They were quiet again, only the sound of John’s heavy breathing between them. A melancholy had sunk into Tom ever since this morning when he’d walked past a cottage with an open window, through which he’d heard a small child playing a labored version of “Greensleeves.” Her mother sat with her and they talked about the girl’s part in the upcoming pageant at St. Mary’s Church in December.

The rigors of their march today had suppressed his thoughts of the upcoming holidays, but now the stillness of the nighttime had brought them back to the forefront.

“William?”

“Yeah, Tom?”

“Do you realize that next month will be Thanksgiving? And then Christmas.”

William sighed, and his voice sounded flat, the way Tom felt. “Don’t think about it. Anything can happen between now and then.”

“Sure. But there’s no chance that we’ll be home. Whether we’re here in the English countryside or out on the battlefront by then, the point is that we won’t be with our families. I guess that finally just sank in.”

William paused. “Thanksgiving. It’s my favorite.”

“Yeah.” Tom’s father would shoot a turkey. And his mother would prep it. Removing the feathers, boiling the innards, and dressing it in a bath of spices and vinegar to sit in overnight. The highlight of the day, for Tom, at least, was not the meal itself, but what his mom did on the afternoon of Thanksgiving. She pulled out a large cast-iron pot that was used just this one time every year, a Cousances that had been owned by her great-grandmother and brought over two generations ago from France. She simmered the carcass for hours and then added the meat, the vegetables from earlier, and some barley, and it turned into what they called Leftover Soup. They’d store it in the refrigerator and eat it for the next three days, letting the glow of the original holiday dinner extend just a little longer.

Earlier in the week, if the weather allowed, he and his father would take canoes to the James River and make their way up to the banks of the Berkeley Plantation, which argued that it, and not Plymouth, was the site of the first Thanksgiving. Preceding the more well-known location by a year and a half.

This is the first time he’d be missing it.

“It will definitely be different this year,” William lamented. “Thanksgiving. Christmas. New Year’s Eve. My mother will cry. Maybe my sisters. Not my dad. He’ll pretend to be strong.”

“Mine too,” Tom added. “I’m their only child. I don’t envy my mom having to be alone with my dad. He’s…he’s got a very strong personality.”

“So it seems. He doesn’t hit her, does he?” Tom could see the alarm on William’s face as moonlight streamed over his bed.