Quinn tried to pull herself out of her pensive mood. “What was it Robert E. Lee said up here? About war-”
“At the height of the battle, Lee was reported to have said, ‘It is well that war is so terrible, lest we grow too fond of it.’” Her grandfather looked out from the summit toward the surrounding hills and valley, once witness to so much carnage. “Quinn, are you going to be all right? I’m sorry about your friend’s death.”
On her way to Fredericksburg, Quinn had turned on the radio and realized Alicia’s death had made the news, although no mass of reporters had descended on little Yorkville-not for the drowning of a kayaker. “I’ve been acting like a crazy woman since I found Alicia.”
“You’ve never experienced anything like that before.”
“And I never want to again. It was horrible.” She thought of the gulls but wouldn’t paint that particularly awful picture for her grandfather. “There’s so much I can’t get out of my head.”
“Give yourself time,” he said quietly.
“I have about a thousand questions, it seems like. So much doesn’t add up, at least not in the way people want it to.”
“What people?” But he didn’t wait for her response. “It’s how things add up for you that matters right now. Is there anything you need to do?”
Quinn fixed her gaze on the old cannon. During the battle, Lee’s Hill-Telegraph Hill, as it was known in 1862-served as an artillery position as well as Confederate command headquarters, firing on Union positions and being fired on. Lee himself was almost killed. But his death those bleak days wasn’t meant to be. He would live through the deaths and maiming of thousands more on both sides over the next two and a half years, until the Confederate final surrender at Appomattox.
The Union army, so badly defeated at Fredericksburg, would go on to win the war.
“I keep thinking there’s something I’m supposed to do,” Quinn whispered.
“You’re a catalyst, Quinn. You always have been. You push for answers. You make things happen. You don’t settle.” Her grandfather put a bony hand on her shoulder. “That’s why you wanted to go out on your own. It’ll be why you succeed.”
“It’s only been three months. The jury’s still out-”
“Not for me. If your questions about Alicia’s death need answers, you’ll get them.”
“I don’t want to get arrested.”
He smiled gently. “I’d like you not to get arrested, too. I’m not suggesting you break the law. Short of that, do what you have to do.”
She sighed. “You make it sound so simple.”
“A lot of difficult things ultimately are simple.” He studied her a moment. “Is there a new man involved?”
She thought of Huck Boone, his thick arm around her, his compelling, uneasy mix of self-control and unbridled energy. He hadn’t told her everything, Quinn thought. He hadn’t even come close. “Just another wrong man.”
“Ah.”
A longtime widower, her grandfather nonetheless understood the ups and downs of romance. He’d had relationships but had never remarried after his wife died when Quinn was two. She had no memory of her grandmother, but understood her to have been a gentle soul, too, although both her grandparents had encouraged their only son to be true to his nature as an adventurer and risk-taker.
Her grandfather walked back down the hill with Quinn, and she gave him a ride out to his car at the end of the road, passing intact trenches from the legendary long-ago battle. Somehow, the peacefulness of the landscape seemed to make her feel even more the horror of the death and destruction that had taken place there.
“Trust your instincts,” her grandfather said when she hugged him goodbye.
Traffic back to Washington didn’t bog down. Quinn arrived at her apartment before dark. She had a studio on the third floor of an unremarkable ivy-covered building a few blocks from her office, sacrificing the space she would have had in a cheaper area for location.
Collapsing onto her sofa, she listened to messages from her parents, a string of friends she and Alicia had in common, Gerard Lattimore again and-to her surprise-Brian Castleton, her ex-boyfriend’s voice cracking as he said how much he’d miss Alicia. But Quinn couldn’t help thinking that Brian must have been relieved she hadn’t been around for his call and got her voice mail instead.