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If I Had to Do it All Again

Epilogue, Part III: Lovers This is the final chapter. Please see Author's Note and comments at the end! Summary:

Warnings/Tags: Language, Mature Themes, brief sexual content, high emotions, family reunions, mentions of death Word Count: ~19,600 A/N: Here it is. The final Chapter. I want to preface this with a slight recommendation: If you don't want to cry or have a bittersweet ending, just leave it with Part II. It's happy. It's open-ended. It's a feel-good chapter that leaves you all warm and cuddly. This chapter, well…It's good. But it's also all the feels. I had debated on how I would end this chapter. I initially worked on it being open-ended as well, but I felt it was so beautiful and poetic this way. It is a conclusion. A chapter ending. But leaves room for us to know that life continues, and that is what we want to know after all is said and done, right? To know that after everything, you leave a mark on this world somehow. A legacy. Arthur and Eliza have one. Still with me? Wonderful, I hope you like this chapter. Please stick around for the end comments.

“It’s colder than a well digger’s butt…!” Arthur hisses as he closes the bedroom door behind him. Frost clings to the window like tiny diamonds, and you can see his breath as he ambles back to the bed where you've pulled the quilt and flannel sheets into a welcoming tent. You hum eagerly, the sound vibrating in your throat, as he slides beneath the covers. His calloused feet brush against your ankles, cold as river stones, while his shivering body settles atop yours like an oak felled in winter. He nuzzles his face into the hollow between your collarbones, his breath warming your skin through your nightgown. The comforting weight of him presses you deeper into the feather mattress, his broad chest and sturdy frame enveloping you like a living quilt stitched from muscle and sinew.

“The children still asleep?”

“Yeah,” he sighs into your skin. “And I doubt they’ll be wantin’ to get up until the house warms up again.”

“Thank you for doing that,” you say softly into his hair, and you press a kiss into his scalp.

“Thank you for keepin’ the bed warm for me.”

“It could get warmer, you know,” you say suggestively, and you hear his chuckle vibrate against your body.

“Don’t tempt me, woman. But I’m—” His sentence is separated by a large yawn. “—dead tired.”

Arthur grows heavy, but you keep your arms wrapped around him, tracing shapes in his greying hair. The world’s still dark outside, no sign of sunrise, and in the hush you count out the seconds by the rise and fall of his back, the answering flutter of your own chest. A slow, giddy ache stirs in your chest, an ancient note calling up through the cracks in the floorboards. The house settled, a sound like a sigh, and the wind outside is a long, slow moan. You can almost forget the children down the hall, the endless round of chores waiting at cockcrow, the splitting headache that will hit when the light finally comes. For now, it’s fine to lie here, older and grayer but alive, pressed close by Arthur’s steady heart.

The question floats from your lips into the dim light, soft as the dust motes suspended in the sliver of moonlight through the curtains, making its descent to allow the sun to rise. "How long has it been?"

Arthur stirs against you, his consciousness hovering somewhere between dreams and reality. "Hmm...?" His voice is gravel-rough with sleep, warm breath ghosting across your collarbone.

"How long have we been married?" Your fingers trace the weathered landscape of his shoulder, mapping familiar terrain beneath the covers.

"Legally or...?" A smile curls in his words, though his eyes remain closed, lashes casting feathery shadows on his cheeks.

You tap the crown of his head where silver threads have colonized what was once a tawny brown. "You know what I mean."

Despite his teasing, he answers without hesitation, as if the number is etched into his bones. "Thirty-two years."

"You count the year before Isaac was born?" Surprise colors your voice as you peer down at him.

Arthur shifts his weight, the mattress dipping beneath you both as he nestles his face between your breasts. His ear presses against your nightgown, seeking the steady drum of your heart. "Makes sense, don't it?" he murmurs, his words vibrating against your skin like the purr of a contented cat. He doesn’t let you answer right away, stretching the silence as if it can hold up the weight of the years. “And anyhow, we was us before we signed any paper,” he mumbles, letting his hand drift to the familiar dip of your waist, as though to hold the proof of it. “Nobody needs to tell us we wasn’t,” he says, and you feel the hug of his arm anchor around your ribs.

A log slips in the stove down the hall, a distant thud that throbs through the winter-still house. You run your hand down Arthur’s back, counting the notches of his spine, the puckered scar on his shoulder, counting off the tally of accidents and misadventures that were stitched into both your skins. You remember the stories behind each one clearly—you’d nursed half of them yourself, felt the grit of gravel and the stickiness of blood, heard him try to laugh off pain as if it never bit hard. Every mark was proof. Every scar a new chapter.

You think of the time he fell off the hayloft, landing hard enough to lose a day. Or the way he looked, white as milk, when he showed up at the back porch with his palm split to the fat from a carving tool. You remember it all, and while thankful, you’re surprised he’s lived as long as he has.

“Are you ever going to slow down, my love?”

He doesn’t answer right away, but lets out a deep breath. “Ain’t that what I’m doin’ now?”

You chuckle at that. “I mean, quit working so hard. Retire. Let the men you hired do the hard work.” You feel an ache in your chest as you try to plea with him. “I don’t want you getting yourself killed climbing cherry trees or riding green horses.” You then nuzzle the top of his head with your nose. “I want you to outlive me. I couldn’t bear to live my life without you…”

He hears the ache in your voice, feels it like a physical thing between you in the darkness. His calloused thumb traces small circles on your hip bone. He isn't a fool—the mirror shows him the silver threading his temples, the crow's feet deepening at his eyes, the way his knuckles swell after a day's labor. But his arms still bulge beneath his union suit, his back still straightens against the weight of feed sacks. The thought of sitting idle while younger men tend his orchards makes his jaw clench. As long as blood pumps through his weathered heart, he'll provide for you all—you with your chestnut hair now streaked with silver, Jonnie with her father's stubborn chin, delicate Annabelle with her books, and young Augustus still needing a firm hand to guide him. The war left empty chairs at neighbors' tables, and the Spanish flu's ghost still haunts the graveyard with its row of small stones, but they survived. Whatever comes next—drought or depression or another damned war—they'll need his shoulders, broad as barn doors, to weather it.

“You'll outlive me, darlin'," he says, voice muffled against your nightgown, the words vibrating through the cotton to your skin beneath. "I'm older than you by six years and worn out by twice that."

"That still doesn't answer my question." You run your nails against the ribbed texture of his union suit, tracing slow zigzags from the broad plane between his shoulder blades down to the small of his back, where sweat always pools after a day in the orchard. His muscles twitch and relax under your touch like a horse settling under a familiar hand. "You're dodging me, Arthur Morgan, same as you've done since 1889."

His body quivers in your arms, not from cold but from the effort it takes to swallow whatever words claw at his throat. In the gloom, you feel the struggle roll off of him—a tautness in his muscles, the way his jaw works back and forth, the almost childish stubbornness that lurks beneath that mountain.

“We can go on a vacation," you offer, your hushed voice budding with excitement like the first green shoots after winter. "Just you and me. The children would love to see their sister and Jack again, or Isaac and Noissette can have them over. They miss little Jaques and Louise."

Jaques and Louise. His grandchildren. The twins will be seven years old this spring, all skinned knees and sticky fingers, the little French phrases they say as confusing as they are entertaining. He pictures them racing through the orchard like fawns, the same way Alice once did in her overalls.

Alice, oh, Alice, who calls now to excitedly tell you both about the swell of her belly and the kicks that keep her up at night, is living quietly with her husband a few hours away. She’s already on her second child, in quick succession of the first. He still pictures her wrapped up in her mother’s arms when he stepped into that small cabin that day. Oh, how different things would have been…!

Arthur's weathered hand returns to the hollow of your hip beneath the quilt. "Is that supposed to make me feel older, darlin'?" he asks, voice rough as bark against your sternum.

You huff at that. “That wasn’t my goal, but does it make a point?”

He remembers one of the last conversations he had with Hosea, before he died, saying that he wished he had slowed down long ago. When Bessie died, he should have quit right then and there, left the gang to go live out his days in peace and quiet. “Don’t forget to take your time, Arthur,” he said solemnly. “Enjoy what you’ve made. What you’ve accomplished. I…I am so proud of you, son.”

He is grateful for that time, those last few years with Hosea—evenings spent on the porch swing with whiskey warming their throats, mornings fishing the glassy lake where mist rose like ghosts, conversations that mended what Arthur thought was broken beyond repair. Those trips to Canada were worth it, and to think it nearly slipped through his fingers like creek water, if Charles hadn't reminded the old fox that his past and the people in it can be entirely separate.

After Hosea’s passing, John later described how Hosea's face had gone pale as chalk when he mentioned Arthur's name, how he'd knocked over his tin cup, spilling coffee across the rough-hewn table as he swore he'd never set foot near the Marston place if they showed up. He insisted that it was out of self-preservation, but it was also to keep Arthur from returning to his own past. He himself left it, and he was worried that reuniting would somehow ignite that desire in Arthur to find his way back to the life he had left behind. But somehow, Charles' quiet persistence wore down that old con man's resolve like water on stone.

Arthur thinks about your question again. Will he settle down?

“Alright, darlin’,” he sighs. “I’ll take it easy.”

He feels your lips once again on his head. “Thank you, Arthur.”

“And we’ll take that vacation.” He laughs, the rumble in his chest shaking the bed as if a horse had rolled in the mud beside you. “Don’t mean I’ll like it, though.”

A laugh bubbles up from your chest, honeyed and inviting, while your fingertips drift across the landscape of his skin, causing goosebumps beneath his clothes. "Oh, I suspect you might enjoy it after all..."

Arthur's muscles lengthen with a low, satisfied groan before he shifts his weight, drawing you against the warm wall of his body, the mattress dipping as he rolls over. You chuckle excitedly, eagerly, as you anticipate his hands, rough and battered but gentle, sliding beneath the hem of your nightgown, working their way up to cup your waist. His breath, now less shivery, warms the hollow between your throat and shoulder, and you feel the tips of your ears burn in the cold air. He kisses the sensitive shell of your ear and down to your jaw, lips mapped by memory. His palms, broad and strong, knead the soft flesh of your hips. For a moment, you let yourself float—forgetting the brass alarm on the dresser, the creaking floors, the endless scrape of winter on glass. The world shrinks to the heat of your bodies, forgetting the age of them, and returning to a place where pain doesn’t exist.

Just him.

And just you.

And you’d do it all over and over again.

***

Dear Alice,

I am so glad that I finally convinced your father to take that vacation. I do confess that while trying to choose a place to go, it was rather difficult—simply because we’ve been all across the county. I offered Europe, but your father dug his heels. He was not going to do that. But you can’t blame your poor, old mother for trying, can you?

But it’s been so long since we’ve been to California. Of course, you were so little then, I carried you everywhere, and was too busy trying to stay alive to really enjoy the beaches. You know, they have shaved ice on nearly every street corner here? At least, it appears to be, not that I am one to complain. It is much warmer here, and the ice cools me down.

Enough about my little musings, or I will be here forever. Your father suggested I should only write a letter every once in a while so I can focus on our time together while we’re out and about. I think it is a splendid idea, as I will not keep to the writing desk the entire journey.

Give my love to your husband, and take care of yourself (let him handle the toddler!). I look forward to returning home and spending time helping you prepare for your baby’s arrival. I am excited beyond words, and cannot help but hope that it will be a boy, so you will have both a boy and a girl. Wouldn’t that be marvelous? I will write again or give you a call from the bed and breakfast’s telephone when I can. Maybe even pick out a postcard with a nice picture of the coast.

All my love,

Your mother

***

“Smile…!” And with a soft click, the stranger takes the picture with your camera. “I think it took.”

You chuckle softly; you won’t know until you get them back from the developing company, but thank the man anyway. “We thank you for doing that.”

He meets you halfway in your stride, and you take the camera back from him, and he waves politely as he walks away.

“I think I blinked,” Arthur says lowly to you as he approaches, his hand finding the small of your back. Your focus is on the camera, rolling the film over so a new picture can be taken.

