Free The Widow's War by Mary Mackey Page B

shawl William intended as a wedding present and throws it around her shoulders. The touch of the silk against her skin makes her sad. Perhaps she should put the shawl away, yet every time she wears it, she feels as if William is holding her. Will she remember him less often and be happier if she gives up the only gift he left her besides their baby? Running the hem of the shawl between her fingers, she decides the price of happiness is too high.
    There are three pens in the penholder. The nib of the first one she selects is so badly splayed it must have been used to tighten screws, but the next is brand-new. Taking a sheet of paper from the top of the pile, she dips the tip of the pen into the inkwell, and begins to write the first of eight letters:
    March 17, 1854
    Dearest Mama,
     
    I am writing to you because I need someone to confide in, and there is no one on this ship I can trust not to judge me. I lack the talent so many women have of working by indirection. I have always been too plainspoken for my own good. You and Papa always taught me to say what was on my mind and damn the consequences, but as I grow older I find this is a trait more suitable for a man than a woman.
    I am also writing to you because I was told to. There, you see: I am being blunt again, but I know you will not mind. You always were a woman of strong opinions. When you and Papa argued it was as equals, face-to-face with no words minced and nothing hidden between you.
    Before I left Rio, I went to a fortune-teller who threw those polished cowry shells the slaves call buzios, the ones they believe the gods use to send messages to human beings. I think the fortune-tellers read the messages by counting how many shells land right side up and how many fall upside down, but I’m not entirely sure. In any event, I know getting my fortune told was not a logical thing to do. The woman I went to claimed to be a priestess, but she was not nearly as skilled or wise as Mae Seja, and you never believed Mae Seja could see any farther than the end of her own nose. Still, I longed to know if my baby would be born well and healthy, and if it would be a boy or a girl.
    At first the fortune-teller refused to tell me what she saw. Instead she looked frightened, which alarmed me. When I ordered her to reveal what the buzios were saying, she told me I would give birth to a girl “more angelic, strange, and beautiful” than any child I had ever seen. I objected to the word strange and demanded to know what she meant, but she refused to say another word beyond repeating “If you want to know anything else, Senhora, ask your mother.”
    I called her a fake, told her my mother had been dead for fifteen years, paid her, and ordered her to go away since it was clear she did not know any more about the future than I did. But since then, I have had a change of heart. Recently, I realized I have never stopped talking to you although you have been dead since I was a child. I dream of you often, and although you can no longer reply, this one-sided conversation, which never stops, comforts me.
    Do the dead know what happens to the living? Were you present at my wedding? Did you slip into the church unseen and watch me marry a man I do not love for the sake of my unborn child?
    Yesterday, I left Rio to return to the States, and yesterday I felt my child move in my womb for the first time. Will she really be “angelic, strange, and beautiful?” Can you see her, or was the fortune-teller only pretending to read a message in the shells? Perhaps my baby is a boy. If so, I hope he will look like William. If the souls of unborn children and the souls of the dead are in the same place, please speak to my little boy and tell him that his mother already loves him.
    As you may have deduced by now, I am not entirely happy in my marriage. No surprise there; I didn’t expect to be. But I think if I were a person more capable of forgetting the past, I would at least be content as Deacon’s