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“He says we can borrow it,” Carolee put in. “Once he finds it. Claims it’s stored, which probably means it’s buried somewhere in the piles.”
“He won’t be in any rush to dig it out,” Justine continued. “But I talked to my cousin, his daughter. We always got along, and she’ll nag at him for me. Meanwhile, he doesn’t remember a Joseph William Ryder; my father doesn’t either. But Daddy thinks he heard stories from his grandfather about a couple of his uncles fighting in the Civil War, and one of them, he thinks, died at Antietam. But I can’t swear that’s a fact. It might just be Daddy’s remembering it that way because I asked that way.”
“It’s a start,” Hope said. A frustratingly slow one. “I can’t find any Joseph William Ryder listed as buried at the National Cemetery.”
“I’ve got nothing so far,” Owen added. “But there’s still a lot to go through.”
“Daddy said he knows there was an old Civil War bayonet, and some other things—shells, a uniform cap. Even old cannonballs,” Carolee added. “What he didn’t know is if they came down in the family or if they just got dug up in the farming. A lot of old stuff gets dug up.”
“I barely remember the farm,” Justine told them. “It got sold off before you boys were born. Houses planted on it now, and the Park Service bought some of it. But Daddy said—and this he was sure of—there was a little family cemetery.”
Hope straightened. “On the farm?”
“People buried their own in the country sometimes rather than in churchyards or cemeteries. He said it was down an old, rutted lane, backed by some trees. It might still be there.”
“I can find out,” Owen said. “If they exhumed, it takes paperwork to move graves.”
“On the old Ryder farm.” Frowning, Ryder considered his beer. “There’s a pond. A little one.”
“Daddy said they had a little swimming hole. How do you know that?”
“I dated a girl who lived in one of the houses they put up. There’s a small cemetery, an old one. It’s got a low stone wall around it, and a plaque. The Park Service type. I didn’t pay much attention. I was more focused on trying to get her naked and into the pond.”
“Why didn’t you say so before?” his mother demanded.
“I don’t usually tell you about girls I’m trying to get naked.” And he smiled at her. “Mom, I was like sixteen. She was the first girl I took around after I got my license. What the hell was her name? Angela—Bowers, Boson—something. I didn’t get her naked, so it didn’t stick. And I didn’t think of any of it until now. I do remember thinking, shit, some of those dead people are relatives, then it was back to hoping for naked.”
“A guy’s attention span’s short at sixteen,” Beckett put in. “Except for naked girls.”
“It’s still there,” Justine remembered. “We should’ve known that. It’s disrespectful we didn’t, Carolee.”
“Daddy just wanted off the farm,” Carolee reminded her. “He wanted away from everything to do with farming. And he and Grandpa were at odds over that for so long. It’s no wonder we didn’t know.”
“We know now,” Owen reminded them. “We’ll go take a look.”
“All right.” Justine rose. “Let’s corral the kids and dogs.”
“What?” Owen blinked at her. “You want to go now?”
“What’s wrong with now?”
“The sun’s going to set before long, and—”
“Then we shouldn’t waste time.”
“If we wait until tomorrow, I can go, take a look, let you know what—”
“Why are you wasting your breath?” Ryder asked him.
After a rush, a pause for debates, much excitement from the boys on what promised to be an adventure, they piled in various cars and trucks. One debate involved dogs, and in the end, they left Ben and Yoda with Cus and Finch—cutting the numbers.
Hope found herself riding shotgun in Ryder’s truck, D.A. sprawled on the seat between them.
“Tomorrow would’ve been more sensible,” Hope commented.
“None of this is about sense.”
“No, it’s not. And I’m glad we’re going tonight. He may not be there, or the headstones may have been damaged. It may never have been marked.”
“Good. Keep up that positive thinking.”
“Just preparing for possibilities.”
“There’s a possibility you’ll find what you’re after.”
“I guess I’m a little nervous that we won’t find anything, and a little nervous that we will.”
He took one hand off the wheel, reached over to take one of hers in a gesture that surprised her heart into thudding. “Stop, and relax.”
Because the abrupt order struck more in line with what she was used to, she did just that.
“This was all farmland,” he told her as he turned onto a winding road with homes spaced wide enough for some decent elbow room, for sloping lawns, shady trees.
“It must’ve been beautiful. All fields and rolling hills.”
“People have to live somewhere. And they didn’t crowd them in, so that’s something. We got some work out here during the boom. People adding on, remodeling.”
She leaned forward. “Is that—”
“Yeah, the old Ryder farmhouse. The developer was smart enough not to tear it down, to put some money into it—and I bet he got plenty out of it.”
“It’s beautiful, the stonework, the gingerbread. And it’s big. Pretty gardens and trees. They must’ve added on that solarium, but it’s well done. It’s a nice spot.” She looked at him as they drove past, turned again. “Have you ever been inside?”
“We did some work in it about three years ago. Updated the kitchen, two baths, added on a bonus room over the garage. And that sunroom you liked.”
“How did it feel?”
“At the time? Like a job. A good one. Now?” He shrugged. “I guess I get what Mom was talking about. Maybe we should’ve paid more attention to this part of us, had more respect for it. My grandfather pretty much hated the farm, and it was clear he didn’t get along with his old man, so I never thought much of it.”
He turned yet again, onto a narrow gravel lane.
“Is this private property?”
“Maybe. Might be Park Service. We’ll deal with it if we have to.”
“They fought here? North and South, boys and men.”
“All over hell and back,” Ryder confirmed. “See there?”
She saw the little pond he’d spoken of, its water dark and deep in the lowering light. Cattails crowded around it with their brown velvet heads, and ferns green with summer formed a verdant carpet.
Beyond it, before the trees thickened, stood a low stone wall. The sort, she thought, Billy Ryder might have built. Headstones tilted in its center. Hope counted sixteen—small markers, pocked by time and weather, some tipped in the rough ground.
“It looks lonely. Sad and lonely.”
“I don’t think dead’s a party.”
He parked, got out with the dog scrambling behind him. When Hope simply sat, he walked around, opened her door as the rest of the family convoy pulled up.
“He’s here or he’s not. Either way, we are.”
She nodded, stepped out beside him.
It felt less lonely with people, with voices. With boys running and dogs sniffing. Still, she felt unsteady enough to reach for Ryder’s hand, to be grateful when he linked his fingers with hers.
More than sixteen, she realized as they approached. Some of the markers were hardly more than a stone set flush with the ground.
Not all had names, or if they had once, time had erased them. But she read those she could. Mary Margaret Ryder. Daniel Edward Ryder. And there a tiny one, marking the grave of Susan—just Susan, who’d died in 1853 at the tender age of two months.
Someone tended to the grass here, she mused, so it didn’t grow wild. Still, there was that sense of wild. To offset the infant, she found the grave of Catherine Foster Ryder, who’d lived fr
om 1781 to 1874.
“Ninety-three,” Justine murmured beside her. “A good, long life. I wish I knew who she was to me.”
“You’ll get the Bible, then you’ll know.”
“How come they can’t stay at the inn like Lizzy?” Murphy asked her. “How come they have to stay here?”
“Lizzy’s special, I guess.” Justine lifted him up, pressed her face to his throat as Hope turned.
She’d thought Ryder stood beside her, but saw now he’d walked off, to the right, stood alone by a trio of graves.
She walked toward him, realized her heart began to thud as she did.
“He’s the middle one.”
“What?” Her hand trembled as she reached out for his again.
“He was born last, died second. They were brothers.”
“How can you—I can’t make out the names.”
“Light’s going,” he said as she dropped down to her knees to peer closer.
