Deedee had been so quiet since joining us that I’d forgotten she was even there. So it surprised me — surprised all of us — when she spoke.

“You loved your brother that much,” she said quietly.

“I promised my parents,” Sally said. “I had to find him.”

“But what could you do?” I asked. “The Confederates would shoot at anything, or anybody, who moved.”

“I moved anyway,” Sally said. “Pushing myself into the mud, crawling on my belly with one arm, holding my wounded side with the other. I whispered Frankie’s name. Men begged me to help them. They begged for water. Some had been lying in the field, wounded or just trapped, for hours and hours. I gave as much of my water as I could spare, but I had to save some in my canteen for Frankie. It was horrible. I couldn’t tell what was mud I was crawling through and what was blood. The bodies seemed to spread out endlessly. Once, twice, I made too much noise and they shot at me. One shot hit my boot and tore off part of my foot. I was sure of it, but I couldn’t afford to reach down to find out. The pain kept me conscious. I couldn’t pass out. I had to find Frankie.

“But I never did.”

I looked at the others when Sally paused there in her story. Everybody was crying, even Julie who never cried. Even Deedee. I put my arm around Deedee’s shoulders and patted her, hoping that would help. I wished I could do something for Sally, but as close as she was to us, she was too far away for me to ever put my arm around her, too.

Without my fully realizing it, we had started walking away from Sunken Road, back toward town. We were on Mercer Street, one of the closest to the battlefield, and Sally stopped there, next to a brick house that looked like it dated back to the Civil War. There was a sign on it: THE STRATTON HOUSE.

“I remember this place,” said Sally. “After hours in the battlefield, I had to give up on my search for Frankie. I hoped maybe he’d been able to escape the slaughter and I would find him in town. Maybe he was wounded and I’d find him at one of the houses that they’d turned into a hospital. Maybe he’d done what he said and was in one of those hospitals helping the surgeons, trying to save other soldiers.”

“What about this place?” Greg asked.

“I made it this far, using a rifle for a crutch now, to hold myself up. But I staggered anyway, like a drunk man. There were men packed here inside and out, some living, more of them dead. The dead they rolled outside. The dead horses they used for breastworks, piling the bodies up high enough to act as a wall. I studied all the faces of the dead, but none of them was Frankie. So I staggered on toward town. I knew if I didn’t get help for myself soon that I wouldn’t last. But if I stayed there, or stopped moving anywhere along the way, I was dead, too. I had to find a hospital.”

“But they would find out you were a girl,” Deedee blurted out, only the second time she’d spoken since joining us what seemed like a hundred hours before, though really it was just then pushing five o’clock.

Sally nodded. “I thought of that. I was delirious, I guess you could say, but I still managed to think of it, and to think of what it would mean. They wouldn’t let me stay in the army, and how would I ever take care of Frankie then? If I tried to reenlist in the same regiment, they’d know who I was and they wouldn’t let me in. If I enlisted in another regiment, I wouldn’t be with Frankie.”

We kept walking back to town. I imagined wounded and dying men littering the ground all around us, which must have been the case. And I remembered reading that a lot of bodies of Union soldiers were buried right where they died, in people’s yards, just about everywhere. I wondered if they could still be under us — and if Sally might be one of them.

But she said no. “Every time an ambulance wagon passed me I waved them away,” she said. “I told them I was fine. Just bone weary from the battle. They had men stacked like cordwood — the living and the dead — and didn’t have room for me anyway. They were glad to push on wherever they were going. I pushed on, too, the questions vexing me more and more, the closer I got to town: How could I pass for a soldier any more if I went to a hospital and put myself in the hands of the surgeons? The blood was running through my hands from the bullet hole in my side. I could hardly stand by the time I stumbled downtown. I needed time to think. I needed to lie down somewhere and rest, and think things through.”

We were all the way back downtown now, on Caroline Street, actually standing in front of the Dog and Suds building, next door to the Kitchen Sink.

“It didn’t look like this back then,” Sally said. “Our cannon had taken off the roof, and the top floors. There was only the first floor left, and not much of that. Door hanging off the hinges. Windows blown out. Everything inside thrown upside down, or stolen, or destroyed. I figured nobody would think to go in there, so that’s where I went, only it was too much street light from fires and lanterns, so I found my way to the cellar and crawled back as far into a dark corner as I could. I told myself I just needed to lie down there for an hour. I just needed to rest. If I could just rest for a while, I’d be better. My wounds — I told myself they weren’t too serious. Why, look — how could they be if I’d been able to make it all the way back from the battlefield? So just an hour hidden there and I’d be better. Better enough to go back out and find Frankie. That’s what I convinced myself of anyway. And so that’s what I did.”

I looked around to see if anyone on Caroline Street had taken any notice of us standing there. The Dog and Suds was already closed for the night, so Mrs. Strentz wasn’t around, though Uncle Dex was still standing behind the counter inside the Kitchen Sink. He saw me, and waved, but then went back to whatever he was doing. A few people passed us on the sidewalk, but once again, like when we met up with Sally at Federal Hill, we probably just looked to them like four kids with bikes, hanging out and talking. No ghost — or at least no ghost they could see or hear.

“I don’t remember anything after that,” Sally said. “I only remember going inside, like I said.” She took a step closer to the building. Then she said, “Like this.”

And with another step forward Sally passed through the locked front door and inside the Dog and Suds, vanishing into the darkness, leaving us behind.

We all stood there for a good ten minutes after Sally disappeared, feeling empty and lost and helpless.

Greg finally broke the silence.

“Hey, Anderson, your uncle knows all about the history of Fredericksburg. Do you think he’d know when this building was built? Or when it was rebuilt — like, after the war?”

I gave him a quizzical look, wondering why that would matter.

“This is the last thing Sally remembers,” he said. “Which must mean this was where she died. What if that’s what happened, way down in the cellar or wherever — some place nobody thought to look? What if they tore down the building after the war, not knowing she was in there? Or what if the building collapsed on her? That would explain why she disappeared, why they never found her body, and why she’s been stuck here all these years, waiting for, well, I guess, waiting for us to solve the mystery!”