Chapter Forty, Part One

To Sophie’s disappointment, Thanksgiving dawned cold and drizzly. She had hoped to go for an early ride before helping her father prepare their Thanksgiving meal, but she knew it was unlikely she would be allowed out in this weather, so she tried to go back to sleep. When that failed, she took the USS civil war book from underneath her mattress. She kept it there when she wasn’t reading it, in case her father got curious. So far he only seemed pleased to see her with a book, but she wasn’t sure if his feelings would change if he knew she was reading about him and her mother.

Well, there really wasn’t very much about him in the book, although she had dog-eared what few pages there were. It had been written for middle grade children and didn’t get into a whole lot of detail. But what pieces of her parents’ lives she had been able to figure out fascinated her. Of course she had known for as long as she could remember that her mother had killed a bad man during the war, but Sophie hadn’t realized that she killed the U.S. colonel who led the raid that sparked the civil war. And she knew her father had contributed to the war’s end in important ways, but no one had ever told her that he had negotiated peace with several of the warring factions before leaving the USS abruptly when the country was on the cusp of finally coming together as a true nation.

It was all very mysterious. Why would they both vanish from the history record after such important successes? She thought back to what her father had told her after he brought her home from her aborted attempt to run away. He left the USS because a man wanted to kill him. But that was a silly reason to leave. There was a war on. Lots of people wanted to kill him, as well as anyone else they could find. Besides, her mother could have protected him, if he didn’t think he had the skills to protect himself. One thing Sophie had observed very early in life was that her father didn’t mind at all that her mother was better at riding and shooting, and other outdoorsy things. If anything, he was proud of her. And likewise her mother never missed an opportunity to brag about her clever husband, even though she longed to be book-smart, too. Her father wouldn’t have been at all embarrassed if his wife saved him by killing a dangerous man. Knowing Mom, she would’ve found a way to give Dad all the credit, anyway.

So there was something else to the story of their abrupt decampment to Kentucky. Sophie sighed and wished she had a book that went into more detail. It was possible that Ms. James or Ms. Garduño had one, but that would involve asking, and they would probably think she wanted to find things that she could brag about. That would never do.

But maybe someone else could ask. Sophie smiled. Yes, that was the right way to do it. She would ask Mateo to find her another book. He knew everyone and would know who had a lot of books.

Satisfied that she would soon have some answers to her questions, she closed the book and slipped it back underneath her mattress. Then she went downstairs where she could hear her father making coffee and getting out the pots and pans to start cooking their Thanksgiving dinner. It was going to be hard to get through the day. She wished she could ride to Mateo’s house right now. But no, she would eat her breakfast, help cook, and maybe she and her father could work on a jigsaw puzzle after dinner. She preferred board games, but he liked puzzles. And maybe he would be happy enough that she could ask him a few questions about the war. Then when she had a better book, she could see if everything he told her checked out.