Their eyesight had changed.
One afternoon Henry Cobb arrived.
Abigail opened the door.
He removed his hat.
“Mrs. Mercer.”
“Mr. Cobb.”
He looked ashamed.
“I need help.”
Abigail waited.
“With a timber contract.”
She almost said no.
Then remembered how systems changed.
Not by copying cruelty.
“Come in.”
Henry sat at the table.
Before opening the document, Abigail said, “There is something we should settle.”
He looked down.
“The wedding.”
“Yes.”
“I was cruel.”
“Yes.”
“I thought…”
He stopped.
Abigail waited.
“I thought if everyone laughed, no one would notice how scared I was of my own debt.”
That surprised her.
Henry swallowed.
“Blackwood had me too.”
Abigail’s anger softened without disappearing.
“That explains it.”
He looked hopeful.
“It does not excuse it.”
His face fell.
“No.”
Abigail opened the contract.
“Now show me the timber clause.”
Henry did.
That was enough.
Blackwood’s trial began the following spring.
Abigail testified for two days.
His attorneys tried to humiliate her.
One asked whether she had professional qualifications.
“No.”
Whether emotional resentment against Blackwood influenced her.
“I resented him after finding evidence, yes.”
Whether she had manipulated Cole into giving her access to records.
Cole nearly stood.
Abigail answered first.
“My husband leaves paper everywhere. Manipulation was unnecessary.”
The courtroom laughed.
Even the judge smiled.
The attorney shifted tactics.
“Mrs. Mercer, you have described yourself as an observer in business rooms since childhood.”
“Yes.”
“Would you agree that people often ignored you?”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps that resentment caused you to interpret ordinary accounting mistakes as deliberate wrongdoing?”
Abigail looked at the jury.
Then at the attorney.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because arithmetic does not know whether I was lonely at sixteen.”
Silence.
She continued.
“Either four hundred sixty minus forty-four equals four hundred sixteen, or it does not.”
The attorney stopped.
Abigail almost felt sorry for him.
Almost.
Blackwood was convicted on multiple counts of fraud, conspiracy, and falsification.
The final sentence mattered less to Abigail than the judgment itself.
The record now said what happened.
That mattered.
Truth written down.
Numbers corrected.
Names restored.
Sarah Pike sat beside Abigail when the verdict came.
She whispered, “My husband should’ve lived to hear it.”
Abigail took her hand.
“Yes.”
There was no better answer.
After the trial, Cole took Abigail back to the church where they had married.
The building was empty.
Abigail looked at him suspiciously.
“What are we doing?”
“Correcting something.”
“That sounds expensive.”
“Probably.”
Cole opened the door.
Inside stood Aunt Margaret.
Amos.
Sarah.
A few friends.
No crowd.
No Henry Cobb.
No spectators.
No cake leaning dangerously left.
Abigail turned.
“Cole.”
He removed his hat.
“The first wedding wasn’t yours.”
Her throat tightened.
“It was legal.”
“I know.”