Their reflection showed what time had done.
Gray hair.
Lines.
Bodies altered by years.
Cole touched her shoulder.
“Remember our wedding?”
“Which one?”
“The bad one.”
Abigail smiled.
“Yes.”
“Remember what Henry Cobb said?”
“Unfortunately.”
Cole looked at their reflection.
“He thought neither of us was worth choosing.”
Abigail’s expression softened.
Cole continued.
“I believed half of it.”
She turned.
“About yourself.”
“Yes.”
He touched her cheek.
“Did you?”
Abigail considered lying.
Then shook her head.
“Yes.”
Cole nodded.
“We were idiots.”
She laughed.
“Apparently.”
He looked at her body.
Not critically.
Never that.
“Abigail.”
“Yes?”
“You are still the woman I want.”
Her eyes burned.
“I’m heavier than when we married.”
“I’m slower.”
“That is not comparable.”
“My hearing is worse.”
“You ignore me deliberately.”
“Sometimes.”
She laughed.
Cole moved closer.
“You still enter a room and I notice.”
Her throat tightened.
“You still make me nervous.”
“Liar.”
“Terrified.”
She touched his beard.
“Good.”
He kissed her forehead.
Abigail looked into the mirror again.
This time she saw less enemy.
More history.
A body that had ridden wagons.
Carried ledgers.
Worked kitchens.
Held children.
Loved a husband.
Buried friends.
Grown older.
Taken up room.
Stayed.
There were worse things.
Cole died first.
He was seventy-nine.
A winter illness.
Nothing dramatic.
No mystery.
No Blackwood waiting in shadows.
No villain to blame.
Just time.
Abigail sat beside him.
Clara and Ben waited outside.
Cole’s breathing had become shallow.
He opened his eyes.
“Abigail.”
“I’m here.”
He smiled faintly.
“You always are.”
“Don’t become sentimental now.”
“Too late.”
She held his hand.
The same hand that had taken hers outside the church decades earlier.
Rough then.
Thin now.
Still his.
Cole whispered, “You know something?”
“What?”
“I never protected you very well.”
Abigail almost laughed.
“You did fine.”
“No.”
His eyes closed.
“You protected yourself.”
She swallowed.
“Mostly.”
“And me.”
“Sometimes.”
“And everybody else.”
Tears escaped.
Cole opened his eyes again.
“That day at the wedding.”