“County archive.”
“All of it?”
“All of it.”
“What about your father’s letters?”
Abigail hesitated.
Then nodded.
“Those too.”
“Why?”
She looked around.
“Secrets kept us alive.”
Then toward the younger women working nearby.
“But records keep other people from needing the same secrets.”
Clara smiled.
“That sounds like something for the wall.”
“Don’t you dare.”
Clara wrote it down anyway.
Near the end of Abigail’s life, Henry Cobb visited.
He was old.
Bent.
Nearly blind.
Abigail sat on the porch wrapped in a blanket.
Henry removed his hat.
“Mrs. Mercer.”
“Henry.”
He smiled.
“You still scare me.”
“Good.”
He sat.
For several minutes they watched cattle moving across the lower pasture.
Then Henry said, “I think about your wedding sometimes.”
Abigail looked at him.
“So do I.”
“I was a cruel young man.”
“Yes.”
He laughed.
“You never soften anything.”
“I’m tired.”
Henry nodded.
“I thought I was funny.”
“I know.”
“I was afraid.”
“I know that too.”
He looked toward the hills.
“Blackwood owned more of me than I understood.”
Abigail said nothing.
Henry continued.
“I laughed at Cole because everybody knew about the fever.”
Abigail’s expression hardened.
“I know.”
“And you because…”
He stopped.
She waited.
“Because men are cowards around women they’re attracted to when they think other men won’t approve.”
Abigail stared.
Henry turned red despite being nearly eighty.
She burst out laughing.
He covered his face.
“I knew I shouldn’t say that.”
“You waited sixty years?”
“I was stupid.”
“That part was established.”
Henry laughed too.
When the laughter faded, Abigail looked at him.
“You know what I learned?”
“What?”
“Most cruelty is less mysterious once you find the fear underneath it.”
Henry nodded.
“But fear doesn’t excuse it.”
“No.”
He looked at her.
“I’m sorry.”
Abigail considered.
Then nodded.
“I know.”
That was enough.
On her final spring morning, Abigail woke before sunrise.
She was ninety.
The ranch belonged to Ben now.
Clara’s daughter managed the accounting office.
The county archive had created a permanent collection around the Blackwood fraud cases.
Students occasionally visited to study them.
Abigail found this hilarious.
Her life had become history before she had finished living it.
A granddaughter helped her dress.
Powder-blue blouse.
Abigail requested the color deliberately.
The same color she often wore during those first months with Cole.
She sat in the kitchen.
The table had been replaced twice.
The hearth once.
The room remained the same shape.
Morning light entered through the eastern window.
Abigail imagined Cole stepping through the door carrying firewood.
She could almost see him.
Brown coat.
Hat.
Sawdust.
That look on his face when he saw papers covering every surface.
You found something.
Several somethings.
Sit down.
Abigail smiled.
Her granddaughter entered.