“And I think my hat was lopsided. No matter, it adds character, then.” You turn to your husband and tuck your camera away in his satchel. “Let’s keep walking.”

Arthur has been watching you this whole time, still under the spell you put on him years ago. He knows you don’t care for your crows' feet or smile lines, or the silver in your hair, but he loves all of it. It is almost a compliment to watch you grow old, that he gets to be here to do it with you.

He loves the way your lashes curl naturally, how your lips, though thinned out some, still feel intoxicating when he kisses them. Your skin, softer and beginning to wrinkle now, still feels warm beneath his fingers. Fifty-three looks good on you.

Not acknowledging even what you’ve been saying the last two minutes, he reaches to let his forefinger gently graze your cheek. “You want some more shaved ice?”

And as though you were a dog who spotted a squirrel, your brown eyes lift, still doe-eyed and radiant, and they sparkle with eagerness at the mention of your newly-found favorite sweet treat. “Do you have to ask?”

He chuckles at that, moving his hand away to offer you his arm. “Let’s go, then.”

You take it, and as you turn, a slight breeze catches, threatening to take your hat off your head. You quickly reach up to hold it steady and laugh at the situation. “I’ll be red like a lobster if I lose my hat…!”

“But’chu will be my lobster.”

You risk losing your hat to slap your husband on the arm. “Oh, you stop that.”

***

Arthur does his best to not show his age as he lays out the large blanket, taking advantage of the breeze to get it to splay out and spread softly on the sand. “This good, darlin’?”

You nod your head, absentmindedly slipping off your shoes as you hold two cups of shaved ice with cherry syrup. Your wide-legged pants move like a skirt in the breeze, and you think to yourself how grateful you are that you’re wearing cotton instead of those wool stockings and bathing suits like the other women are wearing on the beach.

Wearing black outside on a day like this seems foolish, and even then, you couldn’t imagine wearing those in public. Things have certainly changed.

“You gonna sit down, darlin’?” You blink away your thoughts and look down to find Arthur already sitting down and rolling up his cotton pants. “Gettin’ a little lonely down here.”

You chortle at that and find a spot across from Arthur in the blanket. You stretch out your legs and lean back on the support of your arms, letting your eyes lift to look over Arthur’s head and to the ocean rolling in on itself against the beach.

A silence falls between you, your thoughts wandering again, and Arthur enjoying the sounds of the waves behind him. He prefers the view of you to the ocean, and doesn’t feel the need to turn around. He can see the tense look in your brow, finding it contradictory to the insistence on your part to relax all of the time. Seems like you should take your own advice.

“Hey,” your husband calls out to you, soft, almost hushed, and you lower your eyes to meet his, and you see him now lying on his side. “Give me your feet.” You look at him with an inquisitive brow, but cross your ankles and stretch your toes in his direction, wiggling them as he scoots closer. Arthur’s hands are sand-gritty but careful, and he lifts your right foot with both palms, cradling it with embarrassing reverence. Despite your uncontrollable response to pull your foot back, he starts to knead the arch, working out the fasciitis right tenderly, but firm enough that you can feel it. You have to bite your tongue for a moment or two longer, until the warmth of his hand provides some relief. Once he feels you relax and you let your chin lift, he smiles to himself and begins to work his hands up your left calf, slipping his hands into your pant leg. That’s when you close your eyes and let out a deep exhale.

He watches as the sun hits your face, the late afternoon glow. Shaved ice already forgotten, melted down to nothing after you had set the cups in the sand beside you. His eyes follow the scattered freckles on your skin, and how they disappear beneath your partially open shirt collar. The light makes you shine like an angel, a celestial being that could tell him the location of heaven. If he were any wiser, it would be right here.

You open your eyes to look out at the ocean, its rolling foam crashing into the shore. Children play at its edge, their parents standing close by. Some movement catches your eye, and you see a young couple holding hands as they walk along the beach. The man stops momentarily, causing his woman to be pulled back suddenly. When she pivots back to him, he pulls her close, meeting her smile with a loving kiss.

Oh, to be young again. You could do without all the gang escapades and Dutch’s plans, but to be younger and to have more time.

You’ve heard about these new fads, radium creams, and "Laird's Bloom of Youth,” and while you’ve been tempted to try to make yourself more youthful, it all just sounds like a bunch of snake oil. No potion or cream can turn back the wheels of time.

And yet…

“There are women my age who dye their hair…” you begin to say out loud, looking down at him as he continues to knead a sore muscle in your calf. “Would you want me to color the gray out of my hair?”

“What? No…” he sets your leg down almost instantly, rising to a sitting position. “I ain’t gonna ask you to change, darlin’.” He moves closer to you, reaching out a hand to tuck your curls behind an ear as you tuck in your chin.

“But you’ve always liked my hair, and it’s turning white now…”

“Like a halo,” he answers quickly to disperse your self-doubt. He lets his finger linger against your cheek, making goosebumps almost rise on your neck.

“I am no cherub, Arthur, nor a saint.”

He grins, sly, and sets his hand on your knee. “Don’t have to be, to have a little god-given light about you.” And he leans in to kiss you. The compliment curls in the hollows of your throat. Always this man, and always the same—it is like poetry, how the words hit you as sweet as honey and twice as thick, and you let them slide down into memory for later when you will want to recall them. Arthur’s mouth is soft and rough all at once, chapped from the wind but careful on your lips. A real kiss, not for show. The kiss that knocks the taste of winter from your mouth and replaces it with salt and sunlight. You’ve always been greedy for it. You’re greedy now, even if the shape of your hunger has trimmed down to something smaller, more private, less a forest fire and more a candle stub in a jam jar.

He draws away slowly, letting the kiss linger as long as it can, then tilts his head, blue eyes shining with amusement. “You wanna walk in the water, don’t’chu?”

It’s as if he can read your bones, the way he can get you to think of something else. “We don’t have to,” you start, determined not to seem childish, but your feet are already flexing, ready for the cold shock.

Arthur frowns for a split second, considering the state of his knees and the effort it’ll take to stand, but then shrugs and smiles the kind of smile he usually saves for the children. “Why the hell not?” He pushes to his feet, joints creaking under the old wounds and the miles, and offers his hand. “We took this trip for a reason, didn’t we?”

You look at his hand, his callouses in his large palm. You mull it over for a few seconds more before shrugging. “Aw, the heck with it.” You take his hand, letting yourself be pulled up, his palm warm where yours is cold and a little sticky from melted ice. The sand grits between your toes as you straighten and step off the blanket into the sand, and Arthur steadies you with an easy regrip at your hip. He doesn’t bother brushing off his pants; the salt air clutches at the fabric anyhow, outlining the ridges of muscle and bone. The two of you walk, drifting along the beach’s slope, where the wet-packed sand is cool and flecked with black grains. Arthur leads a half step ahead, always vigilant, scanning for stray driftwood, broken shells, glass.

“Always looking out for me,” you think aloud, and the thought lands heavy and sweet as a ripe fig.

“I ain’t gonna let no one else do it," Arthur answers soflty, and his hand doesn’t leave your hip. You see the children from before, now closer to the water and trying to collect shells before the waves return again. He leads you to a vacant spot on the shoreline, his hand leaving your hip to take you by the hand. “You wanna take this slow, or…?”

The ocean water laps over your toes and begins to soak into your pants. Truth be told, you don’t really care; you just love the way the water feels. It’s invigorating, and, combined with the nostalgia of youth, Arthur’s swooning eyes, and the feel of his hand in yours, makes you want to laugh and spring and jump.

“I sort of…” you begin to say. “just—wanna get right in.”

Arthur watches you with a raised brow. “You mean, get in or…?”

“I mean charge right in, up to my neck.”

“But, darlin’…” Arthur chortles. “You just got done tellin’ me to take it easy, and now you wanna act like a school girl?”

You turn to look up at him, eyes twinkling. “And why not? It isn’t like we’re building a house or running the orchard. I just wanna run into the ocean!”

He can’t help but smile at you, those doe eyes of yours full of life and wonder. “What changed your mind?”

Without thinking much about it, you lean in quickly and give him a kiss, long and hard, taking in a deep breath before letting your lips part in a satisfying smack. “You.”

You watch the wrinkles in his eyes multiply as he smiles, see the silver in his hair, and the spots in his brow from working in the sun too long. He nods toward the water. “Go on then.”

You shake your head, pulling back on his hand. “Oh no, no, you’re not getting outta this, Mr. Morgan…”

Arthur lets you drag him forward, both of you picking up speed as bare feet slap wet-packed sand and tidewater squishes between your toes. Your laughter, pitched high and reckless, tangled with the white noise of surf, louder than you’d mean it to, attracts looks from a few sunburnt children and their bored mothers.

Arthur’s lungs almost give out when that cold Pacific water bites into his shins, but he digs his heels and powers through the wall of sensation, holding tight to your hand as you drag him, squealing, toward the next breaking wave. You shriek at the chill, your hat forgotten as the brim promptly flopped off and bobbed away. You whoop, the sound brighter than anything in you in years, and turn to see Arthur blinking ocean out of his lashes, water dripping from his eyebrows.

He is grinning like a schoolboy, clothes plastered to him and hair flat against his brow.

“Well, you look like a drowned coyote,” you shout at him, the laughter bubbling up your throat as you skirt sideways from the next breaker.

“Better than a wet cat, I guess,” he says, squeezing your hand and tugging you so you nearly topple. Your feet tangle, knees buckling, and you crash together against his chest, his arms instantly wrapping around you, more reflex than romance, steady as always. The sharp cold stings your skin, teeth rattling, but the feeling makes you cackle louder. You kick at the water, splashing his shins, and the next slap of a wave catches you both at the waist.

You can’t stop laughing, even as the next wave smacks you hard enough to stagger you forward. Arthur’s hands clamp on your arms to anchor you. The water is only up to your knees, but the surf sucks at your calves, spinning you off balance. You clutch his forearms, and his skin is solid and warm and lined with old scars. For half a second, you are weightless, as if carried by the tide, your cheek pressed into the hollow of his chest.

And there it is—Arthur’s laugh, that deep, rolling baritone like thunder behind a hill. It is a living thing. No matter how foolish or glorious life has and will become, some things will always make sense—like this. Like him, like you. He wipes the salt spray from his nose and drags you back up, closer to the shore, and brings you close to his chest.

And that young couple who passed by you earlier, you can catch the tail end of the woman’s words. “…I wanna be like that when we get older…”

And you could just swell up with pride.

You close your eyes for just a moment, letting the Pacific wind tug wet through your hair, salt stinging your eyes, and hear the echoing beat of Arthur’s heart.

You are so happy.

You feel Arthur’s finger graze your cheek again. “What say we head back, hm?”

After a moment longer, you nod your head and let Arthur guide you back to the dry sand, his big hand wrapped around yours, his thumb rubbing slow circles into the base of your palm. The salt water clings sticky to your skin, and your teeth knock together as the last chill overtakes you. Above, gulls pick their way through the soft hush of wavering cloud-light, treading the air as they might just float off the spinning earth. You bend over to pick up the blanket, shaking off the sand, and dab your face dry with it. Arthur wrings out the bottom few inches of his rolled-up pant legs, making a great show of stoicism, but his jaw is clenched in an overly heroic display, even when he’s clearly miffed. You stifle a smile and hand him the blanket. He dries off his arms and shoulders, then reaches behind you to wrap the blanket around your back and draw you in, enveloping you in his arms.

Something red catches your eye, and turning your head to look down, you see the two cups of what used to be shaved ice.

Your bottom lip juts out as you stare at the melted puddles of cherry-red, the cups seeping into the sand like tiny tide pools. "Oh..." The disappointment in your voice is childlike, genuine. "I forgot I had those."

Arthur only chuckles, the sound rumbling from deep in his chest, his eyes crinkling at the corners where salt water has dried into fine white lines. "You want me to get’chu a new one?" His thumb traces a damp strand of hair from your temple.

You look back to meet his eyes, those ocean blue irises that have watched over you for decades, now soft with affection in the golden afternoon light. "Yes, please."

