She was sure she blushed a thousand shades of red. Fortunately, he didn’t seem to want to torture her any further.
“My first time?” he repeated, shaking his head and smiling awkwardly. “I was a kid with an imaginary friend. We had a home that was built right before the Revolution. During the mid-nineteenth century it was a tavern at one time. It has an association with Thomas Jefferson because he helped a cousin purchase it. As a kid, I thought it would be neat if you woke up at night and found Jefferson sitting in a rocker in front of the giant hearth. I never saw Thomas Jefferson, but I did meet Josiah Thompkin. He was a young guy, barely nineteen, and he was killed at the start of the Revolution. Great attitude—he figured being a ghost for a few hundred years wasn’t a bad deal. When the place was a tavern, he liked to douse men’s cigars with ale and pull at the ladies’ skirts. I talked about him and people smiled. Although I think my mother was a little concerned that Josiah was a real historical person. Later, I was at Arlington for a funeral. My uncle had died and he’d been a marine. I was about ten, and I was standing there in the heat, listening to the priest give a long graveside eulogy. Being a kid, I looked around most of the time. I was staring up at the house, the old mansion that Robert E. Lee had owned before the Civil War, built by Washington’s step-grandson and adopted son...”
“I know the house,” Meg reminded him. “I’m from West Virginia, remember?” She couldn’t prevent a certain irony from entering her tone.
“Yes, of course. Anyway...we were always interested in Washington and Lee family history. And even as a kid, I felt terrible for Lee. Lincoln offered him a pivotal post leading the Northern army, and Lee had to make a decision. Back then, your first loyalty was to your state. And he was a Virginian. They say the entire household could hear him pacing through the night and day, trying to make that decision. He had to know that the Union would take his house—the Union would have to. Guns up here could have shot right across the Potomac into the Capitol. And can you imagine him having to tell his wife that they were going to lose a home that had come to them through her family? But he had to decline Lincoln’s offer because he was a Virginian and Virginia was bound to secede.”
“And when the Union took the property, they began to bury their dead, ensuring that he’d never come back. Except now the house is a Lee memorial,” Meg said. “And?”
“And I was looking up at it, and I saw Lee.”
“As in Robert E.?” Meg asked.
Matt was still wearing his dry smile. “Yeah,” he said huskily. “As in Robert E. I saw him standing in his uniform, hands folded behind his back, gazing out over the Potomac. He was some distance from the columns.”
“Did it occur to you that it might have been a reenactor?”
“Of course. In fact, my mom was certain that I’d seen a reenactor.”
“How do you know it wasn’t?”
He smiled. “Because I saw Mary Lee walk up behind him and put her arms around him. Reenactors seldom engage in that kind of intimacy. But everyone said it was a reenactor—although the management at the house said there were no reenactments that day. I accepted it. Easier than dealing with the ribbing I got for seeing a ghost. I let it all go.”
“And then?” Meg asked.
He turned and looked at her. “A girl in high school. A friend. A great kid. Kerry Sullivan. We weren’t a couple, but we’d known each other since grade school, and our parents were friends, too. I was actually away, checking out colleges. I dreamed that she and I were walking along a path in the Blue Ridge. Our parents often rented cabins up in the mountains in the national park. I was in New York, and she was supposedly in Richmond. But in my dream, she took my hand when we sat down and told me to be kind to our parents, to reassure them that she was all right. I teased her. I said no one had ever accused her of being all right. She just smiled and touched my face. She’d done that as long as I’d known her—a funny little way of running her hand down my face, telling me not to be a jerk. I don’t remember anything else until I woke up. And when I did, I could still smell the scent of the perfume she always wore. I called home, and my mom was crying. She’d been about to call me, to say that Kerry had died of an aneurysm during the night.”
He took a thoughtful breath. “I knew then. Everyone thought I was crazy again because they saw me talking to her at the grave site. She was in a great mood, happy that so many people had come to her funeral. She told me to say good things to her parents and sisters and brothers. Make them feel okay. I promised I’d try. And then she told me...”
“What?”
“To use it,” he said quietly. “That she could talk to me, that maybe others could, and that...I should use it. Bring comfort to the living. And maybe help the dead.”