Page 106 of Inferno
“I believe that home is your safe haven, Stanton,” she stated. “It’s where you feel most at peace. And you have more control over your home environment than your work environment. You can’t predict when and where a fire is going to take place, but you’ve established a comfortable routine at home. So you know when you’re going to have dinner together as a family, you know when you’ll be needed to help the kids with their homework, and you know when it’s time for you to relax and unwind with Prissy. Anything that upsets that balance—”
“Like me going out of town,” Prissy interjected, playfully bumping Stan’s shoulder.
Evangeline chuckled.“Exactly.Your absence from his safe haven throws him off.”
Stan grinned at Prissy. “Didn’t I tell you that you can’t go on any more business trips, woman?”
“Um, I’ll have to get back to you on that.”
Everyone laughed.
Sobering after several moments, Evangeline asked Stan, “How often do you have the nightmares at home?”
“Not often,” he admitted. Come to think of it, he could probably count on one hand the number of times he’d actually awakened from a nightmare under his own roof.
“But you slept on the sofa just to be sure,” Prissy surmised.
“Yeah,” he said grimly. “The nightmares are so damn unpredictable. I didn’t want to take any chances.”
“And now you know that was the wrong solution,” Evangeline gently admonished. “When a husband and wife begin sleeping apart, you open the door to temptation. Satan was using that woman—Dr. Gilliard—to prey on your vulnerable state of mind in order to lure you away from your wife. If you’d been a different type of man, Stanton, we might have been having an entirely different conversation right now.”
When Stan and Prissy scowled at the reminder of his therapist’s thwarted seduction attempt, Evangeline laughed and shook her head. “Oh, to have been a fly on the wall when my Prissy burst into that room. I know what you saw must have been a terrible shock toyou,baby, but you handled yourself admirably. May all my great-grandsons be fortunate enough to find such strong, feisty women who know how to stay and fight for their men instead of assuming theworst.”
“Amen,” Stan agreed, smiling affectionately at his firecracker of a wife.
Evangeline watched them with a quiet smile of satisfaction. After Celeste’s devastating defection from the family, her heart couldn’t have handled losing another beloved granddaughter, or watching any more of her babies suffer.
She sighed, the sound drawing the young couple’s gaze back to her. She smiled at them. “So now that we’ve analyzed the nightmares—or at leastattemptedto—I’d like to share the contents of this box that I brought from home.”
Stan chuckled softly. “I’ve been wondering what’s inside that box on your lap.”
“Me, too,” Prissy admitted.
Evangeline’s smile deepened. “Well, for the past year, I’ve been working on a book that chronicles the life and military service of your ancestor Bishop Wolf, who, as you both know, proudly served our country as a Buffalo Soldier in the Tenth Cavalry.”
Stan and Prissy stared at her in surprise. “You’re writing a book, Mama Wolf?” they exclaimed.
“I am.”
“That’swonderful!”
“Yes, it is.” Evangeline’s dark eyes glowed with pride. “I couldn’t have been more thrilled when Montana called to tell me that he was writing a book report on Bishop Wolf. I told him about my own project and swore him to secrecy because I wanted to surprise all of you once the book is published next fall. But in light of everything you’ve shared with me today, I now understand why the Lord led me to bring these letters on my trip this week.”
Stan and Prissy eyed her curiously. “What letters?”
“Letters from Bishop Wolf to his wife Sadie.”Evangeline opened the small box on her lap and carefully removed a stack of envelopes that were yellowed with age and bundled with frayed ribbons. She smiled tenderly at Stan. “I think it’s time for me to share these with you.”
Stan swallowed hard, then sat forward and reverently accepted the stack of letters from his grandmother. When he looked down at the bold, masculine handwriting scrawled across the stamped envelope on top of the pile, he was almost afraid to handle the fragile bundle a second longer.
He and Prissy exchanged awestruck looks,thenstared at Evangeline. “Shouldn’t these letters be preserved in a museum somewhere?” Stan asked wonderingly.
Evangeline smiled. “They will be soon enough. During Black History Month in February, the Georgia Historical Society in Savannah will be featuring Lieutenant Bishop Wolf and the Tenth Cavalry in an exhibit on Buffalo Soldiers. After that, a selection of Bishop’s letters and other artifacts will be permanently on display at the Georgia Museum of Natural History.”
“Wow,” Stan whispered, thoroughly awed and humbled to be holding such an important piece of his family’s history.His legacy.A key to the past.
“As I’ve explained to all of you over the years, Bishop Wolf was an educated man who’d gained his freedom long before he enlisted in the army. So he already knew how to read and write. And he wrote exceptionally well, as you will see for yourself.” Evangeline paused. “But what I never shared with you is that he was tormented by nightmares of dying on the battlefield.”
Stunned, Stan stared at her.“Really?”