***

The bathroom door creaks as you push it open, towel-dried hair still damp against your neck. Your eyes scan the empty armchair where Arthur usually sits with his journal or a dog-eared paperback, but the room holds nothing but silence and the fading afternoon light through half-drawn curtains.

“Arthur…?” you call out softly, hoping that he is just around the corner in your suite. The suite’s silence feels a little too thick, a little too expectant, like the pause after someone spits a tooth and everyone waits to see what’ll happen next. You walk barefoot through the entry, carpet rough against your still-damp toes, robe tight around your body. You muse that he might have gone downstairs to bring up dinner, the idea of a supper with just the two of you instead of in the dining hall with other guests appealing.

You figure you can change into your clothes while you wait; there's no sense in sitting around in your bathrobe.

The closet is a wooden armoire with a smell like old cedar, and as you open the door, the scent is overtaken by a brush of lavender sachet—standard housekeeping, always more refined than typical hotel methods. You’re about to peel off your robe when you hear a strange tapping on the glass window.

tic-tic-tic!

It is faint. Maybe nothing but a seagull bouncing off the siding, but the tap drags prickling gooseflesh up your arms—tic-tic-tic!—insistent enough to draw you to the window. The glass is shrouded behind the voile curtains, the breeze making them float in the air momentarily.

You crane your neck, lean into the pane, and slide two careful fingers between the curtain and the glass, pulling the fabric back to get a full view of the world beyond your room. The view beyond shimmers with salt haze and sunset, an endless stroke of orange over the Pacific. Far below, other guests dot the colonnaded terrace or stroll the promenade, and the horizon swells in blurred ripples, the world smeared in gold and red by a sun slipping off-edge. The hotel’s trellis, with its tangled nest of bougainvillea and morning glory, circles just below your window—if you stick your head out to look down and see it—but nothing in view to explain the noise. You’re just about to let the curtain go, when you almost—almost—jump out of your skin at a new, sound—like branches snapping—this time from your left.

A shadow looms on the balcony, outlined against the gold-lit ripple of the sea. Your heart stutters.

“Kind of a nice view, ain’t it, madame?”

Land sakes, it is Arthur!

“What!” you shriek, almost catching the attention of people below. You then lower your voice and stick your head out of the window carefully, not wanting to do anything and jeopardize the hold he has on the trellis frame. “What are you doing…?!”

He smiles sheepishly behind a low grunt as he stabilizes himself, feet planted on the second-story ledge. “Couldn’t get the lock on the damned door open, so figured I’d take the scenic route,” he said with a flair of sarcasm, and his eyes flicked up—hoping to impress, but you can see that there is a deliberate reason that he has decided to climb up the trellis.

“I know you aren’t doing this for your health,” you venture, sticking your head further out of the window. “You realize that this is the second floor…?”

“Don’t this—?” He pauses, readjusting his grip. His plan was better in theory, and now that he is up here, he’s begun to realize that while he is still strong for his age, he isn’t as strong as a twenty-five-year-old man. “Don’t this remind you of somethin’?”

You click your tongue at his absurd question. “Yeah, it reminds me how foolish you can be sometimes—!”

“I know you ain’t a princess in need of rescuin’…” he starts. “But this feels like a tower…!”

You feel your body freeze and your eyes widen. It is as though you just got struck by lightning, but in this case, a memory. Back home, in Utah, when the town was still named after the Dwyers.

You were in your hotel room, staring a young man down as he climbed up your trellis.

You remember.

“Arthur…” you gasp, meeting his eyes. “You…”

“You almost reacted the same way,” he muses, his voice a half-grimace, half-chuckle. He grins, but the effort of holding himself up is starting to show in his jaw, the lines along his chin going tight. “Darlin’, you gonna let me in, or am I gonna get arrested out here for loiterin’?”

You shake your head. “You should get down, it isn’t safe for you to keep going!”

Arthur flashes his lopsided smile. “Ain’t a thing to it, sweetheart.” He barely gets the words out before a rut in the wood gives way, and his left foot slips an inch. The jolt sends a spark through you, and you instinctively grab the window frame.

“Hurry, hurry!” You pat the windowsill, beckoning him to climb. “Get in, before you fall…!”

You reach toward him, palms open, as he scales the final stretch of trellis. His forearms tense with each pull upward, veins mapping rivers beneath sun-weathered skin. Though you stand safely inside, your chest rises and falls in rhythm with his labored breaths—as if your body remembers what it means to climb toward something wanted.

When you can finally reach his shoulder, you grab onto it with both hands, bracing your feet against the inner wall. Arthur grunts, teeth bared, and heaves himself up the last stretch. His shoes scrape heavily on the painted wooden ledge, his breath ragged as he shoulders his way through the open window into your arms. He nearly stumbles forward and, for a brief slippery second, you’re sure he’s going to topple over backwards and concuss himself on the tile floor. You catch him by the wrist with both hands, dragging him the rest of the way until he collapses, half on you and half on the rumpled wooden floorboards. The whole experience has you catching your breath, but you find yourself laughing despite it.

“So much for relivin’ memories,” he pants, and he pushes himself off of you and to his feet.

You lie on the floor just a bit longer, still giggling, and the memory lapses over you like a second tide. Still on your back, you pat your chest and feel the tremble drain out through your fingertips and into the old pine planks beneath you. Arthur’s shoes tap close and then stop, and for a moment, there is only the breeze and the distant slap of the curtain against the partially opened window.

“You alright, darlin’?” Arthur asks, concerned to find you still on the floor.

“Yeah,” you pant. “I’m fine.”

After a second longer, he leans down and offers you a hand. “Here…”

You glance at his fingers—knuckles still broad and rough, hand calloused but surprisingly elegant, scar running like a faded crack across the back from that time with the wire fence and the runaway cow. He’d barely let you clean it, griping and whingeing about the size of the needle when you stitched him up, but now he flexes it without a care. You take his hand and let him draw you to your feet, the memory of being hauled up from a ditch or onto a horse or into a moving train car braided so tight with your muscles that being held like this feels as common as breathing, as sacred as prayer.

When you stand up, you recinch the rope about your waist, as though propriety matters right now. You clear your throat, and Arthur quickly turns to avoid your gaze, now embarrassed for having tried to be romantic.

“Arthur…”

“Naw, it’s alright, I got it.” And he heads to the window, with the intent to close it.

But that isn’t what you were even about to say. “…Wasn’t even thinking about the window,” you start, voice low and careful, “but if you're tryin’ to put a show on for me, it’s a damned good one.”

Arthur glances back over his shoulder, his face half-shaded by the falling night, the lines at his mouth crease and jaw all doubled up in a half-smile, like he can’t settle on how to react. He stands awkwardly for a beat, hands on the sill, then shrugs his whole upper half and mutters, “Well, it seemed more poetic before the rot caved in that step.”

You feel another tide of heat crawl up your neck. “I—I never forgot that day, you know,” you venture, hugging yourself. The world outside is silvered, sea-wind smudging the stars, and inside it is just you and the pulse in your throat.

Arthur fidgets with the window pane until it falls down, and he secures the latch. “Neither have I.”

“Sometimes I wonder if that was the time when—” you stop yourself with a chortle. You’re not making much sense, anyway.

But even so, he knows what you mean. “Me, too.”

Your brow lifts, the skin crinkling like parchment paper. "You do?"

Arthur nods, his broad shoulders still facing the window, the amber glow of sunset catching the silver threads in his hair. "Yeah. Kinda foolish to think about that, especially now that time’s passed and he is in his thirties..." He finally turns around, weathered shoes creaking against the floorboards, his eyes—still that impossible blue—meeting yours across the dimming room. "But if it was, it is almost...special...you know? I mean, we was happy at that time."

You smile, feeling the familiar warmth spread across your chest like honey. "Very happy."

He scratches the back of his neck, calloused fingers moving against sun-leathered skin, the gesture transforming him into that shy young man with dirt on his boots and hope in his eyes—not the confident gunslinger who'd tipped his hat at you across a crowded restaurant. "I just...want you to feel special all the time. To not worry if I'll stop lovin' you because you're changin'. It's just life."

You feel your shoulders drop, tension melting away like snow in April sunshine. The knot between your shoulder blades—one you hadn't even realized was there—unwinds itself. Even if you don't doubt his love for a second, hearing it aloud feels like rainfall after drought. "I know," you whisper, the words barely disturbing the air between you.

He walks up to you, shoes clopping softly on the floorboards. You let him take you by the waist, his calloused fingers splaying across the curve where your hips begin. Through the thin silk of your robe, his touch burns like whiskey, warm and familiar. He traces the outline of your body as if committing it to memory all over again. "And I find you...so temptin', Mrs. Morgan," he murmurs, voice rough as sandpaper but gentle as a prayer. "It's torture sometimes."

You feel the glow of his confession radiating through you, sparking dumb, giddy heat behind your ribs. You close your eyes just long enough to savor it, then open them to him—the way he hovers as if afraid to break the moment, the way his hands gentled on your waist. His wedding ring, the one you bought him for your twenty-fifth anniversary, still bright and true despite the years of wearing it, bites a spark of gratitude from your throat. You let your hands roam up, linking behind his neck, and drag his big, heavy head down to yours. This time you’re not laughing; this time it’s deliberate, something slow and steady and hungry. “We can’t have that…can we, Mr. Morgan…?”

He hums at your reply just before your lips meet, hungry and urgent, a petty theft of years lost and found again as Arthur presses your back. He groans, hands finding the hollow at the base of your skull, curling in the wet ropes of your hair, greedy for the pulse of your heartbeat at your throat.

You welcome his hands, the way they slip off your robe effortlessly, how they wander your body as he whispers praises in your ear. It is no wonder at all that you give in to him so easily, and once he is no longer restricted by clothing, any soreness from the day is completely forgotten. The old ache in his left hip, the one he’s lived with ever since he fell off that young stallion a few years ago, is cast to the wayside as he finds his rhythm alongside you; inside you. Body and soul.

It is always the weight of him you’ve craved, the bone-deep surety of his body crowding out the uncertain evening, the way his hips slot against yours, and the way every bit of you that ever felt hollow comes up full, brimming, like a glass shivering to overflow.

It is morning, and you lie cocooned in its light and tangled sheets, the hush only broken by the quick, shallow breaths as your heart fights to slow itself down. Your legs ache in places that make you want to laugh for the sheer ache of it. You turn your head on the warm pillow, face pressed into creased linen, and find Arthur at your side with the loose-troubled breathing of a man who’s run a race and knows he’s won for the day. His hand droops, palm down across the bedspread, wedding band glinting. He snorts awake at your movement and cracks one eye, smile showing in the half-shadow of his jaw.

"So, was it worth the climb?" you ask, the words dry in your throat but curling up warm at the edges.

“Let me put it this way…” His hand moves to find yours, and your fingers clasp around his. “If I had to climb that thing every day for the rest of my life, I’d do it.”

You smile, feeling the corners of your eyes crinkle with the genuine warmth of it. "And if I had to help you climb into the window every day, so would I."

He snorts, a gruff sound that rumbles from deep in his chest, his weathered face crinkling at the corners. "Shut up."

You grin wider, your teeth catching the last golden light filtering through the curtains. "Oh, you know you love me."

And his eyes—blue as a summer sky, fringed with lashes gone silver at the tips—soften like butter left in the sun. The hard lines of his face melt away, leaving only the man you've always known beneath the years. "Oh, I know."

"And don't you forget it, Arthur Morgan," you whisper, his name on your lips still tasting as sweet as it did decades ago.

“I won’t.” He whispers, and he squeezes your hand tighter. “I won’t.”

***

It is a beautiful place. He is glad she picked it out beforehand. They went out walking one day, taking their sweet time, hands never letting go, and she pointed it out to him. “This is where I want us to be,” she said sweetly, her silver hair letting loose in the light breeze. “The sun can set on our stones, and it will be just the prettiest picture.” She turned to him and kissed him, then. “Remind me to get my camera later.”

