The Unhappy Resurrection of Winston Biggs

I have neither the energy nor the inclination to record every gruesome detail of my husband's death — if, indeed, dear reader, my poor Winston is truly dead. It may well be my duty as a wife to bear witness, but I take no pleasure in documenting the particulars. I write only for the sake of the child I carry inside me, the one that deserves to know what happened to its father.

To understand my husband, you must first know and come to accept, as I have, that Winston Biggs was seemingly possessed of an uncanny ability, on more than one occasion, to cheat death. Even as babe, no more than a few days old, Winston should, by all accounts, have died, but the scarlet fever that took his mother apparently never touched the child.

Tragedy struck the family again when Winston was thirteen. He alone somehow walked away from a fire that claimed the lives of his father and two servants, a fire that started in the boy's own bedroom. It was then that Winston left Washington, near Augusta, to live with his older sister in Savannah.

Now, there is no doubt that Julia Gaines, widow of the late honorable Judge Jefferson Gaines, loved my husband. When she married at nineteen, leaving a then six-year-old Winston to fend for himself back home, she was certain to tell her brother that he always had a home in Savannah. My husband had said on many occasions that were it not for Julia, he would not have lived to see as many days as he had.

I wish I had understood their relationship better from the very beginning.

I had met Winston at the wedding of a mutual friend. Savannah society, even then, was a small group of well-informed wives and widows, all looking for any opportunity to marry off a niece or daughter. I was the former, visiting my Aunt Winnie for the summer when I was eighteen. Winston, wide-eyed and handsome in his uniform, was formally introduced to me after the Church service. He was then dividing his time between Washington and Savannah, trying to rebuild the Biggs estate.

It was not until the following week, when he awkwardly came to call with an invitation to dinner at his sister's house, that I knew Winston Biggs was the man for me.

Only three years and few months separated us in age. We were perfect together. We shared a fondness for gardens and a love of music. We both wanted a large family and an estate with many servants. He called me his "lovely Rose" — for that is my name, Rose — and I was the happiest woman alive.

It was to be a short courtship. We were married on the 22nd of March. A few weeks later, Winston rejoined his regiment, the 15th Georgia Infantry, and I was a new bride — with no husband and no home, for the house in Washington was still in disrepair. It was then that Julia invited me to stay with her at the house on York Street, near Columbia Square. Without Nelson there, her sixteen-year-old son who was also off fighting Yankees, the house felt empty, she told me.

I remember her saying "We are, after all, family, my dear."

But family does not keep secrets as Julia and Winston kept from me.

I had never had a sibling, so I do not expect to know or understand the nature of the bond that exists between brothers and sisters. Winston and Julia shared a playfulness that I envied, and an unspoken understanding of each other's thoughts. For the few weeks of our short honeymoon, Winston spoke much of Julia.

"I owe her my life," he once told me at dinner.

I had only remarked that Julia seemed overly protective of him.

He reached inside his vest, as if to show me something, but then stopped.

"Do you trust me?" he asked.

"Implicitly," I answered, for I was in love.

"Then, please, never question my sister's dedication."