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his pasture. They dug them up and took them to the national cemetery.”
    “They?”
    “The government. They decided that the Confederate soldiers deserved as much respect for fighting for their beliefs as the Union soldiers did fighting for theirs. So they exhumed their bodies and took them to a national cemetery. Some went up to Shiloh, some over to Corinth. There’s a big cemetery there, you know. Anyway, the ones that were buried here were dug up and taken elsewhere. So if he had been buried here before, he’s not here now.” She pointed to an indentation in the earth, almost like a shallow hole dug in between two graves. There was no stone marker, yet she knew that it had been there once upon a time. “Like there.”
    Newland walked over to look at the indention in the earth. He studied it from this angle and that, and Natalie wondered what he was looking for. It was nothing more than a hole. At least now that’s all it was. Once upon a time it had been a grave.
    “So why would a Confederate soldier hang out in a graveyard where he wasn’t buried?”
    “Why does a Confederate ghost do anything?” She quoted her aunt.
    Newland chuckled. And Natalie liked the sound. Wait. No, she didn’t. The sound was neutral. It didn’t dance upon her skin like the wind at night. It was just a chuckle.
    “So why do you think he shows up the last Thursday of the month?”
    Natalie thought about it a minute. She had no idea why a ghost would haunt a cemetery one night of the month. Again, further proof that there was no ghost and there was no haunting, but she had said she would play along, and she would. “Maybe that was the day he died?”
    He nodded. “Or the day he was buried?”
    “What about the day he was exhumed?”
    “All good theories,” Newland said.
    Despite the fact that it was May in Mississippi, a cold wind blew through. Natalie shuddered. Ghost or no ghost, being in an old cemetery after dark was a little creepy.
    “So do you have what you need? Can we go back now?”
    He turned to study her with those dark eyes. “You’re not scared, are you?”
    Natalie somehow kept her teeth from chattering. Okay, so she was scared. But she wasn’t admitting that to him. “Of course not. There’s no ghost, remember?”
    Tran nodded. “I was just fixing to remind you of that fact.”
    “Fixing?” she asked. “Did you just say ‘fixing to’?”
    He nodded and despite the dwindling light she could almost see a blush rise to his cheeks. “I spent some time in Tennessee last year.”
    “I see,” Natalie said. So Mr. Chicago had spent time in Tennessee. Enough time that he picked up a little bit of the slang. Maybe he wasn’t all bad. “What brought you to Tennessee?”
    Tran winced. “It’s sort of complicated, but you could say a girl, a murder charge, and a story about Elvis.”
    “Sounds reasonable.”
    The two of them laughed.
    “Seriously, though, can we go back now?” she asked.
    “Sure.”
    Newland said the word, but he made no move to leave the cemetery. Instead he turned away from her and looked at the lot as a whole.
    Natalie tried to imagine it from his point of view. She had seen it time after time over the course of her life. And it never changed, except maybe a few of the graves were a little deeper and a couple of the tombstones were a little more slanted, but there were no new graves here, no new tombstones. They were all weathered and beaten, most of the graves slightly overgrown with weeds and grass. There were no flowers, no flags, no mourners for these ancient deceased.
    A large oak tree stood at one end of the cemetery, and Natalie wondered if the mighty oak’s roots had caused the tilting of the tombstones closest to it. Despite the majestic oak’s beauty, somehow the big tree lent an eerie air to the place.
    “What’s that over there?” Newland pointed to a spot on the other side of the tree.
    Natalie couldn’t see it from her angle and stepped a little closer to him to get