He wasn’t too eager to talk about it, the thought of either one of them being in the ground was something he wasn’t ready to face, but she did not much care for his discomfort. When spring came, she would drag him out there again, basket in tow, checking the fragile green shoots for rabbits or frost and pointing out the aspen tree that anchored the far corner. “Plenty of room for the whole family,” she said casually. “That is, if the children want to be buried here. It’s hard when they all grow up and get married or find their way away from us. I imagine it would be hard to choose.”

Arthur always figured he’d be buried beneath the mountain, or tossed off some nameless ridge like the outlaws before him. The idea of a tidy family plot, hemmed in by aspen and crocus, seemed like an absurd joke until she started nagging him about it. For the past two years, she’d worn him down with gentle reminders about the cost of family and how beautiful a good death could be. Maybe she believed she could trick fate by planning ahead—keep the reaper at bay with a well-tended border of lilacs and painted stones.

But it didn't keep Death away for long. The harsh winter of ‘44 froze the marrow in her weary bones, turned her fingers ice cold, and stole her breath in visible puffs that grew fainter each day. The war was bleak enough, it being the only thing ever discussed on the radio, and the only thing worth looking to was spring. But when the first crocuses finally pushed through the thawing earth, she followed them. On the evening of May 7th, 1945, she closed her eyes for the final time—slipping away while Arthur's calloused thumb traced circles on her paper-thin skin, his cracked lips pressed against her temple, whispering promises about summer fishing trips and orchard picnics she would never see.

By morning, it was announced that the war was over and peace would begin to take the world once again.

But not for Arthur.

He loved her. Oh, God, how he loved her.

“You were supposed to outlive me, darlin’,” he says with a quivering tongue. He can still see the shape of the marble marker through his blurred vision, tears hot and heavy as they bead at the end of his eyes and stream down his weathered cheeks. “The grave ain’t gonna be satisfied until I’m lyin’ next to you. I promise.”

Even if Augustus hadn’t taken over the orchard and horse breeding business, Arthur would’ve never sold it. He made his children promise to let it carry on through the family forever, as long as it would last. It’s survived the Dust Bowl, blight, land taxes, drought, and two wars, and it, too, will survive his death.

He will tell her what she has missed when he sees her again, if there is a place for him. And when they are both bones under the aspen shade, with wildflowers growing from their sleeves, it won’t matter that the world changed, that horses gave way to cars, and the world went on without them.

It is a beautiful place. The light hits different on her stone this time, as though the heavens knew this day was special.

Fifty-six years together.

“Happy anniversary, darlin’.” And with a steady movement, he bends over his stiff body to place some Harrison’s yellow on her grave. “Death ain’t partin’ us.”

“Daddy?” a soft voice calls out to him. Slowly rising, he uses the support of his cane to turn around. Jonnie Beatrice stands a few feet away, eyes dark and soft as her hair bouncing off her shoulders. She shivers a bit, the coolness of the spring breeze swirling around her, and she pulls up the collar on her wool jacket. “Isaac just pulled up.”

He stands rigid a moment, hand awkward on the cane, as the clamor in his chest makes it hard to get breath. He wipes at his cheek, rough with stubble, and tries to banish the red from his nose before Jonnie gets close. She’s grown into her mother’s height, drawn thin with the long face of the Morgans and the sad, burned-in wisdom of her mother. Arthur leans into the cane, letting the ache in his knees distract him from the bigger thing gnawing at his insides.

Jonnie reaches for his arm out of habit, like she is still a girl unsure of her steps, but stops herself, knowing her father’s pride. But he takes her offered hand, guiding it back to his arm, where she links it gently. They move slow, careful, the way old people and small children do. On the other side of the meadow, the aspen groves clatter like coins in a tin. Arthur feels every year, every season spent on this patch of dirt, and lets the hush lie across his shoulders.

“She’d like to see the cherry buds, now that they’ve come out,” Jonnie says softly. While she grieves the loss of her mother, she uses very few words to say it. She’s always been that way, and she looks at her father the same way she always has, with a gentleness he has never quite understood how he deserved. In silence, they cross the sodden grass, his boots soaking up earth and the hem of her skirt, just below the knee, following the breeze as she lets him lean into her when the ground softens underfoot.

Arthur clicks his tongue. Why would any woman in their right mind wear a short dress like that in a Utah spring? “You oughta wear somethin’ that you ain’t chitterin’ in, June Bug.”

“It’s the fashion, Daddy.”

“And when is you gonna marry? You can’t keep lookin’ after me forever.”

Jonnie pats her father’s hand. “I’m forty-five now, Daddy. I’m set in my ways.” Truth is, she is happy with the life she has, owning her own pawn shop over on McKinley street and traveling the globe for the next shiny thing to collect. “Any fella that can put up with me is either broke or broken, and I got enough collectables around the house as is.” Her smile is her grandmother’s but undeniably her mother’s, too—something in the corner of the mouth, a secret lazy twist. “Besides, you’re still enough of a handful for me.”

Arthur grunts at that, a low chuckle rumbling up in his ruined chest. Since Eliza died, Jonnie has come to live with him back at the homestead, returning to her apartment on weekends and leaving only to go shopping or check in on her store. Arthur feels indebted to her and knows that after his recent fall, taking care of him isn’t easy. But as stubborn as she is, he wants to do as much for himself as he can.

He pats her hand softly. “Maybe so, June Bug. Maybe so.” He walks with her up the lane, past the scuffed stones and the slanting fence rail, to where the orchard’s first blush of pink-breasted, the branches like a young woman after church, all bright and bashful. He pauses, chest heaving, as the frost-spangled grass catches a shaft of sun and makes the world look new again. Arthur squints against the glare, blinking until his eyes adjust to the budding light.

He keeps thinking she might walk over the hill, as though two years haven’t passed since her death, and that they are young again and just fixing up the place.

You drive a hard bargain, Mrs. Morgan.

Then make like Mr. Morgan and kiss your wife.

Jonnie lets him feel whatever he is feeling, letting him go back to good memories to get him by. She’s known him all of her life, and knows how this place can take a person back to a place where times were better. Whether it be the sound of their boots muddying through the thawed grass, the smell of distant smoke and wet earth, or the slow, stubborn warmth in the air, this home is a safe haven. It is why she and her siblings all agreed that he would stay here until his last breath.

After a moment longer, Arthur blinks at the beaded tears on his lashes and pats Jonnie’s arm. “Let’s keep goin’, sweetheart.”

They reach the end of the orchard, where just up the hill is the house. Three cars are parked on the gravel, one being Jonnie’s, the other two belonging to Alice and Isaac and their families.

Arthur shakes his head. “Cars…hell.”

Jonnie suppresses a chuckle, and they continue up the hill. Arthur slows down a bit, and his pride won’t let him apologize, but Jonnie doesn’t care.

At the top of the porch steps, Jonnie hangs back, letting Arthur catch his breath before she opens the door. Inside: the jangle of laughter, clatter of glass, the low thrum of two radios playing in opposite rooms. A wave of lilac and roast chicken and old woodwork meets Arthur at the threshold, and he allows himself to take a few steps forward as Jonnie closes the door.

“Hello, Papa,” Abigail Celeste greets, holding baby Birdy Lou, her firstborn child, as she passes by on her way to the parlor. “Mama said dinner will be done soon.”

Alice, that bootstrapper. As soon as she takes charge of anything, everything and everyone turns into a well-oiled machine. Her experience as a nurse in the First World War taught her that, as it was what kept her from thinking too much about her husband as he fought in some other country. When the war finally ended, and they were reunited, it wasn’t long before she had her first baby, and the world didn’t stop spinning. Hardly ever has.

Out of all of his girls, Alice took Eliza’s death the hardest. The bond they had was something sacred, and it didn’t help that Eliza died just a few hours shy of her birthday.

He wants to go see her, and without announcing it to Jonnie, he putters his way along toward the kitchen. Two of his great-grandchildren, Julia and Jean, come running by him, and he has to stop himself short of bumping into them. He doesn’t mind; the laughter and joy in children is something she loved and welcomed. It reminds him of her, even if it aches sometimes.

He smiles and carries on.

The door feels a little heavy, but he manages to push it open. The room is just as busy as the rest of the house; the Morgan women hard at work making a delicious meal. He sees Eliza’s cookbooks open on the kitchen table, the fragrance of fresh bread and boiled potatoes filling the air.

“How much longer on that roast, Annabelle?”

Annabelle sticks her head out of the oven, a fork in her hand, with steam coming off it. She brushes back her chestnut colored hair, her brown eyes bright and alert. “I’d say fifteen minutes at most. It really took to that marinade.”

Alice nods her head in approval, turning away to continue whisking something in a bowl. “And what of the Brussels sprouts, Louise?”

Louise—now a grown woman, doctor’s wife, and still the only one who can burn water—stares glumly at the skillet as if it had personally insulted her. “Just as soon as I can get the flame to behave,” she mutters, fiddling with the gas burner. A low blue tongue licks at the pan, which is mostly charred sprouts and what looks like three tablespoons of butter. She curses something in French under her breath. She’s always hesitated to help when asked to assist in the kitchen, but coming from two sides of culinary geniuses in her family, the pressure has always remained. “We have any more fresh ones that I can cook?”

Arthur wiggles a bit at the disaster, then lets himself slip quietly over toward the window, where Alice stands whisking the life from a bowl of cream, face set tight, jaw stubborn.

But even so, she doesn’t miss a thing. “Hi, Daddy,” she says. Despite being in her fifties, she still looks barely older than she had in her nursing school graduation photo, her sharp cheekbones now cast in finer lines, like the lines of a well-used map, or the veins of the leaves her mother pressed in books each autumn. Arthur watches, helpless to the pride and sorrow that tumbles together in his gut, as she wipes the splatters of cream off her wrist onto the apron at her waist, knuckles white where she grips the bowl. She puts the bowl down for a moment and turns to face him, brushing hair back from her forehead. “It’s almost ready,” she says, voice thick and raw at the edges. There’s something under her mouth, words dammed up in her throat, and she keeps them there until, with trembling hands, she reaches out for him and pulls him close.

Arthur nearly cracks in half. She hugs him, tighter than a bear trap, and he stiffens—just a second—then lets himself fold, stiffness in his shoulder eases against her cheekbone, her father’s tobacco-and-applewood scent in her hair. She is trembling, just the faintest quiver at first, but when she finally lets go, she sniffs harshly, trying to regain composure. “You wanna go rest a while? Jack and Isaac are in the parlor with the babies.”

Arthur grunts, “Not tired. Not yet,” and squeezes Alice’s hand once before she lets go, nodding and stepping back toward the counter to retrieve her bowl. The kitchen is a chaos of glass and sunlight and steam, and for a moment, he just watches the bright blur as branches tremble in the window and the women’s voices overlap with the cooking and laughter and smell of rosemary and lemon zest. The world narrows to the here and now—the women, the home, the faint warmth of the kitchen as the oven thunders and pops and the window rattles with a spring wind. Looking back at Alice, he can almost see Eliza standing there, the concentrated look on her face and the way her tongue pokes out the side of her mouth when she needs to whip the heavy cream into submission. For a second, he has to brace himself on the counter, lightheaded. The world blinks in and out, and he tastes the electric tin of grief under his tongue. Dear God, she is gone.

Arthur draws a breath wild with rosemary and the tang of sweat. For a second, he has to rest his hand heavily on the counter’s edge, waiting for the kitchen to settle—or for his heart to catch up, whichever happens first. The thudding in his ribs is sharp.

“Dad…” Annabelle’s voice comes through softly. When he opens his eyes, Arthur sees her standing beside him, setting a fresh loaf of bread on a trivet. “Come with me…” And she offers a hand to him.

She leads him out of the kitchen by the elbow, voices and warmth tapering off behind them, into the front parlor where the lamps were still off, and the room glows blue with watery spring twilight. Books and magazines tower on the coffee table, cluttered with the relics of children and then grandchildren—card decks and pencils, a battered chessboard mid-game with carved knights bent from decades of hands.

