In all of the years she’d been coming to the Adams Farm, Hope had never walked the grounds. The furthest she could ever remember going was to the barn out back to visit the horses. Knowing her mother used to run through the pastures, past them to the woods, to a little pond, made her curious as to what may lie out there in the pleasant countryside. So after the meal was over, and she’d helped clear the dishes, she decided to take a little stroll.

She hadn’t made it too far before she heard her name shouted from the distance. Without turning back, she knew it was Faith, so she slowed her step and waited as her sister rushed to catch up to her. “Where are you going?” She was out of breath by the time she caught up, and Hope almost laughed as she pressed a hand to her side and tried to control her breathing.

“Perhaps you need to get out of the house more,” she said, poking fun at her younger sibling.

“Perhaps I would if I could sew and walk at the same time,” Faith shot back. “What are you doing?”

With a shrug, Hope replied, “I just realized I hadn’t actually explored the farm much. Mama said she used to run around here as a child. I thought it might be interesting to take a little walk. You wanna come?”

“Yes, of course,” Faith replied, breathing easier now. They took off at a leisurely pace, headed in no particular direction, and soon found themselves walking through an overgrown orchard.

“I wonder why this place hasn’t been taken care of,” Hope said as they wandered through apple and pear trees with last year’s fruit still scattered around the ground.

“Maybe Uncle Arthur can’t take care of all of it anymore,” Faith replied. “All of his sons have married and gone off, as you know, and the grandsons have their own responsibilities.”

One of those grandsons, Lola’s husband, had his own farm now. Maybe that’s why Lola wanted her to become a farmer’s wife, so they’d have something in common, though Hope remembered a time when Lola had also wanted to teach school. Her marks were good enough, but she chose to marry Ben and stay in Lamar after graduation, and since Hope was the only teacher the town needed for now, she’d settled out at the farm, not too far down the road from the Adams Farm.

“He could’ve just parceled it up,” Hope thought aloud.

“Maybe no one wanted it.”

They walked a little farther, and up ahead, they saw a stone fence, nearly waist high, that squared off a small area about thirty feet by thirty feet. The grass on the outside of the space was overgrown, but inside, it looked like it was well taken care of, and as they drew closer, Hope realized what she was looking at. “It’s a cemetery.”

“A family plot,” Faith agreed. “Maybe we shouldn’t go in.”

“Why not? Clearly someone does. It’s well tended.” She stepped through a small opening in the stone, careful where she tread. There were only five or six markers, but there was room for more, and she wondered if Great-Aunt Margaret and Great-Uncle Arthur would be buried here someday.

“Baby boy Adams,” Faith read, her voice filled with sadness. “I didn’t know Aunt Margaret lost a child.” It was sad, Hope agreed, but not uncommon. Poor baby didn’t even have a name, and the dates showed he hadn’t lived a day.

Something else caught her attention. “Look!” Hope said, peering past the first row. “Look at the large one, with the muskets at the top.” They carefully stepped around the child’s marker. “Jaris Adams.” Hope turned and looked at her sister, whose eyes were wide.

“He’s the one Mama was supposed to marry,” Faith remembered. “Look. He died at Wilson’s Creek. It says Confederate officer.”

“Wasn’t Daddy at Wilson’s Creek?” Hope turned to look at her sister, puzzled.

“Oh, can you imagine fighting against your own cousin?”

Hope shook her head. “I think there’s a lot they’re not telling us.” Her eyes drifted again to another headstone near Jaris Adams’s final resting place. “Julia Tucker.” She moved a few steps over. “Aunt Julia. Your namesake.”

Faith grabbed ahold of her arm. Her name, Faith Julia, was for the girl who lay beneath the ground here. “Daddy loved her so much.”

They stood and looked at Julia’s grave for a few more minutes before moving on. What Hope saw next stunned her. “Carey Adams is buried here?”

“Why would they allow him in the family plot after what he did?” Faith asked, her voice taking on a tone of outrage.

“I don’t know.” Her eyes flickered down the tombstone. It was small and only had his name and dates on it, but she was certain by the year 1864 that this was the same man who had betrayed their town to Quantrill.

“Carey was still part of the family.”

They both turned at the sound of their mother’s voice. She was standing on the other side of the low stone wall but stepped through as she continued. “Aunt Margaret insisted, and I could hardly protest, even though what that man did was pure evil.”

The girls exchanged glances, realizing their mother wasn’t just speaking about the town now. “Mama,” Faith began, carefully crossing back to where her mother stood. “Can you tell us the rest of the story? I feel like you started to the other day, but there’s more, isn’t there?”

“Was Daddy there when Jaris died?” Hope asked, remembering what the tombstone had said about Wilson’s Creek.”

“He was at the battle, honey, but he didn’t see him that day. Your father was wounded badly at Wilson’s Creek, and he almost died as well.”

Hope looked at Faith, and their eyes met. How many times when she was little had Hope traced the scars on her father’s shoulder, his collarbone? She’d asked what happened, but he never seemed to want to talk about it. Hope had met lots of people who’d lived through the war, many vets, people who had defended their homes against Quantrill, and she knew most of them would rather not speak of those days, but she felt like she needed to know her parents story because it was a part of who she was.