Chapter 13
Wilson woke Monday morning with the strange sense that something was missing.
He lay still for a moment, listening to the faint stirrings from the livery below. A horse shifted in its stall. Leather creaked. Somewhere near the back wall, a hoof struck the packed earth once and settled.
Nothing was wrong.
That was what felt so unfamiliar.
The memory of yesterday waited, but it no longer pressed against him with the same suffocating weight. Mercy knew. Not the careful fragments he’d allowed to slip over the past few weeks. Not the bare admission that one man had been lost under his command.
She knew everything.
He’d expected regret to follow. Shame. The old certainty that he’d said too much and could never take it back.
Instead, for the first time in eleven years, the story no longer felt as though it belonged to him alone.
Wilson let out a slow breath and rose.
By the time he finished the morning feeding, the sun had cleared the rooflines and begun pouring through the open livery doors. He carried a fresh measure of grain to Ash, then paused to run a hand down the horse’s neck. The gray leaned into his touch, calm and familiar.
“Easy morning,” Wilson murmured.
Ash flicked an ear toward him.
Wilson smiled faintly and moved on.
The feeling stayed with him as he worked.
Not happiness exactly. He wasn’t fool enough to think one conversation could set right what eleven years had failed to mend.
Sam was still dead. Sharon had still looked at him as though the very sight of him was an offense.
Nothing Mercy said could alter either truth.
But she’d listened.
More than that, she’d understood enough to ask questions he’d never thought to ask himself.
Perhaps Sharon hadn’t refused Sam’s stories forever.
Perhaps that day had simply been too soon.
The idea still unsettled him. Yet for once, the uncertainty didn’t feel like another burden. It felt like the smallest loosening of a knot he’d long ago stopped trying to untangle.
He lifted a saddle from its stand and carried it to the workbench, where a split strap waited for repair. The leather had dried around the break, but the damage was clean. A new section, properly fitted and stitched, would hold.
Wilson selected a strip from the rack, then caught himself glancing through the open doorway toward the schoolhouse.
Mercy would already be at the annex by now, likely bent over one of her stacks with that slight crease between her brows that appeared whenever a story refused to arrange itself properly.
He wondered what she’d chosen to work on first. The remaining newspapers, perhaps.
Or the captions for the veterans’ display.
Whatever it was, she’d ask what he thought when he stopped by.
The certainty warmed him more than it should have.
He lowered his gaze to the leather and measured the replacement strip.
There was still work to finish at the annex.
A few small adjustments to the last display stands.
Two shelves that needed their edges smoothed.
The committee meeting that evening would likely produce another request or two once everyone saw how close the exhibit was to completion.
And after the meeting, perhaps he and Mercy could?—
His hands stilled.
Could what?
Finish the list together. Eat lunch together. Talk a while longer, if she wasn’t too tired. Nothing more than they’d done any number of times.
Yet the thought remained, carrying with it the same quiet anticipation he’d felt upon waking.
Wilson set the measuring rule aside and reached for his knife. The blade passed cleanly through the leather, leaving a straight edge beneath his hand.
For once, the day ahead didn’t feel like something merely to be worked through.
Mercy was waiting somewhere inside it.
Wilson laid the finished saddle aside and reached for another waiting on the rack. The familiar rhythm of measuring, trimming, and stitching usually quieted his thoughts. Today it did just the opposite.
His mind kept returning to Sunday afternoon—to Mercy's questions, to the compassion in her voice, to the quiet certainty with which she'd offered another way of looking at Sharon's refusal to hear Sam's stories.
She hadn't dismissed his guilt, nor had she tried to explain it away.
She'd simply sat with him in it until, somehow, it no longer felt quite so impossible to bear.
He paused to draw the waxed thread through the leather, then frowned slightly.
Of course it had been easier yesterday. Mercy had been hearing the story for the first time.
She'd been trying to make sense of years of grief in the span of a single conversation.
She'd wanted to comfort him. Anyone with her generous heart would have.
But once she had time to think...once she began fitting all the pieces together...
The thread slipped through his fingers as another memory rose unbidden.
