Summers, Mary would take the kids to the mountains, and he would go with the Guards. Back from training, he’d enjoy the peace and space for a few days. Then, missing the camaraderie of soldiers, he’d open the house to the young men of the Light Infantry.

For three years, he had been their commander. He had trained them properly, instilled in them discipline.

They’d start accumulating on his porch just before the dinner hour. Hattie would fix rabbit stew or stuffed quail, whatever game was on hand, and his table would buzz, lively with earnest conversation about tactics, maneuvers, politics, the future.

Now, the house seemed impossibly huge and empty. As he climbed the stairs to his bedroom, he was stung by a sudden melancholy. It was as if he were watching himself from outside the parlor window, a robust middle-aged man climbing stairs with a heavy tread, a man bereft of wife and family, rattling around in a chilly house all by himself.

He shook off the feeling. He was fine. Mary and the children were all fine. He had done well by them, better than he’d ever had any right to expect, starting out. He had always been certain he would die in battle. That he had lived through the War surprised him every morning of his life.

But he knew what had suddenly spooked him. It had come to him in a dream, and he almost never dreamed. Most nights, he slumbered like a child—he was quickly and restfully asleep, then, at first light, immediately and alertly awake. When he dreamed at all, they were heroic dreams—socking in the winning run, saving a child from a burning house, hitting the bull’s-eye of an impossibly distant target.

But night before last, the same night Dandy was birthing her pups and losing three of them, Bill Kenan had dreamed about the gun.

He wriggled out of his sweater and flannel undershirt, stripped off his leggings, and sat on the bed, listening to the house creak in the breeze. Got to get some people in, he thought. A house was a live thing. It needed voices to keep it alive. Hattie would be back from her errands soon. He would tell her to plan for company tomorrow evening. Soon as he was dressed, he’d see what was left in the smokehouse. Maybe he could persuade Hattie to bake a Lady Baltimore cake—all those layers of sugar and almonds. The young men always craved the sweet stuff. He’d tell her to buy the fixings at Rivenbark’s and make two—she could take the other one home to her family.