Chapter 3 #5
The words sounded simple enough, yet judging from the look that crossed her face, they seemed to affect her more than he intended.
A moment later, she nodded and moved to gather several additional items from the table.
Wilson watched her for a moment and the Miller visit returned unexpectedly.
Miss Owens sitting quietly while Miz Scruggs spoke. The careful way she’d handled that faded ribbon. The look on her face when Clara described Nathan coming home after the war.
Most women he knew would have focused on the celebration itself. Miss Owens cared about what people remembered, and somehow that seemed far more dangerous.
“You really think folks will care about all this after the Centennial’s over?” he heard himself ask.
She looked genuinely startled by the question. “Yes,” she answered without hesitation.
Not loud or defensive. Certain.
She rested one hand lightly atop a stack of old ledgers.
“Maybe not every single person. But yes, some folks will want to know who came before them.
What mattered to them. How they lived. And they won't be able to take it all in in one viewing.
" She gave a mischievous grin. "Besides, it'll be a wonderful teaching tool I can use with my students, making sure every one of them takes pride in where they came from.”
Her gaze drifted briefly around the crowded room. “If no one preserves those things, eventually it all disappears.”
For one uneasy moment he found himself thinking about failures he'd carried home with him and the quiet disappointment of returning to a place that no longer felt entirely like home.
He set the lantern down more carefully than necessary.
She crossed toward another table and her eyes widened. “Oh dear.”
He followed her gaze. One side of a stacked display had begun leaning precariously. He quickly stepped forward and caught the edge of the top crate just as it shifted.
She reached for the opposite side at the same moment.
The stack steadied.
But in the cramped space between table and wall, she ended up far closer than either of them likely intended.
Wilson became abruptly aware of loose wisps of hair escaping near her temple and the faint scent of lavender lingering beneath dust and old paper.
And there was no mistaking her awareness this time. Her gaze caught and held his as warm color spread across her cheeks.
For a brief moment neither of them moved.
Then she stepped back. “Thank you,” she said, her gaze dropping as she brushed at her skirt with one hand.
Wilson cleared his throat and said the first thing that came to mind. “Those shelves need building sooner rather than later.”
To his relief, the practical observation seemed to steady them both.
She nodded quickly. “I agree. I'll see if I can find the necessary materials.”
Wilson nodded shortly and stepped back from the crowded table.
This was exactly why he ought to keep his involvement limited to practical matters.
Shelves. Repairs. A few buggy rides to outlying farms.
Nothing more.
Because somewhere between the Miller place and this overcrowded room full of Hawthorn’s history, he’d begun forgetting how dangerous it could be to let himself become invested in things that mattered.
It was a lesson he’d promised himself never to forget.
For several moments after Mr. Porter made his exit, Mercy remained exactly where she was.
The archive room had fallen strangely quiet.
Not truly silent, of course. The faint sounds of Hawthorn still drifted in from the open schoolroom door—the rattle of a passing wagon, the distant barking of a dog, the occasional sound of birdsong. But after the steady presence of another person in the room, the stillness settled differently.
The lingering awareness of that brief awkward pause beside the crates refused to settle quite so easily. Even now, remembering the way his gaze had caught and held hers for that startled instant brought unwelcome heat back into her cheeks.
Mercy firmly pushed the thought aside, drew a slow breath, and turned back toward the overcrowded tables.
"I can build it."
The words returned unbidden. They intrigued her—not because they were remarkable in themselves. Men offered practical help every day.
No, it was the matter-of-fact way he'd said it. As though the solution had been obvious from the moment he'd stepped into the room. Shelves. Repairs. Reinforcement where things threatened to collapse beneath too much weight.
Practical matters, and yet somehow, after only a single morning accompanying her on committee business, Mr. Porter seemed to understand what she was trying to accomplish better than the committee members she'd worked beside for the better part of six months.
Mercy crossed slowly toward the crowded tables along the back wall, absently straightening a stack of notebooks that didn't truly require straightening.
