Born on the 4th of July

we’ve lost and appreciate the memories.”
“It’s a beautiful cemetery and a beautiful day,” Jackson said.
“Yeah, sorry, Dad, sorry,” Josh said.
“That’s okay and don’t ever think I’m not grateful you’re here and helping us all, whenever you can,” Adam said.
Josh hugged his father. He had no physical being, but Adam could feel the touch, and he brushed the air in response.
Jackson looked at Angela.
She smiled at Jackson; it was a nice moment.
Sometimes when they came with Adam, they saw others at the cemetery. Others among the dead. Usually those who had remained for whatever reason came because they knew their loved ones had come, and hoped their presence would be felt just a little.
Of course, she and Jackson came because it did mean something to Adam, especially when it was near the fourth of July.
Jackson had tried to talk her out of coming that day. He was always worried about too much activity; she had been told by her doctor and nurses alike that walking and moving about normally helped to make for an easy delivery. She was due soon with their first biological child. They had an adopted son, Corby, and they loved him dearly, and they’d talked often about making sure he knew he was their child, just like the little girl they were due to have soon. For Jackson, it was all new. She had kept her pregnancy a secret even from him until she’d been sure she would make it through the first weeks. He had discovered at Christmas—right when they had met Corby and started the adoption process—that she was pregnant.
And she knew Jackson; knew he would never love Corby less. But Corby had come to them as a ten-year-old. Jackson worried about Angela. Worried that she maintained her position with the Krewe of Hunters—though she was usually at home or behind her desk at their headquarters—worried when she prepared meals. Worried when she . . . moved.
“Do you need to sit?” he asked her anxiously. “I hope we didn’t walk too far.”
“Jackson, I love you, but for what I have to believe might be the billionth time, walking is good. Going about normal activities is good. Attempting to score the winning goal in a football game might not be good, but regular activity is!”
Adam and Josh were both smiling then. Little got to Jackson, but he was a “hovering” father-to-be. They hadn’t walked far at all. The car was on the pathway that meandered and split and came back together again at both the front and rear entrances to the cemetery.
It was not far.
“I’m fine,” she assured him. And she told Josh and Adam, “I love this place! We have Revolutionary soldiers here, Civil War Soldiers, the beautiful monument to Dr. Henderson who did so much research on diseases—just beautiful monuments to lives well lived. And it’s as gorgeous as it is because it was revamped during the Victorian era when they added some of the amazing funerary art. And the trees are glorious, and so many of the mausoleums . . .”
She broke off. There was something by one of the mausoleums in the area she was speaking about. The mausoleum belonged to the MacInnes family, and many had served in the government throughout the years in Alexandria and on the national level as well.
There seemed to be someone there.
And she had the strangest feeling the someone she sensed was beckoning to her.
She smiled at the others. “In fact, I shall walk a minute if I may, and enjoy the beauty of so much of the art that honors lives lived past.” She glanced at her watch. Corby had met a friend at a local ice cream shop that allowed ordering—six feet apart—at a window and had well-spaced outside tables where he could help her with a math project that had been making her crazy in summer school.
Corby loved Adam and would have come with them, but he also believed it was important to help out where he could. Math happened to be something that came naturally to him; so was helping others.
They were due to pick him up soon, but they had at least forty-five minutes left.
“Angela,” Jackson said worriedly. “You could go into labor at any time.”
“Jackson, I’m not due until the ninth. But if I do go into labor, I promise you’ll be the first to know.” She told him, smiling, and calling out as she walked away, “Love you!”
Jackson, of course, saw the dead as she did; he was exceptionally talented. But she thought if it was a ghost summoning her, it might be a shy ghost or a worried ghost, and she thought maybe she should find out what was going on before alerting him.
She rounded the MacInnes mausoleum with its gothic arches and angel statues and discovered she was right.
The ghost of a man stood there. He was dressed in military attire, perhaps fifty or so, with a mix of platinum and white hair, deep brown eyes, and face with lines that spoke of character through the years, and she thought, a lot of smiles.
But he wasn’t smiling.
He looked at her anxiously. “I’m—I’m dead. I don’t mean I’m in trouble and I’m going to be dead, I am dead. I’ve been dead a decade. But I could . . . I sensed something in you and . . . oh, dear Lord, can you see me, hear me?”
“Yes, sir, I see you clearly. And I hear your every word.”
“Oh, thank God!”
“What’s wrong, sir?”
“You have to help me. My daughter, my poor, beautiful daughter. She’s like you—well, no, she doesn’t look like you, but she’s expecting any day now, has a great husband, and he’s beside himself. He’s with the police, but they won’t even accept that my daughter is missing, and I saw it, I saw it! I saw it when she was taken. The crows . . . so many crows! They took flight, and then . . . he looked like one of them. Like a