I’d always thought of the Union soldiers the same way I’d always thought about the Allied soldiers in World War II — that they were the good guys, fighting to right a terrible wrong. So I wanted to believe that they were always good in the ways they behaved during the wars, too. But it was pretty clear, now that we were helping our fourth ghost solve our fourth ghost mystery, that the good guys could sometimes be not so good, too, even if they were on the right side overall.

Greg was thinking something different. “I wonder if maybe they were just, you know, so angry and upset about the Confederate sharpshooters shooting the Union engineers, and the people who lived in Fredericksburg letting the Rebels use their houses and businesses to hide in while they were doing it,” he said. “I bet I’d be pretty mad, too, if it was my friends or my fellow soldiers who were getting shot. Or if it was me getting shot at. And knowing that everybody in town not only helped the snipers, but hated me and my friends and what we were fighting for. I bet I’d not care too much about all their stuff, and I might take what I wanted, or even destroy some things, too.”

“That wouldn’t be the right way to be,” Julie said. “But I also think I understand.”

“Well, either way,” I said, “it sounds like what happened with all that vandalism was nothing compared to what was about to happen in the actual battle. I’m not even sure why we’re talking about it.”

Greg and Julie acted surprised that I’d said that. At least I thought that’s why they looked so surprised all of a sudden. But then I realized they were staring at something behind me, so I turned to look, too, thinking maybe Sally had made her way over to Chatham.

But she hadn’t. It wasn’t Sally. It was Little Belman.

She was hiding — though not very well — in a little gazebo, next to a statue of Pan, the Greek god who was half goat and half human, or at least half human form. It was weird to see him in the Chatham Manor garden, and even weirder with Little Belman peeking out from behind Pan’s goat butt.

“What are you doing here?” Julie shouted. “Are you following us?”

But Little Belman didn’t answer. She stepped out from behind Pan, hesitated for a second, and then ran away. Greg started to chase her, but Julie stopped him.

“Let her go,” she said. “Let’s just get on our bikes and ride out to Slaughter Pen Farm and see if she follows us there. It’s a few miles out of town and I bet she doesn’t.”

“But why is she following us in the first place?” Greg asked.

“Who knows?” I said. “She’s just weird. And she thinks she saw a ghost.”

We got on our bikes and rode down a long, steep gravel driveway to River Road, which was paved and which followed the edge of the Rappahannock. It was just a little ways on River Road back to the Chatham Bridge and into town, and then on to Slaughter Pen Farm. I couldn’t help but think about the Union engineers and soldiers and the wheels of the pontoon wagons creaking over some version of this same road a hundred and fifty years ago, at two in the morning, getting ready for the crossings.

We decided to stop downtown to get some lunch first, though, and went into Goolrick’s Pharmacy to get grilled cheese sandwiches, pickles, and potato chips. We also split a chocolate milkshake. I wasn’t sure where Little Belman went while we ate — maybe down to her house to get her own lunch.

She was back to following us once we finished and climbed back on our bikes, though. We had to be really careful riding out to Slaughter Pen Farm because there was no sidewalk for much of the way, and the road was pretty busy, but we kept to the shoulder the whole time, and I was relieved to look back and see that Little Belman did, too.

Slaughter Pen Farm was just that — a farm, a house, a barn, a couple of big shade trees, and a wide expanse of fields that were now another part of the National Park. It was just off the highway. We’d driven past it all our lives and never thought much about it, but now we knew it for what it was — a giant failure of communication that was the site of one of the biggest blunders of the Civil War. We didn’t stay too long there because there wasn’t much to see. Julie pointed to a small hill where a Confederate officer named Pelham with a single cannon kept half the Union army ducking for cover for nearly an hour. Then she pointed to the tree line at the far end of the fields where a Union general named Meade led the one charge that broke through the Confederate line, until the Rebels regrouped. She pointed to the line of retreat where Meade’s division backed out of the fighting, and where the Confederates knew better than to give chase because almost sixty thousand more Union soldiers were down by the river.

Little Belman stayed on her bike near the road and took off once again as soon as we got back on our bikes and rode out of Slaughter Pen Farm. She must have hidden somewhere, because we next rode a couple of miles over to Lee Drive to see where the Confederate defenses had been — even though we’d also been there a million times before. But we were all seeing with very different eyes now, and everything seemed different. Lee Drive was no longer just this nice place to jog or ride bikes. It was where the Civil War could have been shortened by a couple of years if the Union had prevailed, and it was where thousands of Americans fighting Americans died in the attempt.

Near the south end of Lee Drive, close to a place called Hamilton’s Crossing, was a twenty-five-foot-tall stone pyramid that had been raised there after the war. It was next to the train track so that when people rode by on the train to and from Richmond they would see it and remember that this was the place where half of the Battle of Fredericksburg was fought.

It was getting to be late afternoon, maybe an hour of sunlight left, and we had the whole length of Lee Drive to ride north to get to Lafayette Boulevard and then home, a good five miles in all, so we set off, all of us tired, but still having to pedal up and down a bunch of rolling hills. We hadn’t seen Little Belman for quite a while so thought she must have long since gone home, but then Greg caught sight of her behind us.

“Oh man!” he said. “That kid is still there!”

We all stopped and turned to look. Little Belman stopped, too, maybe fifty yards behind us.

“Come on,” said Greg. “Let’s just go. She’ll keep following us. There’s one more stop we should make before we go home.”

“Where?” I asked.

“The National Cemetery,” he said. “Where they buried a lot of the Union soldiers.”

The cemetery was along Sunken Road and we’d all been there before, of course, usually on Memorial Day when the Boy Scouts set up and lit thousands of luminarias — bags with candles in them — at the graves. The graves were spread out in tiers, rising up the side of a steep hill, with thousands more graves covering several acres at the top. There were also some statues up there, some cannons, some monuments, some big shade trees. Mostly it was just peaceful. Well, peaceful and sad.

We parked our bikes at the entrance and hiked up to the top and just sat there for a long time, not speaking, all seeing things differently, I suspected, than we’d ever seen them before. Looking down on Sunken Road, where the worst of the next day’s battle took place, and knowing that thousands died there, made it even sadder.

The sun was going down when we descended back to our bikes. Little Belman was still there, too, half hiding behind a tree next to the Visitor Center. She looked scared.

Julie took control of the situation. “Oh, just come on and join us!” she called out to Little Belman. “It’s getting late and you shouldn’t be out here by yourself. Don’t worry, we won’t be mean to you.”

“Yeah,” I added. “We just want to make sure you get home safely.”

Little Belman hesitated, then came over to where we were, pushing her bike.

“How about if we just ride with you to your house?” Julie asked.

Little Belman looked mad, but she also looked a little anxious.

“We won’t even ask you again why you’ve been following us,” I said. “Don’t worry.”

Little Belman nodded but didn’t say anything. So we got back on our bikes and left, with her following a little ways behind. I thought she’d speak at some point on the way to her house, give us a clue about why she was there and had been there for the past couple of hours, but she didn’t. It had something to do with her knowing about Sally — though she didn’t exactly know about Sally, since I had chased her off from the Kitchen Sink the other day before Sally finally told me that she was a girl.

But Little Belman did know there was a ghost. And she had her strong suspicions about Sam being Sally.

She still didn’t speak when we stopped at her house. She just rode her bike around to her backyard and that was that.

“What a weird kid,” Greg said.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “People probably say the same thing about us.”

Julie sniffed. “Speak for yourself, Anderson.” And then off we went, heading home.