Page 62 of Dalliances & Devotion (The Truitts 2)

As if someone else spoke the words. Calm. Collected. He’d pulled the gurgling man—boy really, but Simon and he’d been the same age, so in his mind they’d been men—behind the cannon, even as the enemy advanced. Some of the Mainers used their dead and wounded as shields. Not that anyone could blame them.

He’d rushed behind the cannon, working it alone while taking breaks to calm the shivering man at his feet. Who grew weaker and weaker.

Finally, a tall, slender, dark-skinned goy he’d never spoken to came to assist. I’ll load and you light. But they kept coming. General Warren spit and pounded his thighs like a madman, his voice hoarse from screaming.

Fucking gates of Hell. Hazlett, make your men work.

Darkness descended, cooling the air as the smoke settled and they retreated, sobs and moans replacing the screams and whoops.

Christ, it’s cold. The nurse, who’d shoved her way between him and the other man, was as bad as their commander.

Simon. Oh god, Simon, speak to me. Come on. Please. Thad was on the ground too, sobbing.

“I didn’t know what to do or say to him.” He choked the words. “Simon was my friend, my best friend in this country, but he was Thad’s brother. Your brother.”

Amalia laid her head against his shoulder. “You knew he was gone.”

Everything about Simon, his voice, his breathing, even his tremors stilled.

“So did Will. And Meg. It took Thad a little longer. And then he wouldn’t leave the body.” David swallowed. “Thad...it near killed Thad.”

We have to bury him. The sun’s setting and tomorrow’s Friday and we have to or it’ll be too late and we won’t at all. We can’t leave him like this. We have to bury him. We can’t wait. You know we can’t wait.

He’d clung to David’s shirt. Meg almost needed to chloroform him to keep him from doing something wild, like deserting or worse, marching into the enemy’s camp.

With his free hand, David pulled off his spectacles and wiped his eyes against his sleeve. “With Hazlett dead and Rittenhouse overwhelmed, I had to ask General Warren.”

I don’t fucking care, private. Bury, don’t bury, but you better be damned awake when the rebels come at us again.

She wrapped his arm around her waist, her fingers still laced in his.

David stared at the endless fields and rocks, once so filled with terror and bodies and now so empty. He enlisted Will to help strip Simon. No metal, no adornment—ashes to ashes, dust to dust. He wrapped the younger Truitt in his tzitzis, the closest thing they had to a tallis.

“Where?” The word on Amalia’s lips was strangled and his heart bled. Her body supported his as much as his supported hers.

“Back up the hill, in the woods.” He gestured a little with his outer hand, as she leaned her head against his, their cheeks brushing. “We must have passed it.”

She pulled back a little, her eyes glistening as a breeze lifted strands of hair from her crown. “Will you...”

“Yes.” He forced himself to breathe, to not flinch, to be strong for another Truitt. “Yes, of course.”

Amalia bent down and palmed two small rocks. She slid one in his hand, the edge smooth and soft from rain and time, cool beneath his fingers. Real. She grasped his hand again and he led her back from whence they came. The woods had changed. The ghosts had returned. A near forlorn mist covered the ferns and leaves on the forest floor. New growth but the contours were the same as eight years ago. The three trees and the disturbed ground and the angle and...

“Here.”

“Here?” Her eyes darkened so every haunted, painful tear flickered and glimmered.

“Here.” He clenched and unclenched his fingers, his mind fighting his body’s need to touch her and hold her and fix the unfixable. “Do you need to be alone—”

Her hold on his fingers tightened, as his memories swirled.

Him and Will digging, Thad on his knees, needing to be held back from jumping inside the too-shallow hole.

The sun rose higher in the sky, the shadows growing, except for Amalia’s face which was still bathed in light.

“Should I say something? I mean he’s not there I know, but he was so silly and kind and—Thad is so smart and Ro so sweet, and they are both wonderful and I love them, but Simon was special. He was mine. He used to play pranks on me. Animals in my closet—live ones, like baby bunnies, who are most certainly not house-trained. Same with birds.” Eyes wide, she searched his face, as if he could do something, fix it, but his tongue stuck to the top of his mouth.

“You know Ethan reminded me of him?” She twisted her arm around his, her silk intertwined with his cotton.

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