Jack and Isaac sit at opposite ends of the blue velvet sofa, the baby bird of his grandchild burbling in Jack’s crooked arm, while Isaac thumbs absently at the cuff of his shirt, nerves stitched tight into his jaw. Abigail plays with her baby cousin on the floor, her own child being held by the grandfather at the moment.

“You’ll have it by next week,” Jack says. “I’ve dug up quite a bit on this real estate thing…”

Isaac nods. “That’s good to know. I’ll have my paralegal begin to compile all of our exhibits, and I’ll start drafting my petition in the morning.”

Jack chuckles, holding out his finger for Birdy to hold onto. “You better wait a little longer. If Alice hears we’re talkin’ about work, she’ll have my head.” Birdy’s fat fist closes around Jack's finger, and he grins lopsidedly. “My, this one’s got a grip already. What’re you feedin’ her, Abby?”

Annabelle guides Arthur to a worn-out armchair, hovering over him as he settles in.

Abigail looks away from her father bashfully. “Dad, that isn’t an appropriate question.”

The child gurgles, clutching his thumb with surprising force, eyes bright as glass marbles. Once Arthur settles comfortably into the armchair, Annabelle takes a blanket out of a nearby basket and drapes it across his knees. “Comfy, Daddy?”

Arthur nods at her. “Thank you, sweetheart. You go on back to the kitchen, now.”

Annabelle gives him a quick squeeze on the shoulder and gracefully heads back toward the kitchen, her footsteps muffled on the braided rug. Glass rattles softly in the next room—someone pouring what sounds like lemonade, or maybe bourbon. Arthur blinks hard and lets his gaze drift to the blur of the parlor window as Isaac and Jack continue their conversation.

“So, how are your folks? Last letter Dad got was from a few months ago, and they don’t call much.”

Jack shrugs his shoulders, the wool of his cardigan bunching at his collar as his eyes drift toward Arthur, lingering on the papery skin of his father-in-law's hands. A shadow crosses his face before he clears his throat. "They're doin' fine. Ma spends most afternoons in her garden—those heirloom tomatoes are takin' over half the yard now. Pop's still whittling those little wooden birds, has a whole flock of 'em lined up on the mantel. Alice and I plan on drivin' up there when the hawthorns finally bloom, as they’re late this year. Maybe Alice and I can convince the kids to come along with their families. Rachel and her family, even Albert, have already gone up there twice this year.” He shakes his head. “Makin’ their big brother look bad.”

Isaac shakes his head, the corners of his mouth lifting in a smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes. "It's strange havin' an empty house, isn't it? All those bedrooms with the doors closed, no loud music, or curfews…”

Jack nods, absently smoothing the baby's wispy hair with his thumb as she lies back in his arm. "Lord, yes.” He nods over to his daughter. “Abigail Celeste only just got married and gave me this grandchild, and Arthur Charles packed up his record collection for that dormitory across the state. Some mornings I wake up and listen for footsteps that aren't there anymore. Both are barely twenty years old, but I feel old."

“You feel old?” Isaac laughs. “You aren’t the one who’s spent thirty years in a courtroom. I went to my twenty-fifth reunion, and nobody recognized me at first. I had to wear a name tag like the rest of the sad faces.”

“You could always retire. Leave it to us young folks.” Jack winks at his daughter as she continues to play with Emmett Arthur on the floor. She grins before turning away again.

Isaac laughs at that. “I guess I should have become an investigative journalist like you.”

Jack nods. “Maybe so.”

“But…I’ve been talkin’ with Noissette…and I’m thinkin’ of running for Judge next year.”

Jack’s eyes widen. “You are?”

Isaac shrugs, as if the idea weighs less than it does. “Just feels like the next right thing. The circuit court’s been run by Kevin Patterson since Reconstruction, and he’s already promised the Governor he won't seek another term.” Isaac’s voice flexes and goes tight, his hand palming restlessly at the arm of the chair, gaze half-lost at the lamplight pooling in the rug. “If it comes down to it, that courthouse’ll go up like a chalk drawing in the rain, but I think I owe it to her. To Mom and—” Here he casts a look at Arthur, still sitting quietly in his favorite chair, voice nearly lodging itself in his throat, “—to you, Dad. You always said to do the job right.” The words tangle and catch until they nearly choke him out, but Isaac makes himself look up and meet his father’s eye. “I’ll do right, Dad. I ain’t gonna let you down.” He snorts, as if the topic embarrasses him. “I’ll ugly up the campaign trail in her honor, that’s for damned sure.”

Jack grins, a wide, honest thing, then salutes with his free hand. “She’d have said, ‘Just don’t forget about your family when you’re out there savin’ folks.’”

Arthur listens, half-shrouded behind his eyelids, letting the words rattle around in his chest like loose cartridges in an old pocket. Funny how the world keeps turning with or without his say. He’s proud of his children, even if he never can quite figure out how to say it straight; pride is always hardest to show, but easiest to feel, and he wonders if one day that won’t be true of grief, too.

Arthur nods his head. “We was already proud of you, son. Still is.”

Isaac smiles softly at that. “Thanks, Dad. I love you.”

“Love you too, son.”

The room falls into a soft racket, babies squirming, old arguments rehearsed with new faces, and Arthur, though not tired, lets himself close his eyes and sink back into the chair. The parlor vanishes in a blink, awash in the damp gold of porch-light as the front door flares open again. The voices from the kitchen sharpen a notch, just loud enough that Arthur can tell someone is fussing over what was brought in, and an excited shriek from Louise, which says enough.

He can hear the kitchen door open again, and doesn’t bother to open his eyes to see who just arrived.

Jack announces it for him. “Oh, hello, son, you got it—? Oh…” He hushes himself suddenly, almost giving away the secret of what his son, named after his grandfather, holds in his hands.

Arthur Charles's voice drifts from the doorway, warm and low like his father's. "Hey, Dad. Hey, Uncle Isaac." There's a pause, and Arthur feels the weight of his grandson's gaze settle on him. "Is he asleep?"

Arthur keeps his breathing even, his eyelids still as pond water. The charade of sleep feels like a small rebellion, a private joke between himself and the darkening room.

"Probably," Jack chuckles, the leather of the couch creaking as he shifts. "Been nodding off since before you got here."

Footsteps pad across the braided rug—Arthur Charles's distinctive gait, slightly heavier on the left foot from that old baseball injury—followed by the soft click of a bedroom door closing, the mysterious parcel safely hidden away.

Behind his closed lids, Arthur feels genuine drowsiness creeping in like evening tide, washing over the shores of his consciousness. His limbs grow heavy, thoughts untethering from their moorings, and he surrenders to the gentle pull of sleep that had only been a pretense moments before.

***

Daddy..." A soft voice pulls him from the warm darkness, gentle as a breeze through summer curtains. Arthur's eyelids flutter open, heavy as old shutters. Alice leans over him, her face haloed by the amber glow of the table lamp. Her fingers make small, comforting circles on his cardigan sleeve, the gold of her wedding band catching the light with each movement. Chestnut hair—now threaded with silver at the temples like fine strands of moonlight—cascades past her pearl earrings in waves that remind him of her mother's. "Dinner's ready. The roast you like. You wanna come join us?"

Arthur straightens in his seat and works the ache from his neck, squinting through the blur as Alice helps him to his feet. She’s careful, hands gentle but firm at his elbow—too much like her mother in the way she fusses, hovering close without crowding him. Behind her, he can see family members on their way to the dining room, just across the hall.

He gets to his feet and reaches for his cane, and they walk together.

As they enter, Arthur takes in the general sweep of the crowded dining room, the old oak table still supporting the weight of platters and bowls. Every seat is full—Isaac at the end, with his wife Noissette and Jonnie seated on each side of him. Jonnie looks up at Arthur, her eyes sharp behind horn-rimmed spectacles, and smiles. Annabelle shepherds children into their chairs with pert commands; Franklin already corralling the salt and bread to his side of the table just as his father, Augustus, chides him silently with a look.

Alice, Noissette, Louise, Annabelle, and Jonnie have pulled out all the stops for the anniversary. There are sprigs of plum blossom tucked into blue mason jars, candelabras winking in the gloomy evening, hand-sewn linen napkins, and polished silver stacked at every setting. The air is thick with roast and root vegetables, the tang of gravy, yeast, bitter apple, and a background thrum of old tobacco and lemon honey. Soft laughter, chink of glass, the way a sentence rushes and then stalls as all eyes land on him and Alice. They pause at the edge of the table, and for a moment, Arthur feels a touch of tremor in his chest. For every empty place at the table—Eliza, Hosea, and all the rest—there stood twice as many living, breathing souls. Maybe that is how she wanted it, all those years ago in their bedroom when they talked about the cost of family. Maybe she knew that loss was inevitable, but wanted everyone to remember the feast, not the famine.

Alice arranges him at the head of the table, tucking the chair close, then hurries round to help her granddaughter Emelia as she’s about to knock over the gravy boat whilst reaching for a napkin. Arthur plants both hands on the table, letting in the feeling of the soft cotton tablecloth under his palms, remembering the years of meals eaten here—sometimes in celebration, sometimes in silence heavy as stone.

Alice commands the start of grace, her voice proud, and the words caught up with every accent she’d picked up along the way. Arthur bows his head, waiting for the hush to gather in the room, and Jack says a quick blessing.

Benjamin, Augustus' youngest son, breathes a sigh of relief at the brevity of his uncle’s prayer. “Thank God, I’m starvin’…” and reaches for the first thing he can get his hands on: a slice of bread.

“Mind your manners…!” Esther, Augustus’ wife, scolds, reaching across the table to swat his hand. “You wanna eat at the children’s table since you’re fixin’ to act like one?”

Arthur tries to conceal his grin, remembering the times when Eliza had to scold Augustus for doing the exact same thing. Then his heart begins to ache again.

But the ache in Arthur's chest soon dissolves as Isaac rises from his chair, punch glass held aloft like a beacon against the gathering dark. “I’d like to propose a toast…” He raises it higher as others follow suit, sweat shining above his brow as the room stills. “To my mother and father,” Isaac begins, the words rough and stilted—but he does not pause, nor let the old nerves creep along his tongue. “To the two folks who taught us what it meant to work hard and make a home. And not just with their hands, but with their hearts, too.”

The liquid in his glass trembles, catches the light. Isaac’s voice steadies, louder now, carrying through each corner of the dining room. “We wouldn’t have nothing if it weren’t for you, Dad. For you and—” Noissette reaches a hand to squeeze her husband’s arm in a comforting gesture, others beginning to sniff softly. “—and to Mama. To every lesson she taught, every story she told, every mornin’ you both got up early and got yourselves and us through another day. I don’t think a single one of us’d be here now if not for you two, and if we could do it all over again, we’d want the same folks raisin’ us. So here’s to you, Dad. And to Mama, may she rest in peace." He then holds out his glass, swallowing thickly once. “To Arthur and Eliza. Happy Anniversary.”

“To Arthur and Eliza.” And everyone clinks their glass with their neighbor.

“Thank you, son,” Arthur says, voice gone rough and tight. “Shoah am glad to have all of you here with me. Eliza, she–family was everythin’ to her…”

The silence at the end of the toast comes heavier than the clink of glass, a hush swelling behind every ribcage. The punch tastes of peach syrup and saccharine and the burn of memory. Arthur can’t swallow for a second, but he tips back his glass with the rest, the burn washing down the lump in his throat.

And soon, plates pass from hand to hand, big helpings for the little ones, small, careful portions for the adults, but more than enough to go around.

Every bite that Arthur takes is like revisiting a memory, each dish a recipe of Eliza’s make, created with care and love that comes through in every ingredient. Alice really outdid herself with the planning of this.

She watches her father eat in silence as conversations swell around him, the gentle upturn of his lips as he lets the gravy puddle around his mashed potatoes. It is like being given a second helping of memory, the echo of her voice behind every instruction scribbled in the margin of the cookbook—“use the gold potatoes, never russet!” and “double the pepper” with footnotes of, “he loves it with extra butter” and “use the leftovers for soup the next day.” She wanted to make this as special as she could, but now seeing him there at the end of the table, she has only two more chances to make it so.

