If the tour group had come to the cemetery, they’d already moved on. While the puffs of fog hugging the graves might have been spooky to some, they were reassuring to her. As a child, she, like Joey, had played here.
She never saw the dead at the Harper Cemetery. They didn’t seem to linger. There was talk that Father Michael Costello could be seen walking the heights, still protecting the church he’d presided over during the Civil War—raising his British flag to prevent the opposing forces from firing upon it. She’d never seen him, but she didn’t mind believing the legend that he still walked these steep paths.
The cemetery seemed to sit in the midst of a haunted atmosphere.
Matt stood by her side. “And now?” he asked.
“I think I have to find Mary Wager,” Meg said.
“Mary Wager. Her stone, you mean?”
“Yes, her stone. There are Wagers all over the cemetery,” Meg began. “I’m sure you know that Robert Harper left no children, but his niece married a Wager, so...through the generations, there were many of them. Lara and I were both crazy about her grave marker. It has the most beautiful poem...but the marker was falling apart and we shored it up with stones.”
She lifted her flashlight higher as she looked around the cemetery. Being here reminded her so much of days gone by, back when she and Lara were young, when they slipped out at night—just as Joey had—to hover on the outskirts of a ghost tour or scamper up the steps to the cemetery. Tonight she barely needed the flashlight; they were on the hilltop and the moon was dazzling.
“Mary Wager.” Matt moved ahead of her.
“It’s more or less in the center,” Meg told him.
He nodded. “I vaguely remember...”
The cemetery was somewhat overgrown with haphazard trails. She was accustomed to it; she knew her way through it and took the lead. She came to a stop when she reached the grave. Matt joined her there, his long strides bringing him close to her in a matter of seconds.
She shone her light on the marker and recited the poem, mostly from memory.
“’Tis better to have loved than lost,
No matter what the cost.
I died for him, and he for me,
The war the game, the end the same.
I waited for love, did not return,
And then the pain, the bitter burn.
So I loved and lost and lingered here,
In death, I know, my love be there.”
“Poetic, and quite sad,” Matt said. “So you two, you and Lara, came here and dreamed about Mary’s great romance?”
Meg shrugged and glanced at him. He didn’t seem to be mocking her.
“There’s no record in the archives that we could find, so we made up a story for her. She was a Southern girl and he was a Southern boy, but he fought for the Union. When he died, she couldn’t even bury him. So she lived on. She was a good Christian, we’d decided, so no thought of suicide. We imagined her watching the years go by, always believing that she’d see him again once she died.”
She realized he was smiling.
“Hey, we were kids.”
“Pretty impressive that you were doing this kind of research—in the archives—when you were that young.”
“We learned from my parents.”
“A teacher and a mom who worked for the park service—makes sense.”
As he spoke, Meg knelt down, holding her flashlight, Killer beside her, and moved her fingers around the old monument. She found the crack and pushed one finger through to the hollowed-out point at the base.
There might be nothing there. This might just be wishful thinking. But...
“You know, you could hit a snake or spider doing that. You want more light?” Matt asked. “Let me hold yours, too.”
He knelt close beside her. She felt the strength and heat of his body, felt whatever it was that made him so alive, so forceful and charismatic.
The scent of his cologne or aftershave wasn’t bad, either.
“Thanks,” she murmured as he trained dual lights on the marker.
The crack that led to the little hollow in the stone was low against the ground, hidden by overgrown tufts of grass and weeds.
“Want me to try?” Matt asked.
“No, no, I’m fine. And my fingers are smaller,” she said.
They were. Of course, they’d been smaller still when she and Lara were young and left notes for each other there.
But her fingers touched paper. She stared at Matt; his face was practically touching hers. She flushed and said softly, “There’s something here!”
A moment later, she pulled it out—a piece of paper rolled in a tube. She gasped as she almost tore it; there’d been rain since the note was left and the paper was fragile.
“Careful. We can get it back and dry it. Might be good to have the lab look at it, too,” Matt said.
He was, she had to admit, always prepared. He’d put down one of the flashlights and had an evidence bag in his hand. As she placed the paper inside the bag, she frowned up at him. “Matt, we have to read it now. What if she’s in danger? What if she’s in hiding? What if she’s alive and she needs us?”
“Let’s get out of the cemetery and off this hill first, huh? At least get to where we can open it carefully? It’s no good if it’s ruined.”