Too Good to Be True(33)

“I might need to replace some trim when I put these in,” he said, “but I won’t know till I take them out. These are pretty old.”

I dragged my eyes to his face. “Right. Sure. Sounds good.”

He came over to me, and my breath caught. God. Callahan O’ Shea was standing within an inch of me. The heat shimmered off his body, and my own body seemed to soften and sway in response. I could feel my heart squeezing and opening, squeezing and opening. His hand, still holding the tape measure, brushed the back of mine, and suddenly I had to breathe through my mouth.

“Grace?”

“Yes?” I whispered back. I could see the pulse in his neck. Wondered what it would be like to kiss that neck, to slide my fingers through his tousled hair, to— “Can you move?” he asked.

My mouth closed with a snap. “Sure! Sure! Just…thinking.”

His eyes crinkled in an all-too-knowing smile.

We went back downstairs, and a disappointingly short time later, Callahan O’ Shea was done. “I’ll put in the order and let you know when they come in,” he said.

“Great,” I said.

“Bye. Good luck at the battle.”

“Thanks,” I said, blushing for no apparent reason.

“Make sure you double lock the doors. I’ll be home all day.”

“Very funny. Now get out,” I said. “I have Yankees to kill.”

CHAPTER TEN

THE CANNON ROARED IN MY EARS, the smell of smoke sharp and invigorating. I watched as six Union soldiers fell.

Behind the first line, the Bluebellies reloaded.

“This is so queer,” Margaret muttered, handing me the powder so I could reload my cannon.

“Oh, shut up,” I said fondly. “We’re honoring history. And quit complaining. You’ll be dead soon enough. A pox upon you, Mr. Lincoln!” I called, adding a silent apology to gentle Abe, the greatest president our nation ever saw.

Surely he would forgive me, seeing as I had a miniature of the Lincoln Memorial in my bedroom and could (and often did) recite the Gettysburg Address by heart.

But Brother Against Brother took its battles very seriously. We had about two hundred volunteers, and each encounter was planned to be as historically accurate as possible. The Yankee soldiers fired, and Margaret dropped to the ground with a roll of her sea-green eyes. I took one in the shoulder, screamed and collapsed next to her. “It will take me hours to finally kick the bucket,” I told my sister. “Blood poisoning from the lead. No treatment options, really. Even if I was taken to a field hospital, I’d probably die. So either way, long and painful.”

“I repeat. This is so queer,” Margaret said, flipping open her cell phone to check messages.

“No farbies!” I barked.

“What?”

“The phone! You can’t have anything modern at a reenactment. And if this is so queer, why did you come?” I asked.

“Dad kept harassing Junie—” Margaret’s long-suffering legal secretary “—until she finally begged me to say yes just to get him to stop calling and dropping by. Besides, I wanted to get out of the house.”

“Well, you’re here, so quit whining.” I reached for her hand, imagining a Rebel soldier seeking comfort from his fallen brother. “We’re outside, it’s a beautiful day, we’re lying around in the sweet-smelling clover.” Margaret didn’t answer. I glanced over. She was studying her cell phone, scowling, which wasn’t an unusual expression for her, but her lips trembled in a suspicious manner. Like she was about to cry. I sat up abruptly. “Margs? Is everything okay?”

“Oh, things are peachy,” she answered.

“Aren’t you supposed to be dead?” my father asked, striding toward us.

“Sorry, Dad. I mean, sorry, General Jackson,” I said, flopping obediently back in the grass.

“Margaret, please. Put that away. A lot of people have worked very hard to make this authentic.”

Margaret rolled her eyes. “Bull Run in Connecticut. So authentic.”

Dad grunted in disgust. A fellow officer rushed to his side. “What shall we do, sir?” he asked.

“Sir, we will give them the bayonet!” Dad barked. A little thrill shuddered through me at the historic words. What a war! The two officers conferred, then walked away to engage the gunmen on the hillside.

“I might need a break from Stuart,” Margaret said.

I sat bolt upright once again, tripping a fellow Confederate who was relocating my cannon. “Sorry,” I said to him.

“Go get ’em.” He and another guy hefted the cannon and wheeled it off amid sporadic gunfire and the cries of the commanding officers. “Margaret, are you serious?”

“I need some distance,” she answered.

“What happened?”

She sighed. “Nothing. That’s the problem. We’ve been married for seven years, right? And nothing’s different.

We do the same things day after day. Come home. Stare at each other over dinner. Lately, when he’s talking about work or something on the news, I look at him and just think, ‘Is this it?’”

An early butterfly landed on the brass button of my uniform, flexed its wings and fluttered off. A Confederate officer rushed by. “Are you girls dead?” he asked.