“What a nice place!” said the other: Miss Atkins, sniffing a long, toothed leaf and admiring the exuberant flame-colored fungus sprouting from a stump. A high school teacher, her companion had announced. And an accomplished naturalist, expert in everything to do with birds and fish and rocks and trees. He himself was Bernard Deverell, nephew of two soldiers from the local regiment, looking for the Savery Stokes who’d been gathering materials for a regimental history. On the steps, he’d held out a grubby circular and asked, as stiffly as someone twice his age, to whom he had the honor of speaking.

“Sissy,” she’d replied, knowing her married name would prove confusing. Other parts of this awkward encounter had also occurred before. Hence the walk out back, the viewing of the grove, the further distractions of the hogs munching last year’s mast on the other side of the fence. “The present S. Stokes. My brother was Savery.”

While the hogs snuffled and grunted with pleasure, while the clouds moved and the wind blew, the conversation occurred during which they, like the visitors who’d come before them, absorbed the news that Savery had died four years ago and that she’d taken over his project. Miss Atkins murmured how much she’d been looking forward to meeting him, while Bernard seemed more upset by her failure to announce this earlier than by her brother’s actual death.

As the woman pretended to inspect another of the coppiced trees, Bernard, studying a bracket fungus, a lady’s slipper, the elongated ellipse of a woodpecker’s nest, bit back whatever he really wanted to ask and said, instead, that they’d be grateful to see what her brother had collected. She nodded and turned back down the path. The library’s rear door, still unlocked, opened easily. The pair followed her past the wrought-iron shelves and the volumes carefully arranged by the librarian, Mrs. Holmes, who, in return for Sissy never touching the books in the main room, never, ever, touched Sissy’s papers.

“I meant to come earlier,” Bernard said. “I thought about it in ’83, when there were all the gatherings marking the twentieth anniversary of the battle where my uncle Izzy—Isidore—was wounded. Then again in ’86, after he died. I sent the last of his papers here, because he so much wanted to contribute to some record of what had happened, and I thought—”

That first name leapt forward, as the last name had not, from the great file of names in her mind. Isidore whose arm had been lost; Izzy of the unexpected gift. Not from Savery’s company, not even one of his special friends, despite the bond they’d shared for a few months during the summer of 1863. Here, as if she’d summoned him, was his young relative.