So, as everyone nears the end of supper, the time for dessert approaches. She gently scoots her chair back, the old oak legs scraping against the worn floorboards with a familiar creak. Jack's eyes flicker up from his half-empty plate, a question forming in the slight furrow of his brow.

"Where're you going, love?" His voice carries just enough to reach her ears but not disturb the conversations humming around them.

She lifts her chin towards the kitchen, where yellow light spills through the doorway. "I'll be right back," she whispers, her fingers briefly squeezing his shoulder. "Just make sure no one leaves." The anticipation in her eyes betrays the surprise waiting beyond the swinging door.

In the kitchen, three peach pies wait on the windowsill, still glistening with warm syrup and flakes of dough. Alice reaches for the oven mitt, stops, and instead grips the old tin pie server—her mother’s, notched at the handle from decades of use. She can almost hear the remembered scrape of it against the blackened pie plate, the way her mother used to set aside the first uneven slice so no one would see. All at once, she feels the heaviness in her own hands, the tremor that comes with moving her mother’s things, the private, weighted hush of being the only one alive who remembers how she was always the one to trim the crust with the paring knife, slow and careful, so no one else would have to eat the burnt bits.

She serves the pies herself, as tradition dictates—three thick wedges, syrup pooling at the base, crust dark and fragrant. Taking the cream she painstakingly whipped earlier out of the Frigidaire, she dollops it on each piece, then takes them in her hands. She isn’t a waitress, nor ever worked as one, but manages to carefully make her way back to the diningroom.

The hush that follows her return to the table is thick enough to spread a hush on bread. All eyes follow the pie like an altar offering as it circles its way to Arthur at the head of the table.

“For you, Daddy,” Alice says warmly.

He sits up a little straighter, the old coil of pride and embarrassment tangling in his chest as he sees the first plate—the big wedge with the golden crown and the sugared crust, the cream already softening to rivulets. The sight of it damn near undoes him—tremor in his chin, the whole world coming hot behind his eyes.

…I'd sure like some of that pie that I had on Sunday.

Pie?

Shoah, it was pretty good. Who makes it?

I–I do.

Oh, you do, do ya? My compliments.

His voice cracks as he speaks, but he manages: “Thank you, Alice, sweetheart. God almighty that’s beautiful.” He places his trembling spoon down, pie untested just yet, and presses a fist to his mouth, the knuckles going red and white—unsure if he’ll even make it through the next swallow. The table was quiet at first, utensils stilled, a hush rolling through the room heavier than even the hush, the crust and syrup and cream. Arthur forces himself to look at Alice—not just the pie, but Alice—and memorize her face for as long as he can still see it.

“Aren’t you gonna try it, Papa?” Abigail Celeste asks encouragingly as she readjusts Birdy in her lap, and Jack gives her a gentle look, shaking his head.

Arthur hesitates a moment longer, then forks the first bite. The crust shivers, the peach flesh slides like a memory onto his tongue. Not a whisper of bitterness lingering in the fruit, only sweetness and the tender give of a perfect ripeness. It doesn’t matter that it was made from store fruit and not right from an orchard, or that the crust is imperfect; it is pie, and he can nearly taste her in it. He barely sets the fork down when the ache in his chest returns, and he chokes on a little snort of a sob, one he barely manages to stifle before it gets loose in the room. It’s suddenly too hot in here. The tablecloth’s pattern swims in his sight, and the smell of cinnamon and cream cuts sharply through the center of his nose. Is it always going to be this way?

Arthur stares at the pie, at the creamy pooling and the way the syrup bleeds into thick rivers. Damned if he wasn’t near useless. Even after all these years, the smallest thing can just level his whole person, make him soft and hollowed out. He pushes at the inside of his cheek with his tongue and covers his eyes with his hands as he weeps in front of his whole family.

“Oh, Daddy…” Annabelle sighs empathetically and begins to rise from her chair to go comfort him.

“Daddy, I’m—” Alice starts, guilt overwhelming her. “I’m so sorry, I should’ve never have—”

“No, little lady—” Arthur manages to say, and he chokes a groan as he tries to suppress his sobs. “It ain’t your fault, I’m just—” Annabelle wraps her arms around him, and he leans into her softly. “I just miss her…”

The room falls into a reverent silence, broken only by the soft clink of a spoon against china and the muffled sniffles Arthur tries to contain. Alice's mind races with what-ifs and whys, each thought sharper than the last, pricking at her conscience like the tines of her mother's silver dessert fork. This was all just a terrible idea—the carefully arranged place settings, the recipes pulled from yellowed index cards, the peach pies cooling by the window where her mother used to stand. She watches her father's shoulders tremble beneath Annabelle's embrace, his weathered hands covering eyes that have seen too much loss. But her siblings had all nodded enthusiastically when she proposed the dinner, their voices overlapping with eager suggestions. Are they all to blame for the tears now staining the tablecloth her mother had embroidered decades ago?

Jonnie then gets up, joining her little sister in embracing her father. “Why don’t you and the men head into the living room, Daddy, while we women clean up the kitchen?”

Isaac's smile breaks across his face like dawn, grateful for the diversion. "That sounds like a swell idea, JB." He clears his throat, the sound like gravel under tires. "I think the young men around here could use some sage advice from their grandfather..." His eyes, the same deep brown as his mother’s, find each of the young men in turn—Alexander with his slouched shoulders, Franklin picking at his napkin's edge, Benjamin still clutching his fork. Isaac tilts his chin toward the living room, a gesture as familiar to this family as breathing. "Boys...?" The word hangs in the air, gentle but unmistakably a command.

The next generation of Morgan men all rise in unison—each old enough now to be called young men, but still prone to dragging their heels when Uncle Isaac’s tone promised “advice.” Arthur forces a huff out of his chest and shambles up from his chair, patting Annabelle’s hand where it still rests against his sleeve.

Jack takes it upon himself to rise as well, his chair scraping softly against the worn floorboards. He turns to his wife, noticing how the lamp light catches the dampness in her eyes. His calloused fingers find the sleeve of her Sunday dress, thumb brushing against the soft blue cotton. "You alright, love?" he whispers, his voice barely audible above the clink of silverware. Alice clenches her jaw until a small muscle flutters beneath her skin, her gaze meeting his through eyes glossy as rain-slicked windows. The silence between them speaks volumes. "You want me to help you clean up?" he asks, his wedding band catching the light as his hand hovers near hers.

She shakes her head, swallowing hard against the stone lodged in her throat, feeling it scrape all the way down. "You go on..." she manages, her voice thin as tissue paper.

Deciding not to push it, he leans in close to kiss her softly on the cheek, then turns away to help Isaac and Augustus escort his father-in-law to the living room.

“Alright, I think I will serve the children some pie.” Imogen rises from her chair, then turns up to look at Annabelle. “Is that alright, Mother?”

Annabelle lingers by her father's empty chair, her gaze following him until he disappears into the living room. Only then does she turn to meet her daughter's questioning eyes. "Yes, darling," she says softly. "Let the children have their pie."

***

“They was called the O’Driscolls.”

Benjamin, Alexander, and Franklin all lean forward on the sagging floral couch, their shoulders hunched like cats about to pounce, eyes widening to catch every word. The lamplight catches their eager faces, gold almost dancing in their eyes. Isaac can't help but grin with a knowing look, the deep lines around his mouth crinkling like well-worn leather, as he watches his nephews' feigned boredom dissolve into naked fascination at the first mention of their grandfather's gunslinging days.

“And you fought these guys all the time?” Benjamin asks. “Sounds like the mafia gangs I’ve read about in the magazine Uncle Jack writes.”

It's true that Jack had once spent countless nights hunched over his desk, poring through ledgers and newspaper clippings, tracing the tangled web of Salt Flat's underworld—the way “The Lion” Luciano's men moved whiskey through the sewers beneath the city, the precise locations of basement speakeasies with their hidden entrances behind barbershops and laundries. The investigation consumed him during those dark months when the Great War still echoed in his dreams, when every backfiring car sent him diving for cover. The meticulousness required to map each connection between corrupt officials and mob enforcers had given his trembling hands purpose, and when he finally laid his evidence before Isaac, who, once the state prosecutor, had smiled that wolf's smile that meant justice was coming.

But Arthur shakes his head. “Them boahs are chickens compared to these gangs. Mafia fellers like to hide and pay folks under the nose. Outlaws…they do it right to your face.”

Alexander, the most skeptical of the three, glances at Franklin and mutters, “Guess who’s still around, though? And it isn’t the gunslingers.” The other two snicker, but Arthur’s jaw sets and his hand flexes over the crook of his cane, knuckles whitening. He can still feel the ache that runs up the cane when he squeezes, the sweet-and-sick memory of powder and blood pooled deep between his knuckles. The boys don’t notice the shift in his jaw or the pulse in his throat, but Isaac, who'd once watched men die at his father's feet, catches every nuance. He waits, eyes on his father.

Arthur stares at the rug between his boots, the old brown and cream pattern blurring at the edges. The question knots his gut for a moment, but he answers as smoothly as ever. “Once, in Nevada,” he says, keeping his eyes on the floor. “I was aimin’ to rob a stagecoach. It was an easy stop, was gettin’ ready to have Javier open the door, but there were women and children inside.”

The boys stop their snickering and listen.

“Did you rob them?” Alexander asks.

Arthur leans forward a bit, looking at his grandson dead in the eyes. “What’chu think I did?” He studies his grandson, weighing the sharpness in the boy’s gaze. “Let ‘em keep their money. They needed it more than I did.” The ice in his voice tells the boys it isn’t up for debate. “Some men shoot first, then open the coach. I ain’t never been that sort.”

Benjamin’s eyes widen. “Did they report you to the law?”

Arthur leans back in his chair and looks toward his eldest son. “Isaac, fetch me your mama’s scrapbook.”

Isaac was up and across the room almost before Arthur reached the end of the sentence. He moves with the old habit of a man who has fetched things for his father since boyhood: no wasted motion, no questions, just a nod, his knee popping as he rose from the armchair to cross to the glass-fronted bookcase before anyone else could even guess where to look. He comes back with the battered leather-bound album, edges curled, corners blunted by decades of hands and sunlight. Isaac hands it off, and Arthur lays it open in his lap, the paper yellowed and stiff as tree bark.

He flips past the pressed wildflowers he had given to Eliza over the years, old seed packets, turkey feathers, and magazine articles recalling her children’s accomplishments. Photographs of Alice after winning horse races, and Isaac’s certificates for good grades. Finally, he finds the newspaper clipping, from all the way back in the 1890’s.

“Here,” Arthur says as he holds the book out. “Read that article out loud for us.”

Franklin rises from the couch and takes the scrapbook, returning to his place between his brothers, and begins to read aloud.

Wales & Figaro, one of Nevada’s prestigious stagecoach companies, has the honor to present a badge of valor to one of its employees, by the name of Terrance Riggs, for courageously fighting off a band of robbers.

According to Mr. Riggs, he was transporting a group of passengers toward Lake Washoe, when he was stopped by a pair of young, masked men, who had their weapons drawn.

“I thought I was done for,” explained Riggs. “They seemed to know what they were doing, and I had no means to defend myself or my passengers.”

But it wasn’t to be so, for these men, who had appeared to have the intent to rob and kill these innocent people, did something remarkable.

“They gave me a gun,” Riggs said, also noting that it was the largest of the two, who seemed to be in charge, who ordered Mr. Riggs be given a Springfield rifle, in very good condition, and gave some advice on spotting any further trouble.

While still in shock, Riggs was then told to check on his passengers before leaving. After promptly checking on the women and children aboard, Riggs drove off, resuming the journey to Lake Washoe.

But the trip was far from over, when a second band of robbers appeared, their guns blazing. Terrance Riggs, now armed and slightly more prepared thanks to the advice he received, managed to fend off the attackers, all four in number. He attributes his survival to the earlier intervention by the mysterious pair.

“I feel out of sorts to say this, but they were Providential,” said Riggs.

It was discovered, after reporting the event, that the second band of thieves was none other than the remnants of a notorious gang of outlaws: the O’Driscolls. Their leader had been rumored to have been killed a year or two ago, but it is now clear that their methods are more sporadic, given their approach and quick demise.

