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kept his silence as they walked toward the harbor. The few men loitering around watched them with silent, steady expressions. Sheriff Kern ignored them, his lanky, relaxed way of walking giving the impression that they were strolling along a boulevard in Savannah.
    Not along the rundown docks of the former Confederate port.
    His guard relaxed when they at last approached a pier. The air smelled both of the sea and the fetid remains. A cross between fish and decay and coal and debris. The scent was acrid and strong. And though far different from the smells he remembered coming off Lake Erie around his prison, not completely dissimilar.
    The memory, like all the others, threw him for a tailspin. He inhaled the cloying air, attempting to locate something fresh weaving in the middle of it. Anything to clear his head yet again and bring him back to the present.
    As his vertigo dissipated, he breathed deeply and cautioned his body to remember that he was no longer at another’s mercy. No more bars separated him from freedom.
    He wasn’t cold. He wasn’t shooting his mouth off about things he had no knowledge of. Phillip Markham wasn’t dying next to him.
    Once he got his bearings again, he realized the dapper young sheriff was staring at him with concern. “Mr. Truax, you’ve grown pale. Is something distressing you?”
    It seemed he could either pretend he had no past or admit what was really the matter.
    His instincts told him telling the complete truth at this point in his mission would be exceedingly foolhardy, not even to a lawman. “My body seems determined to take its time getting acclimated.”
    Instead of letting his comment pass, the other man looked at him curiously. “To what do you need to become acclimated? The ocean? Or the South?”
    Despite his vow to remain distant, Robert felt his eyes flash in annoyance. “As you well know, I was an officer in the Confederate army, sir. I have no need to become acclimated to the South.”
    When Kern took a page out of his book and merely stared steadily at him, silently daring him to reveal his dark secrets, Robert gave in and admitted the rest. “As much as I don’t care to think about our time in captivity, sometimes the memories still inundate me.”
    Kern winced. “I dream about all that water that surrounded our encampment. In my dreams I relive the feel of the ice under my worn boots and my fears about being forced to march on it during the spring thaw. I think those pieces of ice floating in it scared me more than anything.”
    Robert couldn’t believe they were currently making small talk about his months in captivity. Discussing the weather like it mattered. But as he involuntarily shivered, his body recalling the chill against his skin that he could never seem to completely forget, he nodded. “I was always cold. And damp.” And though the sheriff hadn’t prompted any more confidences, he found himself continuing to talk.
    “Every once in awhile, something triggers my body, and for a brief amount of time I imagine I’m back. A loud crash, or the smell of burning fibers. Cold, damp air.”
    “It seems no matter how one might wish otherwise, the past always treads on our present.”
    Kern’s tone wasn’t light. Instead, it gave Robert a reason to believe he wasn’t the only man present suffering from the war. “Do you, also, have demons that you find difficult to escape?”
    “I do.”
    “I must admit I’m surprised. You don’t look old enough to have fought, let alone been sent to Johnson’s Island.”
    “Toward the end of the war they didn’t just send officers. Anyone would do.”
    The younger man’s simple statement shamed him. “Forgive me. I didn’t mean to negate your experiences.”
    “There ain’t a thing to forgive. We’ve all experienced loss, sir. Only some of the things, I think, are harder to imagine than others.”
    Robert blinked. It seemed this young pup had more to him than he had anticipated. The other man’s