Most of the committee still treated the archive as secondary to the celebration itself. Important, certainly—but mostly as supporting material for speeches and displays and newspaper notices. Their main concern was to get the three Honor Roll boards correct.
But Mr. Porter had looked around this room and immediately seen what it actually was.
Not clutter. Not simply old things and curiosities. Responsibility. A place where the stories people entrusted to her could be gathered and preserved with the care they deserved.
Her fingers paused atop the stack of notebooks. That realization unsettled her more than it ought.
Mercy moved toward the table where Miz Scruggs's keepsake box rested. The repaired hinge and braced lid existed only in promise for now, yet somehow she no longer doubted the work would be done with care.
"I'm a man of my word."
Again, no flourish. No attempt to impress her. Just certainty.
She carefully unwrapped the box and folded the shawl neatly. She would return it to Miz Scruggs on Sunday, before church service.
When Mr. Porter had offered to drive her home a few moments ago, she'd refused almost automatically.
There were still several things she wanted to tend to before heading home.
Notes to update. Space to clear before additional artifacts arrived.
And to be honest she'd wanted some time alone with her thoughts.
Besides, though it was past noon by now, she'd told her mother she wasn't sure how late she'd be.
As she lifted her logbook from the stack, a niggling unease tugged at her. Had something in his manner shifted before he left?
Barely noticeable—Mr. Porter was far too controlled for it to be otherwise. Earlier, she'd thought she detected the slightest thaw in him. Then, after that unexpected moment beside the unstable stack of crates, he'd withdrawn again, as if the earlier ease had never happened at all.
As if she'd imagined it.
Mercy gathered up her logbook and Miz Scruggs's box, then headed back into the schoolroom. Sunlight stretched across the empty student desks while the familiar order of the classroom settled around her.
She sat at her desk at the head of the room, then opened her logbook. For several moments she only stared down at the inventory list without truly seeing it.
Perhaps she had imagined the entire thing. That seemed the more reasonable explanation.
Annoyed that her thoughts had drifted again, Mercy dipped her pen into the inkwell and added notations in the logbook for the Miller family artifacts.
She began by inventorying the items properly while the details remained fresh in her mind, drafting labels and careful descriptions before the pieces could be placed in the archive room.
Wooden keepsake box—hinge damaged; repair pending. Ribbon fragment. Pressed violet. Silver comb. Family letters tied with faded blue ribbon. A lock of hair. A worn English coin. Mother-of-pearl button.
And she created a tag for each individual item, taking pains to write in careful, even script.
She was careful to note that the collection remained on loan and had not been donated permanently.
Once done, Mercy placed the artifacts back in the box and prepared to carry them and her logbook back into the archive room. Hopefully she could find a safe spot for the box.
Then she paused.
Had she made note of what Clara said about Nathan carrying a tintype of her through the entirety of the war?
Mercy sat back down again with a faint sigh and reopened the notebook. Best to check that out while she was thinking about it.
That led naturally into reorganizing portions of the Miller interview itself so they were roughly chronological rather than haphazard.
She also made notations as to which were strictly family history and which were wartime experiences or related to other historical events.
This would make the eventual formal documentation much easier.
One notation led to another after that—clarifications and context she wanted to add to the notes she'd taken this morning.
Before long, notes crowded the margins and backs of pages, covering nearly every available space.
And as she read through her notes and supplemented them, she felt as if she were back at that family table, seeing their animated expressions, hearing the emotion in their voices that said how important these memories were to them.
History books would remember battles and treaties and speeches. The dates men signed declarations. The names attached to victories.
But listening to Clara describe watching Nathan ride home from the war, Mercy had been struck again by how much of history truly lived elsewhere—in homes, in family stories, in the quiet cost carried long after the marching and gunfire ended.
A faded ribbon preserved through three generations. A pressed flower saved because someone once called it everlasting. A cherished Bible containing family triumphs and tragedies.
Those things mattered too, perhaps more than most people realized.
And if no one bothered preserving them, eventually all that would remain were the broad strokes people printed in history books while the smaller human truths disappeared entirely.