Mr. Riggs is now praised as a hero of Washoe County, and is now pushing for the policy that drivers be permitted to carry firearms for Wales and Figaro.

The three boys lift their eyes in awe, almost speechless.

Arthur decides to deliver the sage advice that was promised. “There’s a lotta things I ain’t proud of doin’, boahs, but I ain’t never regretted doin’ a good thing. I was part of a gang, I rode long, fought hard, and robbed folks. You’re right, Alexander. Those of us who ended up livin’ is because we left. We learned that bein’ a man ain’t about gettin’ what’s yours, it’s about givin’ what you have.”

The boys lapse into a stunned hush, the article slipping between their knees as they stare into the middle distance, jaws slack. Arthur feels a prick of satisfaction; not pride, exactly, but something close—a rightness, like a bone mending along good lines. At the time, he didn’t much believe in Providence, not after the things he had seen and done, but love, forgiveness, redemption—the ability to change and live a better life—those things had to come from somewhere.

“Arthur—” Jack starts, interrupting Arthur’s thoughts. “We got company.”

Arthur looks up and sees the rest of his family come in through the doorway. Arthur Charles, with a grin on his face, enters the room, followed by Jonnie, Annabelle, and Imogen. The little children, now hyped up on pie, come squeezing their way in and settle on empty places on the couch and on the floor, after receiving looks from Esther and Alice’s eldest daughter, Elizabeth, with her baby in her arms.

“Daddy…” Jonnie says, taking the parcel in Arthur Charles’ hands. “We had this specially made in Salt Flats…” She walks over to him and places the large parcel in his lap. “Happy Anniversary.”

He stares at the parcel, feeling the weight of it in his lap. It’s a large square, its edges sharp and firm. It hardly makes sense, sitting here with this broad, mysterious square in his lap, wrapped up in pale blue tissue and a ribbon as tight as a cinched saddle. Arthur works the knot free, mind blank for a second, hands clumsier than they should be now that everyone is staring. He peels away the tissue slowly, not that his hands can move any faster, anyway.

With just the gentle tearing of the paper, the last of the wrapping falls away. Arthur finds himself looking at a perfectly square picture, matted in eggshell-colored paper and set already inside a heavy wooden frame. It is a photograph—the sort that costs real money, the kind that is done professionally and must be placed behind glass.

Arthur remembers such an event: their family photograph, taken the spring before Eliza’s passing.

The photograph captures the entire Morgan clan—a living family tree. Jack and Alice with their brood: Elizabeth, Atticus, and the twins: Abigail Celeste and Arthur Charles. Elizabeth Marie leans slightly toward her husband, their daughter Emelia between them. Abigail, with the ring on her finger promising her fiancé’s return from the war, sits beside her twin. In the back row stand Isaac and Noissette with their grown children: Jacques (accompanied by his wife and young son Jean) and Louise (with her husband and Julia). Louise's arms are empty—Emmett would arrive months later.

At Arthur's feet kneels Jonnie, her face tilted up toward him in the armchair. Nearby stands Annabelle with Harold, his protective hand resting on Imogen Grace's shoulder.

Augustus and Esther form the center of their own constellation: Anne, Franklin, Alexander, Benjamin, and Wilimena clustered around them. James, who would later become Anne's husband, exists somewhere beyond the frame, still unknown to them all.

Finally, his gaze settles on the figure in the second armchair—Eliza, her weathered hands folded in her lap, her face a map of the years they'd traveled together.

Eliza.

Their last family picture.

A hush builds in the room, air thick with memory, as Arthur stares into the crisp grid of faces—Augustus’s stoic jaw, Franklin’s sheepish grin, the hard shine of the studio lamp finding the deep crow’s feet at Arthur’s own eyes, and above and behind it all, Eliza’s likeness: her mouth, smiling like she just said something funny but didn't want him to catch it. The camera caught her in the act, the joke still hovering at the edge of her lips, lines radiating from her eyes as if she’d been squinting at some absurdity just before the shutter fell. Everyone else in that picture looked tense or stiff, hands folded neat as a funeral—except Eliza, her mouth finding mischief in every crack of light.

Arthur’s jaw aches. He’d been clenching it without meaning to. The picture is heavy. He slides a knuckle over the glass, thumbprint smudging in the halo of smudged light, the warmth of his own skin making an odd halo over the ghost of her face. He can’t help the way his hand hovers over her, like he is afraid she’ll vanish if he touches the glass too hard.

“What do you think, Daddy?” Jonnie’s voice is soft and sensitive, hoping that he isn’t upset. “Alice was really worried it wouldn’t make it on time for tonight’s dinner.”

Arthur Charles nods his head. “She really was. Mama would’ve beat the livin’ sh—” Jack cuts him off with an elbow into his son’s back, and Arthur Charles looks back at him. “—ow…!”

But Arthur can’t grab words for a minute. He knows everyone is watching—his kin and their kin and generations’ worth of ghosts, all perched on the point of a pin above his scalp—but the ache behind his sternum locks up his jaw.

After a long, slow blink, he manages, “Sure is somethin’…” he sighs, then looks up to meet their faces. “Thank you,” he says again, the words snagging in the rough spot of his throat. He presses the photo flat to his sternum, as if he can warm it through the glass, then sets it carefully against the arm of his chair while he blinks the brightness from his eyes. “It’s gonna look nice up on the wall, so I can look at it when I’m missin’ you folks.”

“Missin’ us? Dad…?” Augustus asks with a half-chuckled smile. “If you want us to come over more often…”

Arthur lifts a hand, shaking it. “No, son, I weren’t tryin’ to make you feel guilty. I know you all got busy lives.” Then he grins mischievously. “Especially you, with them five kids of yours.”

Those gathered chuckle at that, and Augustus rolls his eyes. He and his wife wanted to have at least five children, and they knew what they were getting themselves into; they just didn’t know quite how much. “I suppose you’re sayin’ that from experience?”

Arthur nods. “You know I am.” The laughter settles down once again, and Arthur rests his hands in his lap. “Thank you for the picture, all of you.” As he glances over each face, each person one he has loved and thought about, he notices a face is missing. “Where’s little lady?”

Jack speaks up quickly, not wanting to encroach on his wife’s privacy. “She’ll be back in a minute or two, Arthur.”

Arthur nods, still concerned, but decides to let it be.

The celebration of Arthur and Eliza’s undying love continues on for another hour, until the first yawn of a child starts, then others soon follow. Those who are parents soon take it as their cue and begin to gather up their things, help clean up after the last bit of pie, and bid their farewells to Arthur.

“Goodbye, Papa,” Abigail says while she readjusts baby Birdy in her arms. “Henry really wishes he could’ve made it to this.”

Arthur pats her lovingly on the shoulder. “You just tell that soldier of yours to stay safe out there.”

“I’m just glad the war is over,” she sighs. “He sticks to the base now.”

Arthur nods, giving Abigail’s arm a soft squeeze. He lets her words echo—glad the war is over—like he needs to hear them twice just to believe it himself. He eyes the baby in her arms and the way Abigail glows, proud and exhausted, the old sense of time passing trickling in, years settling on him the way the sun settles on a stone wall. “You know you can always just come live with us, Papa. Spare you the trouble of this big house by yourself.”

Arthur snorts so quietly it is mostly in his head. He looks at the empty parlor from the window as they stand on the front porch, the empty chair where she used to sit and read when the days were quiet. He can’t bring himself to leave here. He looks back at his granddaughter, so young and full of life. “I’ll be alright on my own for a while longer,” he says. “But if you ever got a mind to come around, you know where I’ll be.” He says it for everyone, even if he can’t find the words for it. The porch smells of thawed mud and woodsmoke, and Abigail, rocking Birdy gently to keep her asleep, smiles up at him before she goes down the steps and to Jack’s idling car. The tail lights flicker as her twin brother piles in, waiting for the rest of the Marstons to join them.

“So long, Dad…” Isaac says, making Arthur turn again. “We will come over next weekend once my jury trial is done.”

Arthur nods, reaching up to squeeze his son’s shoulder. “Lookin’ forward to it. You tell me when you’re gonna start your campaign. I wanna help you win.”

Isaac grins from ear to ear. “I will, but it will be a while yet.” There is a hidden request in his words, his hand reaching for Arthur’s and squeezing it tight. “You know?”

Arthur nods solemnly. “I know, son. You just become judge, alright?”

After a second longer, Isaac nods his head. “Alright, Dad.” His eyes become glossy, goodbyes never being easy for him. “Love you, Dad.”

“Love you, son.”

They embrace, then Arthur lets his firstborn son go. He watches as Isaac steps down, his wife and adult children, and their families following behind.

It isn't long before Annabelle herds her brood toward the door, her husband juggling leftover dishes while she sounds off plans for tomorrow like a secretary. Augustus follows with his caravan of children—five whipper-snappers in descending heights like organ pipes, the smallest one, Wilimena, draped half-asleep over his shoulder. The porch boards creak under their collective weight as they rush down the steps.

Once they get inside, Arthur’s grandchildren stick their heads out of the automobile windows, cheeks flushed pink against the evening chill, waving frantically as if they might never see him again. The cars pull away, taillights glowing red through wisps of exhaust in the twilight, packed so full of bodies and casserole dishes that the chassis ride low to the ground.

Arthur loiters in the doorway after his children leave, letting the last swells of commotion—car doors thumping, snow tires scrabbling the ruts—settle in the twilight hush. He braces his palm against the jamb, gaze tracing the grooves in the floorboards, the shallow scuffs laid down over the decades, the streaks grown pale and then dark again with each oil and shellac. He can see, clear as if it were yesterday, the small tracked lines from roller skates cut years ago by the twins and how he had scolded them for it, then looked the other way as Eliza laughed, saying that that was the point of living—to wear down one thing after another, and laugh about it as you go.

“Daddy…?”

His breath almost catches, the softness in her voice almost uncanny, but as he turns around, he finds it to be Alice. Sweet, loving Alice.

“Hey, little lady. Been wonderin’ where you was.”

She looks down at her feet for a minute, a hesitation in the way she bites her lower lip. When her eyes finally meet his again, she takes a steady step forward. “I’m so sorry that I made you so upset. I should’ve known better—”

Arthur holds up his hand. “No, sweetheart, don’t feel bad about it. It ain’t nothin’ to do wit’chu.”

“But I see it in your face…” She studies him a moment, thinking back on how he clenched his jaw and continually caught his breath throughout the evening. “I put my medical bag back in the car, maybe I should check your blood pressure again before I—”

“No, honey, I’m fine.”

Something in her gut twists like a dishrag being wrung out. Her nurse's instinct—the one that made her bolt upright at 3 AM when a patient’s breathing changed two rooms away—prickles at the base of her skull. The pallor beneath her father's weathered tan, the slight tremor in his left hand when he reached for his punch glass, the way he keeps pressing his palm flat against his chest as if to steady something inside. She moistens her lips, weighs her words carefully, knowing how stubborn he gets when fussed over. "Well, maybe I should stay here with you for the night," she offers, voice deliberately casual. "Jack can come get me in the morning—"

Arthur's voice comes out firmer than intended. "Alice." He waits until her eyes—doe-like as Eliza's had been—lock with his. The porch boards creak beneath him as he shifts his weight, letting his maple cane clatter against the weathered clapboards. His calloused hands, spotted with age and trembling slightly in the evening chill, reach for her soft ones. "You done a wonderful thing," he says, his voice catching on the evening breeze, "gatherin' everyone out here in this old house, fillin' it with the smell of your mama's recipes again." He swallows hard, Adam's apple bobbing beneath the loose skin of his neck. "She would've been touched by that, seein' all them little ones runnin' around her parlor. You can't help it that my heart aches for her—it's just what fifty-seven years of love does to a man." His thumbs trace circles on her knuckles, the way he used to when she was small. "I don't want you drivin' away with any regrets weighin' you down, you hear? None. I want you to go on and live your life. Go on with that family of yours. Love 'em hard, just like your mama taught you."

