She was never coming back. At the base of the stairs, she stopped to press her hand to her mouth. Never coming back to this town, this battleground, this house. Though she would be in full retreat, she would not run.
She never glanced at the monitors, the gauges. Down the hall, she trailed her fingers over wood and paint, as if to absorb the texture into memory.
At the kitchen doorway, the power punched like a fist….
Stew cooking. The distant pop of gunfire…
Weak, she leaned against the wall as the door opened.
She knew it was Shane. The rational part of her mind recognized the shape of him, the stance, even the smell. But with some inner eye she saw a man carrying a bleeding boy….
My God, my God, John. Is he dead?
Not yet.
Put him on the table. I need towels. Oh, so much blood. Hurry. He’s so young. He’s just a boy.
Like Johnnie.
So like Johnnie. Young, bleeding, dying. The uniform was filthy and wet with blood. The new stripe of his rank was still bright on the shoulder of the tattered jacket. There was a rustle of worn paper from a letter in the inside pocket as she peeled the uniform away to see the horror of his wounds.
Just a boy. Too many dying boys…
Rebecca saw it, could see the scene in the kitchen perfectly. The blood, the boy, those who tried to help him. There, the letter in Sarah’s hands, the paper worn where it had been creased and recreased, read and reread. The words seemed to leap out at her….
Dear Cameron…
“They couldn’t save him,” Shane said carefully. “They tried.”
“Yes.” After the breath she’d been holding was expelled, Rebecca pressed her lips together. “They tried so hard.”
“At first, he only saw the uniform. The enemy. He was glad that a Yankee had died there. Then he saw the face, and he saw his son in it. So he brought him home. It was all he could do.”
“It was the right thing to do, the human thing.”
“They wanted that boy to live, Rebecca.”
“I know.” Her breath shuddered out, shuddered in. “They fought as hard as they could. All the rest of that day, through the night, sitting with him. Praying. Listening to him, when he could speak. Shane, there was too much love in this house for them not to try, not to fight for that one young boy’s life.”
“But they lost him.” Eyes grim, Shane stepped forward. “And it was like losing their son again.”
“He didn’t die alone, or forgotten.”
“But they buried him in an unmarked grave.”
“She was afraid.” Tears trembled out, rolling down Rebecca’s cheeks. “She was afraid for her husband, for her family. Nothing meant more to her. If anyone found out that boy had died here, and John a Rebel sympathizer who’d lost a son to the Yankees, they might have taken John from her. She couldn’t have stood it. She begged him not to tell, to dig the grave at night so no one would ever know. Oh, she grieved for that boy, for the mother who would never know where or when or how he died. She read the letter.”
“Yeah, then they buried the letter from his mother with him.”
“There was no envelope, Shane. No address. Nothing to tell them where he had come from, or who was waiting for him to come home. Just the two pages, the writing close and crowded as if she’d wanted to jam every thought, every feeling into them.” A breath shuddered out. “I saw it. I could read it, just as Sarah did… Dear Cameron.”
Shane’s eyes went dark, his stomach muscles tightened, twisted. “That’s my middle name. Cameron was my grandfather’s name. Cameron James MacKade, John and Sarah’s second son. He was born six months after the Battle of Antietam.” Shane took a steadying breath. “The name’s come down through the MacKades ever since. Every generation has a Cameron.”
“They named their child after the boy they couldn’t save.” Helplessly Rebecca rubbed the tears from her cheeks with the flats of her hands. “They didn’t forget him, Shane. They did everything they could.”
“And then they buried him in an unmarked grave.”
“Don’t hate her for it. She loved her husband, and was afraid for him.”