enormous lump of bandages and bracing, and he looks older than Rosalie remembers, more lines scratched into his round red face. He has to be carried from the street to the house, put down in the parlor so his bearers can rest, and then taken in one tremendous go up the stairs to his room. John and Edwin carry him together, their hands clasped in a sling beneath him. Rosalie follows with one of his bags.