CHAPTER TEN

The Cartwrights spent the following day preparing for their journeys from Philadelphia. Jacob, Hannah, Rachel, and Adam didn't have much to pack, but Josie had to sort all her belongings from her dormitory room into two categories: things to take to Nevada and things to send to Boston with her parents for storage. She'd already given away a few of her formal dresses to Michaela and Katherine because she'd have limited need for ball gowns for Nevada, but she wanted to take all her medical textbooks and reference books to help her as she set up her practice. Adam packed her books into a trunk, and he smiled when he came across well-loved copies of The Children of the New Forest and Frankenstein. Josie complimented Adam on the way he had managed to fit all the books into the trunk like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and she tucked a quilt over top of them to hold them in place and keep them dry. The lid of the trunk didn't quite close over the fluffy quilt, so she sat on the trunk while Adam strapped it shut.

Supper that night was a subdued affair. The family wasn't looking forward to saying goodbye to one another tomorrow. Josie, especially, felt conflicted. She was excited to go west with Adam, but this would be the farthest she'd ever traveled from her parents. Even when she was at school in Hartford they'd seen each other every few months. This wouldn't be possible with her all the way out on the Ponderosa, and no one could predict how long the war would last. She was also terrified for her father's safety. He was accompanying Hannah and Rachel back to Boston but had to report to the Army in Washington by June 1. Jacob sensed his daughter's ambivalence and cast her several encouraging smiles across the table during their meal.

Josie tossed and turned in bed that night. Sometime around one a.m. she gave up on sleep and decided to read for a while. No sooner had she lit the lamp then she remembered that all her books were packed neatly in her trunk. She couldn't possibly replicate Adam's precise work—and she probably couldn't get the trunk latched again on her own anyway. Groaning, she flopped backward onto her bed and stared at the ceiling for an hour before drifting into a fitful sleep.

Jacob and Hannah slept no better in their room next door. Hannah accepted that she wouldn't sleep that night, but Jacob dosed himself with several shots of brandy in the hopes it would help him doze off. Unfortunately, all it did was make him drunk, so he lay in bed wide awake and slightly nauseated. He tried not to disturb his wife, but Hannah knew him too well.

"She will be all right," she said, rolling over and wrapping an arm around him. "Ben and the boys will take good care of her. Not that Josie needs taking care of." She laughed lightly.

"I'm not worried about her on the Ponderosa. This is the right decision. I just hate seeing our family split apart."

Hannah sighed. "I think we will see thousands of families split apart by the time this war is over." They were already hearing reports of families in which brothers had joined opposing armies. Even the great Colonel Robert E. Lee, a thirty-two-year veteran of the U.S. Army and a former superintendent of the United States Military Academy, had resigned his army commission to take command of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. The war was splitting all types of families.

"Unfortunately, I think you're right," Jacob said. "At least you and Josie will be with family, even if you're not together." He pulled her close. Hannah eventually drifted off, but Jacob lay awake until dawn.

Rachel, too, spent most of the long night lying awake. She liked predictability, and this "civil" war as people were calling it was upsetting her sense of order and control. Up until now she had been able to pretend the war didn't affect her. Jacob and Hannah coming to stay in Boston was a pleasant family visit, and Adam was in Philadelphia for no other reason than Josephine's graduation. But in the morning the charade would end. Josephine would board a westward-bound ship with Adam and sail away. In a few more days, her brother-in-law would return to Washington to join the Army. She could pretend no longer. The war had come home.

In his room across the hall, Adam had no trouble falling asleep, but he awoke an hour and a half before dawn, which was early even by his standards. He tried to go back to sleep, but images of Uncle Jacob under fire on a battlefield kept invading his thoughts, so he opened his trunk and dug out his copy of Uncle Tom's Cabin. After only a couple of pages, however, he discovered that a story about slavery was not a good distraction under the circumstances, and he returned the book to his trunk. He pulled out his sketchpad and a pencil instead, flipped to a clean page, and began scratching out a building design that had been flitting about his mind the past few days. He was very pleased with the way his brainchild was taking shape, and he was so absorbed in his sketch that he barely noticed the time passing. Before long the sunlight was filtering through his window, so he stowed his sketchpad and pencil and hauled himself out of bed to wash up and dress for breakfast.

