Clara once saw him years later while visiting the territorial prison hospital.
He was thinner.
Older.
No polished coat.
He recognized her surname.
“Hale?”
She stared.
“You treated my mother.”
He looked away.
Clara had imagined this moment for years.
She thought she would scream.
Instead she asked:
“Why?”
Wren said nothing.
She repeated:
“Why?”
Eventually:
“Money.”
That was all.
No deep ideology.
No grand hatred.
Money.
Clara felt almost cheated.
She returned home and told Nola.
Nola said:
“Most terrible things have disappointingly ordinary motives.”
Clara nodded.
“I thought hearing him regret it would help.”
“Did he?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then don't build healing around something he controls.”
Clara carried that advice for the rest of her life.
Mae remained present.
Not as a ghost.
As history.
Her ledgers.
Recipes.
Stories.
Children’s memories.
One blue ribbon Clara kept.
Garrick spoke of her openly once he learned doing so did not wound Nola.
At first he avoided certain stories.
Then Nola noticed.
“Tell it.”
“What?”
“The Christmas pie.”
He stared.
“How do you know?”
“Eli mentioned your first wife once threw a pie at you.”
“It was not Christmas.”
“Details.”
Garrick laughed.
Then told the story.
Mae had thrown a berry pie because he brought five cattle buyers to dinner without warning.
Nola approved completely.
Garrick accused both wives of conspiracy across time.
The children loved those stories.
Mae became fuller in memory.
Not just the woman who died.
That may have been one of Nola’s quietest gifts.
She made room for the dead to be alive in stories without forcing the living to remain buried beside them.
Years became decades.
Garrick’s dark hair silvered.
Nola’s hands roughened.
Her face gathered lines she no longer minded.
Once, at sixty-eight, she caught Garrick staring.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re staring.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He smiled.
“I’m trying to remember the woman who told me she didn’t care what I thought of her face.”
Nola raised an eyebrow.
“Smart woman.”
“She was twenty-five.”
“Yes.”
“I thought she looked older.”
Nola threw a dishcloth at him.
Even after forty-three years, some crimes remained unforgiven.
He laughed.
Then crossed the kitchen and kissed her.
“Still beautiful.”
“You are trying to survive.”
“Yes.”
“Acceptable.”
When Garrick’s heart began weakening, he hid it for three months.
Nola discovered because he stopped climbing the hill to the north spring.
She asked why.
He lied.
She waited.
He lied worse.
Then Clara examined him.
“You’re an idiot.”
Garrick looked offended.
Nola nodded.
“Medical opinion confirmed.”
There was no easy treatment.
Age.
Years of hard labor.
Old damage.
Garrick slowed.
He hated it.