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trying to charm my way out of anything.”
    “Sounds to me like you running from something,” Mariah countered, slowing their pace to a stop as she met his gaze. “Except you don’t seem like the kinda man who’s scared of much. Makes me think the thing you running from is more frightening than any war or anybody’s face.”
    He held her stare. “Maybe I’m running toward something now, not away.”
    They began walking again along the dirt road, wide-open farmland on either side of them: to the left, acres of corn; and to the right, sunflowers breaking into bloom. Mariah adjusted the bag on her shoulder. Tole kept his head bowed, looking down at his shoes, only daring to glance over at Mariah when he knew she wouldn’t catch him.
    They let silence fall over them, the soft shuffle of boots against the dirt, and soon they were halfway to Carnton.
    “You have any kind of family, Mr. Tole?”
    “You need to call me Tole, ma’am.”
    “Tole, then. Any kind of family?”
    “Can’t say I have much left anymore,” he said. “I believe I have a great-uncle still kickin’ around in Albany, but he might as well be as dead as all the others.”
    “No wife and children back in New York?”
    And there it was, the question, so simple, one of the first questions people asked him, the one he had previously found impossible to answer. But now he found the words.
    “I had a wife and a son, but they dead now.”
    Mariah’s stride shifted imperceptibly, like a stagger. She said, softer, “Lord. Sorry to hear that.”
    “Happened a few years ago. It’s all right.”
    “Doubt any parent’s ever ‘all right’ once their child has passed on,” she said, looking over at him.
    “You’re probably right. But I get by.”
    She didn’t ask how it happened, as people usually did. Instead: “What was his name?” And Tole said, “My wife named him Miles, after her daddy,” and Mariah said, “Well that’s a real nice name.”
    The silence fell between them again—rough with unspoken questions, unanswered thoughts.
    A few moments later he saw a pair of brick pillars, and a sign, damaged and weather-beaten: Carnton , painted in simple black script on a white board. She said, “This is Carnton, where I was , once. Like you said. Thank you for the walk.”
    “Good to walk with you, Missus Reddick.”
    “If I got to call you Tole, then you call me Mariah.”
    “Mariah,” he repeated. And then, nervously, “If you want, I can wait a bit and walk you back to town.”
    Mariah laughed. “No, I’ll find my way. Must’ve made the walk a few thousand times on my own.”
    And then Tole reached out his hand. Mariah placed hers inside his palm and they shared the warmth for a moment before Mariah turned and headed up the drive, around the bend. For a while Tole could see her shadow, and then not even that.

Chapter 5
Mariah
    July 6, 1867
    Up the steps of Carnton and in Mariah went. The house was massive, once—when Carrie and Mariah had moved there, upon Carrie’s marriage to Colonel John—very stylish, with wallpapers from France and England and fine Brussels carpets on the floors. Books looked down regally from bookcases in Colonel John’s fine Gothic office. But then the war had roared in upon them, and the house had been commandeered as a hospital, and the blood had soaked through the floorboards. Some of the walls themselves seemed gnawed upon: the officers’ sabers carelessly ramming across the wallpaper and the plaster. Much had been repaired, of course, but the old house now seemed smaller to Mariah, and dim. Colonel John had eschewed the new gaslight, and candles were never where you needed them. So now the rooms were dark and close.
    Mariah moved down the central passage and into the family parlor, where against the windows the dark silhouette of Carrie McGavock waited, dressed all in black, her mourning veil intact. Carrie dressed every day as if funerals were a regular though lamented fact of one’s day, like