All five family members stumbled bleary-eyed into the hallway. Josie was massaging a kink in her neck she'd gotten from sleeping sideways on her bed with no pillow, Jacob was nursing a vicious hangover and cringed at every sound, and Adam's chin was bleeding freely from a spot he had nicked while shaving. Rachel drew a handkerchief from her pocket and reached out to press it to her nephew's chin, but in her fatigue, she misjudged the distance between herself and Hannah and clocked the younger woman in the nose with the back of her hand. Hannah's head snapped back and collided with Jacob, who stumbled backward, groaning. Rachel dropped the handkerchief onto the floor and reached for her sister while apologizing profusely. Josie drew out her own handkerchief and attended to Adam's chin.

"Goodness," she said, examining the cut. "What were you trying to do? Perform surgery on your own jaw?"

"I didn't even notice," he yawned. "But that would explain why my aftershave stung so much."

Josie rolled her eyes and applied the handkerchief. While she waited for Adam to clot, she gazed around at her family: her aunt still apologizing to her mother, her mother dabbing under her nose to check for bleeding, her father leaning with his forehead against the wall and his fingers in his ears to block out the commotion, and her cousin bleeding through one of her best handkerchiefs. She shook her head.

"We are a sorry lot this morning."

"Shhhhhhhh," Jacob said, his forehead still pressed to the floral wallpaper.

When Adam finally stopped bleeding, Josie ducked back into her room to toss the ruined handkerchief in the waste bin, and after peeling Jacob off the wall, the family headed downstairs to the dining room for breakfast. The clamor of the other diners and the clink of silverware on china was agony for Jacob, who even in a quiet room would have been too nauseated to eat. He nursed a cup of coffee, and Hannah, whose nose had fortunately not been damaged, periodically patted his knee. He excused himself early from the table to check them out of their rooms and arrange for their luggage to go to either the wharf or the train station.

Adam and Josie's ship was set to depart at ten o'clock, and the train to Boston not until noon, so after breakfast the family headed for the wharf. Adam had splurged on first-class tickets, so he and Josie were among the first passengers to board. He felt a powerful surge of déjà vu as the family stood in a circle, not sure who should begin the goodbyes. Josie wished Hoss were there to set everyone at ease. Finally, Rachel broke the spell and embraced Josie. Startled, she stiffened against her aunt's grasp. Rachel wasn't the hugging type, and even if she had been, she still had never exhibited any particular fondness for her niece. Josie patted her clumsily on the back.

"Godspeed, Josephine," Rachel whispered in Josie's ear. She broke away from Josie and hugged Adam, who reacted every bit as stiffly as Josie had done. "Take care of her," Rachel instructed him.

"Yes, ma'am."

Her farewells said, Rachel dabbed at her eyes and stepped behind Jacob and Hannah, leaving Josie face-to-face with her parents.

"Oh, Mama!" Josie cried, rushing into her mother's arms. The two women burst into tears and clutched each other for several long moments. "I promise to write," Josie sobbed.

"I know you will," Hannah choked out. She took a few shuddering breaths and stepped back, cradling her daughter's face in her hands. "I am so proud of you, Josie. More than you will ever know. I love you so much."

"I love you, too."

Hannah stepped to Adam and hugged him tightly. "Take care of her," she whispered into his ear.

"I will. I promise."

Josie faced her father, whose squinting against the painfully bright sunshine caused the corners of his dark eyes to crinkle. He reached his arms out to her, and she threw herself into them, still sobbing.

"Hush now," Jacob said as he stroked his daughter's dark hair. "You're off on a grand adventure."

"And you're off to war!" Josie wailed. "Papa, please be careful. You have to come home. Promise me you'll come home."

"I'll do everything I can," Jacob said sniffling. "That much I can promise."

"I love you, Papa!"

"I love you, too, darling." Jacob was weeping openly now, and he made no attempt to hide it. He and Josie held each other until the ship's horn announced that first-class passengers could board. Jacob released his daughter and turned quickly to Adam. The men shook hands at first, and then Jacob pulled him in for a warm embrace. "Take care of each other."

"We always do. And she'll have Pa and Hoss and Little Joe looking out for her, too."

Jacob stepped back and gave him a skeptical look.

"Well, forget I put Joe on that list."

Everyone laughed through their tears as the ship's horn sounded a second time.

"Go, go!" Jacob said, shooing Adam and Josie toward their ship. Josie gave her father one last hug and then turned toward the ship, tears still streaming down her cheeks. Adam put an arm around her shoulders, and together they headed for the gangway.