sixteen

At two on the dot, cannon fire exploded with a boom that shook the trees in the valley. The Confederates gave the rebel yell as they made their charge across the battlefield. I watched from the fence rail along with more than seven hundred visitors. Even though I knew it was a reenactment, the cries of the men as they fell touched me. Grown men and women in board shorts and Capri pants watched the battle with rapt attention. Children covered their eyes and peeked out between their fingers. No one spoke. A shiver ran down my spine. This is what I had wanted when I presented the idea of the Civil War reenactment to Cynthia and the board of trustees. I wanted history to come alive. I wanted visitors to be able to put themselves in the shoes of the men and women living one hundred and fifty years ago. When people remembered the past, then and only then could they learn from its mistakes.

Then maybe something like the Civil War would never happen again. I believed a true student of history would hate war more than anyone else.

Amidst the smoke from the rifles and cannons and the scent of gunpowder on the wind, I picked out Chase Wyatt in his medic’s uniform moving from man to man in his brigade, checking on the wounded and dead.

The Union general called the retreat after about thirty minutes of hard fighting, and the Union men began to pull back, carrying what men they could off of the field. They’d lost this battle, but they would win the one tomorrow. With a reenactment, you could plan the outcome; it was in real war that you couldn’t.

The visitors broke into whoops and applause. Some booed. We were in the North after all, and most of my visitors were Yankee sympathizers to the extreme. Tomorrow, when the North won, there would be great cheers, which is why I asked for the North victory to be on Saturday, when I thought we would have the most visitors.

I pushed off from the fence.

The chief came up to me on the path and sighed. “I hate to see my boys fighting without me, but I suppose a murder investigation should come first.”

“I suppose,” I said.

“The crime scene techs are finished across the street. The brick pit will have to be closed for the remainder of the week, maybe beyond that too, but you can open the village.”

I removed my radio from my belt. “Great. We still have a few hours left. I’ll call in the staff.”

He nodded. “You do that.” He turned to go.

“Chief, have you found any more suspects?”

“Something I’m not lacking for in this case is suspects. My roster is full to bursting with suspects.”

I wanted to ask him what he meant by that, but my radio crackled. “Hey Kelsey,” Laura’s voice came over the device. “The village is open. Want me to call in the staff?”

“I was just about to radio about that. Can you call Judy and have her do it? I’d like you to get over to the village.”

The radio crackled again. “Will do. Ten-four.”

I rolled my eyes. Laura loved saying ten-four. I thought the fact that I gave her a radio had gone to her head.

I waited until Laura radioed back that she was in position and then went into the visitor center and used the PA system to announce that the village was open. I decided to continue to sell discounted tickets for the rest of the day. Until more seasonal workers took their positions, the village would not be fully opened, which meant that some the buildings would remain closed until they arrived. We couldn’t have visitors wandering around the historical artifacts unsupervised.

I took a deep breath. Everything would be all right. Other than the murder and a scuffle, the second day of the reenactment was going well.

Hayden ran up to me. “Mom! The battle was so cool! I want to be a soldier.”

Tiffin ran behind him with his tongue hanging out of his mouth.

Like any mother, I shivered. That would be the last thing I would want my son to choose, but he had a lot of time to change his mind. Last week he wanted to be a minion from Despicable Me.

Krissie smiled at me. “I called Eddie and told him that the battle was over. He’s on his way here to pick us up.”

Hayden grabbed onto my jeans. “Mom, do I have to go? I want to stay here with you and Pop-Pop. What about the bonfire tonight? I want to roast marshmallows.”

I winced. I had hoped that Hayden would have forgotten about the bonfire. My father’s bushy eyebrows knit together as they waited for my answer.

“I want you to stay too, buddy, I do, but a man got really sick in the village this morning, so I think it would be better if you go with Dad tonight. You, Pop-Pop, and I will have our own bonfire next week after the reenactors are gone. Then we won’t have to share our marshmallows.”

Hayden cocked his head and considered this. He was protective of his marshmallows. “You promise?”

“Of course.” I hugged him.

“Is he okay?” Hayden asked.

“Who?” I asked.

“The man who got sick. Is he okay? I hate being sick. I’m real sorry anyone else got sick.”

My heart melted at my little guy’s compassion. “Ummm … they took him to the hospital,” I said, which was technically true since the morgue was inside of the hospital.

“I hope he gets better. It’s no fun being sick. Remember when I had that cold? It was terrible. I’d hate for anyone to feel that bad.”

Tears sprang into my eyes. I hugged my son, turning my face away from him so he would not see the tears. “You are a special little guy. Do you know that?”

“Well, duh, you tell me that like every day.”

“Then it must be true,” I said.

I walked with Dad, Hayden, and Krissie through the visitor center. Now that the battle was over, many of the visitors were leaving. They spoke excitedly about the encampments. “I hope we can come next year,” I heard a girl tell her father. She had the same gleam in her eye about history that I’d had as a child. I had to keep Barton Farm open for children like her and for children who didn’t know anything about American history. They needed to hear it.

Eddie’s luxury SUV turned into the circular drive of the visitor center. He got out. “Did you have fun today?” he asked.

“It was great!” Hayden said. “I still don’t know why I have to leave.”

Krissie gave me a light squeeze. I didn’t hug her in return but awkwardly patted her back. “I’m so happy that I got to meet you finally after all this time.”

Yes, after all this time that I didn’t even know about. I bit my tongue.

Eddie put Hayden’s backpack into the back seat of the SUV. Hayden gave Tiffin a hug good-bye, and Eddie lifted our son into his booster seat.

“Eddie, you really missed a great day,” Krissie said. “I think you, Hayden, and I should come back tomorrow to see more of the action.”

