“What?”
“That you’d survive.”
Mabel considered.
“She hoped.”
“That enough?”
“Yes.”
Hope was not prophecy.
Hannah could not guarantee her daughter’s future.
Only leave tools.
A will.
A letter.
Education.
Memory.
Mabel had done the rest.
At their twenty-fifth anniversary, Ridge Creek held a dance.
The same church women attended.
Most were gray-haired now.
Pearl Mason approached Gideon while Mabel spoke with the mine superintendent.
“You remember your wedding?”
Gideon looked at her.
“Unfortunately.”
Pearl winced.
“I deserved that.”
“Yes.”
She nodded.
“Still frightening.”
“So I’m told.”
Pearl looked toward Mabel.
“She became extraordinary.”
Gideon’s expression hardened slightly.
“No.”
Pearl frowned.
“No?”
“She already was.”
He walked away.
Mabel heard about the exchange later.
She pretended not to care.
Then kissed him for an unreasonable amount of time in the pantry.
At fifty-two, Gideon still found this extremely acceptable.
Age softened some things.
Not all.
Mabel remained large throughout life.
Her weight rose.
Fell.
Rose again.
Children.
Illness.
Menopause.
Years.
Eventually she stopped knowing the number.
That freedom surprised her.
For decades numbers about her body had been treated as moral verdicts.
Later they became medical information when needed and nothing when not.
Gideon aged too.
Hair silver.
Scar unchanged.
Shoulders still broad but slower.
He stopped carrying the Colt daily.
One granddaughter asked why.
“Your grandmother is more dangerous.”
Mabel threw a dish towel at him.
The child believed both.
When Gideon was seventy-three, his heart began failing.
Doctor Merritt was long dead.
A younger physician explained it carefully.
Months.
Maybe a year.
Gideon accepted it with irritating calm.
Mabel did not.
“You are not allowed.”
“That seems medically unenforceable.”
She glared.
He smiled.
One evening they sat outside the cabin watching sunset stain the mountains red.
The original cabin had expanded.
More rooms.
Better roof.
Still the same stone fireplace.
Mabel rested against him.
“Do you regret anything?”
“Yes.”
She looked up.
“That was fast.”
“I regret not telling you everything before the wedding.”
Her chest tightened even after forty-seven years.
“Anything else?”
“Barn sleeping.”
She laughed.
“You deserved it.”
“Yes.”
“Anything else?”
Gideon thought.
“I should have punched Pearl’s husband instead of reaching for my gun.”
“That would have ruined the ceremony.”
“Worth considering.”
Mabel smiled.
Then became serious.
“Do you regret Sarah?”
He understood.
“No.”
“Do you regret me?”
His expression became offended.
“Mabel.”
“I’m asking.”
“No.”
He took her hand.
“The strange thing is I remember thinking the debt bargain was the worst humiliation of my life.”
She listened.
“Jonah thought he was punishing both of us.”