For those few terrible moments, he'd believed she'd finally seen him as he saw himself—a man who had no rightful place among those being honored in the Centennial parade.
The hurt had been so sharp he'd scarcely been able to breathe.
Then she'd explained, and the relief had come so suddenly it had nearly left him weak.
His hands stilled against the saddle.
That had been before she'd had time to think things through.
The thought settled over him with quiet persistence.
Yesterday, she'd been responding to the man sitting beside her, a man carrying a burden she'd only just begun to understand.
She hadn't yet had time to live with what he'd told her, to turn it over in her mind, to see it from every angle as he had since that fateful day.
Wilson lowered his gaze to the leather, but the work before him blurred. The warmth that had accompanied him since waking hadn't disappeared, but it no longer rested as easily within him. It had become something fragile, something he suddenly found himself afraid to trust.
He drew a slow breath and forced his attention back to the repair, yet another realization followed close behind, quiet enough that he almost missed it.
He was afraid because there was suddenly something to lose.
He bent over the harness again and drew the awl through the leather, forcing his attention back to the repair.
Yesterday, Mercy had been trying to comfort a man who'd finally trusted her with the worst day of his life.
She'd listened with the generosity that came as naturally to her as breathing.
She'd searched for another way to look at Sharon's refusal because she couldn't bear to leave another soul hurting if there was any hope to be found.
But yesterday had been only yesterday.
Given a little time, she'd think through everything he'd told her. She'd weigh it more carefully, fit one piece against another, and eventually reach the same place Sharon had.
His jaw tightened.
Not because Mercy lacked compassion.
Because compassion wasn't the same as living with the truth.
The Centennial had simply given them a reason to spend their days together. A reason to work side by side. To share Sunday dinners and unhurried walks home afterward. It had been easy—too easy—to mistake those ordinary moments for something that might continue.
But the work was nearly finished.
Soon Mercy would return to her classroom. The archives would claim whatever hours remained, just as she'd always intended. Her days would fill again with the life she'd been building long before he'd walked through the schoolhouse door carrying a toolbox.
And his would return to the livery.
The way they had always been.
A dull ache settled beneath his ribs.
Perhaps that was for the best.
Better for this season to end before Mercy had time to see him differently. Better to let the Centennial close the distance between them before she had time to decide, as Sharon once had, that he carried more sorrow than any future could bear.
Wilson pulled the final stitch tight and trimmed the thread with careful precision.
He’d finish what he'd promised her that he would.
Then he'd step back.
It was the sensible thing to do.
An hour later Wilson was crossing the schoolyard. He paused on the school steps, drew a steadying breath, then opened the door.
Mercy looked up from her worktable where newspapers lay spread in careful stacks.
A smile lit her face. "Good morning, Wilson. I was beginning to think something had delayed you."
"It nearly did." He hung his hat on its peg. "A customer came in just as I was headed out."
"I suppose horses refuse to consult the Centennial schedule." A trace of amusement warmed her voice. "I'm glad you made it anyway."
"So am I." The words escaped before he could stop them.
Mercy's smile softened, and for the briefest instant he felt the familiar tug to cross the room and ask what she'd uncovered that morning. There had always been another story she couldn't wait to share, another puzzle she wanted him to work through with her.
Instead, he crossed to his own worktable and unrolled his tool pouch. "What still needs doing?"
The question seemed to catch her slightly off guard. She studied him a moment before waving toward the annex. "The shelves by the large item display could use some leveling. I was also hoping to decide where these last few framed articles belong."
"I'll start on the shelves."
"If you'd rather look through the articles first..."
"The shelves." He hadn't meant for the answer to come quite so abruptly.
Something in her smile faltered before she looked back toward the newspapers. Then she gave a small nod. "All right."
Wilson reached for his plane and went to work. For several moments only the soft scrape of steel against wood disturbed the quiet.
He told himself the silence was for the best. Yesterday had asked more of Mercy than anyone should have expected. Yet she asked nothing of him now. It was a kindness he wouldn’t repay by asking for more than she'd ever intended to give.