I bit my tongue from asking if she wanted to come back to reunite with her old college buddy, Wesley Mayes.

Hayden wriggled in his seat while Eddie tried to buckle him in. “Can we? I want to come back! I won’t even ask to watch a show tonight if we can come back.”

Eddie turned and looked at me, raising both of his eyebrows.

“I would love it if you all came back.” I smiled. “Saturday promises to be an even more exciting day than today. There’ll be two battles: one in the morning and one in the afternoon.”

Hayden clapped his hands. “Yes!”

Eddie looked at his fiancée. “If that’s what you really want, honey.”

“Definitely.” She flashed her white smile to me. “We’re all going to be part of the same family and this gives us all a chance to be together like a family.”

“Umm, yeah,” I managed.

My father snorted, and I elbowed him.

“Oomph,” he mumbled.

Eddie stepped away from the car door. I leaned inside the car and smoothed Hayden’s hair away from his brow and kissed the top of his head.

“Can I have my backpack?” he asked.

I reached across him and handed him the bag. He rooted around in it until he came up with his plush Spider-Man. “I had to make sure I had Spidey.”

I patted Spider-Man on the top of his head. “I’m glad he’s safe. Be good for Dad, okay?”

“Okay.” He pulled more toys from his bag as I shut the door. They would all be on the floor of Eddie’s SUV in a matter of minutes, and Hayden would complain that he couldn’t reach them until Eddie pulled the car over to the side of the road to pick them up. He’d hand Hayden the fallen toys just to hear them all fall to the floor minutes after he started driving again. I swallowed the lump in my throat.

“I guess we’ll see you tomorrow,” Eddie said. He and Krissie climbed in the SUV and drove away. I waved at Hayden as they went, but he was too busy with his action figures to pay any attention to me.

Dad wrapped his arm around me. “I hate to see the squirt go, but this is for the best. You don’t really want him to be exposed to the investigation, and if there is some crazed reenactor running around killing people, it’s best to have the boy as far away from that as possible.”

“You’re right.”

My father pulled on the end of his beard. “Is it just me or is that Krissie too nice? There’s something artificial about her. As an actor, I’m a student of human nature, and I can tell when people are playing a part. She’s not doing a very good job of it either. I certainly wouldn’t cast her in anything.”

“I thought it was just me because she…” I trailed off.

Dad’s brow knit together. “Because she’s going to marry Eddie?”

I shrugged. The answer was obvious and didn’t need a response. “Maybe she was nervous. I mean, I would be pretty nervous about meeting my fiancé’s ex-wife, especially if the marriage ended on as bad of terms as ours did.”

“You’re giving her too much benefit of the doubt.”

“Can you give someone too much of that?”

“Sure you can.” He paused. “You know, Kelsey, it wouldn’t hurt you go out on a date now and again. I’m not saying you should get remarried, but go out and have some fun. You spend all your time worrying about Hayden, me, and this farm.”

“I like worrying about Hayden, you, and Barton Farm.”

“I know you do, but there is more to your life than being a mom and daughter, and working.”

I wasn’t so sure about that. First Laura and now my father? What was wrong with being single? I had Hayden. He was all I needed. I sighed because I knew both of them only said this because they loved me and wanted me to be happy. Maybe I had been happier before the divorce, before I knew about the cheating, but I didn’t have the weight of Barton Farm on my shoulders then either. The responsibility contributed to my overall stress, but I refused to give it up until I was forced out. In the two years since I had become director, I had come to love the Farm and fell more in love with history than ever before.

“Just think about what I said.” Dad tweaked my right ear like he had when I was little girl. “Now, that Hayden’s gone, I’m going to head back to the cottage for a bit to practice my lines.” He grinned. “Hamlet, can you hear me? Bahhhaha!”

I chuckled. Dad’s ability to make me laugh was one thing that I could count on.

Tiffin sighed and followed me back into the visitor center. He was always blue when his boy was away. I glanced down at him. “I miss him too, Tiff.”

Ashland ran up to me, dodging Abraham Lincoln as she went.

“Careful there, dear lady. Don’t you know that we are at war?”

She ignored him. “Kelsey.” She waved at me.

I walked over to her. “Ashland, slow down. What’s wrong?”

She took a deep breath. “I did what you asked me to. I researched the nonprofits that the Cherry Foundation supports in the county: there are seven of them.”

“Seven?” I had hoped that there weren’t that many.

She nodded, still out of breath. “I emailed you the list.”

I removed my cell phone from my pocket and saw that I did in fact have a new email from her. It came in the middle of the battle, which explained why I hadn’t hear my phone ping when it arrived. “It’s a start.” I scrolled through the names. Barton Farm was one of the seven, so that took the list down the six. Maxwell wouldn’t remove money from a children’s hospital; that would make him look bad, and Maxwell had been all about appearances. So I knocked another off of the list. That left me with five. Five wasn’t too bad. However, with the reenactment going on, I didn’t know how I could be driving all over Summit County looking for these organizations and questioning people about Maxwell. Right away I knew a couple of them would have no interest in the reenactment.

“I found something else,” she said.

“What?”

“You asked me to cross-reference it with the reenactors. I’m working on that. There are a lot of them, and I haven’t found anything so far. I am about halfway through the all names on the Union and Confederate lists.” She chewed on her lip.

“Ashland, spit it out,” I ordered.

“I took a break from all the reenactors and cross-referenced the Farm employees with the organization list, and I found a connection.”

“What?” I asked. “A connection other than the Farm itself?”

She nodded. “Number three on the list.”

“New Hartford Beautification Committee?” I asked.

“Right.” She paused. “Shepley is on the committee. In fact, he’s the head of it.”