The way he is saying these things—with that finality in his voice, that distant look in his eyes that seems focused on some horizon she can't see—makes her chest tighten like a fist. His words hang in the air between them, heavy with unspoken meaning. She notices how his fingers, once strong enough to break a wild horse, now tremble slightly against hers. The evening shadows deepen the hollows beneath his cheekbones, and when he smiles, it doesn't quite reach his eyes. "Daddy...?" she whispers, her voice small as it was when she was five and afraid of thunderstorms.

“Don’t’chu worry about me, little lady, you forget, I got Jonnie here with me. She’s got nobody, and you’ve got many people that need you; savin’ lives and teachin’ the new nurses out there to do the same. We talked about all this before, remember?”

“Yeah, but…” she stammers, as she clutches his hands tightly. “But I need you.” She can’t hold back the tears. Not this time. She lets them break out, not like the slow drip of rain on tin, but an outpour that catches him off-guard, her face burying itself in his shirtfront. He feels her entire body shake with it. For all her strength of will, she cries without one ounce of control, releasing every knot and ache the anniversary has knotted up in her.

Arthur doesn’t care that his shirt is soon soaked—he just closes his arms around her and holds on, his chin pressed to her scalp the way he’d done when she was little and had cuddled up to him close after a nightmare. “I want you to stay strong and healthy and live a long, full life,” she cries. “You need to be here for as long as you can…”

Arthur chuckles, a warm rumble that starts deep in his chest and rises like creek water over smooth stones. "Ain't that what I've been doin'?" The words hang in the porch air, mingling with the scent of pine and coming frost. After a moment, Alice eases herself from his embrace, her tear-streaked face tilted up toward his. Her expression—eyebrows arched high, lips slightly parted—holds such raw bewilderment that the laugh lines around Arthur's eyes deepen, crinkling like the blueprints he used to fold at his workbench. “Sweetheart, it ain’t like I can get any younger.”

Her brow pinches, all the years of medical training and motherhood betraying her age. "That isn’t funny, Daddy," she whispers, the little girl in her voice rising to the surface.

He grins, not quite sheepish, not quite mean, and shrugs as if it really makes no difference at all. “Would you rather I lie to you, little lady? You know I’m too honest for that.”

Alice swipes the back of her hand across her eyes and snuffles. She wants to say more, to unfold every ache and worry in her ribcage, but the words wad up in her throat. And Arthur is no fool; he can see that—the way her shoulders are hunched, the way she sets her jaw—how the past two years she’s stood on this very porch, clutching his work-ruined hands in both of hers—her father’s hands, the only thing in the world that ever made her feel safe.

She tries to memorize every detail: the gnarled veins beneath gold-tanned skin, the perfect oval of his nails, the exact pattern of the warp in his sleeve, the faint bay rum aroma of his aftershave, the uneven edge of one thumb where a nail had split and has never grown back right. She wants to keep all of it, every last scrap of him, pressed between memory and bone like petals in a book.

When Arthur feels like she can let go, he gives her a gentle squeeze, then smooths her hair. “You gonna be alright?”

She draws a jagged breath, then lets go of him, dabbing her cheeks with her sleeve. “I’ll be okay.” She tries for a smile, the kind he used to coax out of her like she now does for her own children, and it’s not quite the same, but it’ll do. “You better not go dyin’ any time soon, Daddy. Or I’ll…I’ll never forgive you.” She tries to laugh, but the words catch and flutter like a trapped moth in her chest.

“That’s my girl,” Arthur says, watching her, and for a second she wonders if he’ll pull her into another hug. Instead, he taps his temple with one finger. “You know your old man. Harder than hell to put down.”

She tucks a smile behind her palm, jaw still shaking a little. “I know,” she manages.

Seeing that she’s going to be alright, he pats her shoulder one more time. “Now, you go on. Jack’s been patient enough.”

She nods once, leaning in to kiss him on the cheek—his whiskers prickly against her lips—and turns to head down the steps. He watches her go, the porch light catching the silver threads in her hair. When she reaches the bottom, gravel crunching under her sensible shoes, she pauses mid-stride, shoulders rising with a deep breath before turning around. "I love you," she says, her voice carrying across the yard like a hymn, and Arthur offers her a soft wave, his weathered hand trembling slightly against the darkened sky.

And he watches her get in the car and drive away.

He shivers, the spring wind still mean as a snake, and turns to find Jonnie waiting just inside the entryway. She leaned against the door frame, arms folded, not pushing but making it clear that she’s got a schedule to keep. “You’re past curfew,” she teases.

“Past curfew,” he repeats, as if he didn’t hear it, and he sees her dark eyes roll behind her glasses.

“You’re lucky I’m patient.”

“Like a saint, June bug.” He turns, chuckling, and begins to follow her inside. “Like a saint.”

***

“It’s gonna get a little chilly tonight…” Jonnie says as she unfolds a large blanket. With a quick toss, she lets it fly, spreading it out and draping it over his bed. “You need anything else before I get a fire goin’?”

Arthur, already in his long nightshirt and wool socks, shakes his head as he brushes past her. “Naw, sweetheart. I’ll be fine. Just keep my window cracked, I want some fresh air.”

“Fine. Alice said something about checkin’ your heart rate…”

Arthur starts to wave her off, but Jonnie's fingers find his wrist, pressing gently against the blue veins there. Her eyes fix on her watch face, lips moving silently as she counts. The bedroom grows quiet except for the faint ticking of the mantel clock. Arthur swallows his protest, watching her concentrated expression until she finally releases him with a satisfied nod. "Nothing to worry about there," she says, patting his arm.

“See?” Arthur questions with a lilt, his large hand reaching for his bedcovers. “You all need to stop worryin’.”

“We just want you to be happy and healthy, Daddy."

He begins to crawl into bed, his joints creaking like old floorboards as he settles against the stack of down pillows that smell faintly of cedar and aftershave. She doesn't offer to help him, though her fingers twitch at her sides, allowing him the dignity of pulling his own weight. The quilt—one her grandmother had stitched decades ago—rustles as he draws it up to his chest.

"Happy and healthy," he repeats, his voice a low rumble like distant thunder.

"You need a hearin' aid or somethin', Daddy?" she teases, moving to the brass lamp on his nightstand where a dog-eared Farmer’s Almanac sits waiting for tomorrow.

He chortles a reply, a sound like pebbles tumbling in a creek bed, as he tugs the covers higher until only his weathered face peeks out. "Very funny."

Just as her hand reaches the knob to kill the light, casting long shadows across the floral wallpaper, she leans forward to kiss her father on the forehead, her lips meeting his weathered skin. "Goodnight, Daddy."

“Goodnight, June Bug.”

sound of her steps on the wood floor, she closes the door behind her. The room falls silent, with not even a breeze outside to lull him to sleep. Arthur listens to the sound of his breathing—shallow and ragged like a torn paper bag—while his eyes adjust to the darkness. The familiar shapes of his bedroom emerge one by one: the hulking silhouette of his oak dresser, the curved back of the rocking chair where his wife once nursed their babies, the tarnished silver frame on the nightstand holding a faded family photo. Moonlight spills through the thin curtains, painting silver rectangles across his quilt that tremble slightly with each beat of his tired heart.

It is after a long while that his thoughts give way to the weight of his body, a vacancy adrift to let him fall asleep. First, it is his feet, then his knees, then his hands, then his gut, until eventually the world withdraws behind his eyelids and leaves him with nothing but the sound of breath and the slow, tidal hush of blood in his ears.

***

A dull pain stirs him awake, a vise-like tightness that spreads from his breastbone outward like frost creeping across a windowpane. He opens his eyes—wide at first, pupils dilating in the darkness—as his mind fumbles to make sense of the sensation. It is his heart, a suffocating weight as though someone had placed his wife's old flatiron directly on his chest. The pressure builds until each shallow breath becomes a labor that leaves no room for calling out. His eyes dart frantically around the shadowed room, skimming past the familiar silhouettes of furniture until they find themselves drawn toward the window where the thin curtains flutter. And he sees a halo of light, pale as a winter moon, bleeding into the night sky just beyond the horizon.

It is almost morning, and the sun will rise.

It is beautiful.

And his wife’s words echo in his mind.

There’s something beautiful about being at peace when the time comes. A still morning, or even surrounded by loved ones. Even being alone. Don’t you think, dear?

She was right. It is a beautiful time to die.

He knows it now with bone-deep certainty, like recognizing the first notes of an old familiar song. The crushing vise around his chest isn't just pain—it's a doorway. Each labored breath draws him closer to that threshold where the mortal world thins. The ache that's lived in him since they lowered Eliza into the ground—that hollow space behind his ribs where her laugh used to echo—was never just grief. It was Death’s hand reaching back through the veil, patient as always, waiting for him to heed its call.

The call to send him back to her, all this time.

His hand instinctively clutches his chest, the pain increasing, but he knows that it is no use to try to fight it. Jonnie could come running, phone a hospital, but an ambulance wouldn’t reach him in time to save him, and it would only prolong his agony.

He had once imagined an ideal death would be to see the setting sun, to think of all the good times he had that way. But this, this is more than life could ever give.

He is grateful. Grateful for the time he’s had with his friends. His loved ones. John, Charles, Abigail, and all those who fell before. He’s lived a good life. Eighty-four years is more than he would have ever expected with a life like his. An orphan. A vagabond. An outlaw. A thief. A father. A lover. A fighter. A grandfather, even. He’s seen the change of time through two wars, a financial crisis, drought, even the reinvention of the wheel. Washing machines, airplanes, television. He didn’t deserve it, but somehow fate, or God, even, thought that there was something in him worth saving.

He takes in a sharp breath that catches like a rusty hinge halfway through, a guttural moan escaping his lips and rattling against his teeth. His body arches slightly against the mattress, old muscles tensing one final time against the inevitable, fingers clutching at the quilt with the desperate strength of a drowning man. Through pain, he keeps his rheumy eyes fixed on the horizon, where the darkness is slowly yielding to a wash of amber and rose, the first molten edge of the sun spilling gold across the distant pines.

It isn’t morning yet.

Just a little longer.

“Eliza," he pants, her name escaping like a prayer between shallow gasps. His body finally begins to surrender, muscles melting into the quilt his wife had stitched with hands he can almost feel now, cool against his burning skin. The golden light spilling through the curtains paints the room in honey, catching dust motes that dance like memories above him. Such a beautiful morning to leave this world—the scent of pine drifting through the cracked window, birdsong just beginning to weave through the dawn air.

Such a beautiful morning, and he has to go.

And he is at peace with it.

Eliza.

..

.

She was in his heart when he closed his eyes, and she will be there when he opens his eyes once again.

FIN

It is Sunday morning, and golden sunlight filters through the thin curtains as you watch Arthur's calloused fingers work each wooden button through its hole. His broad shoulders flex beneath the worn cotton as he tucks the shirttail into his trousers. You pull the patchwork quilt over your head, burrowing into the lingering warmth and scent of him, as if the fabric might somehow anchor him here and prevent his inevitable departure.

After securing the last button, he hooks his thumbs into his suspenders—faded leather worn smooth from years of use—and draws them up over his shoulders with a soft snap. He turns toward the bed, expecting to see your face, but finds only a small, trembling mound beneath the covers. The corners of his weather-beaten face crinkle as he smiles, a face still young but with eyes that have seen too much hardship. He recognizes your silent protest against goodbyes, finding unexpected tenderness in this childlike gesture. His boots make soft steps into the sod floor as he approaches the bed with deliberateness.

Arthur's voice comes low and gentle. "Now, Eliza..." His weathered fingers reach for the quilt's edge, but your knuckles have gone white with the force of your grip. A brief tug-of-war ensues—him patient but insistent, you, stubborn as winter frost—until the heavy fabric surrenders with a soft whoosh. Beneath lies your body curled tight as a fern before spring, knees drawn to chest, arms wrapped around yourself. The morning chill pebbles your bare skin as you uncoil slowly, drawing the blanket back around your shoulders like armor, though he's memorized every inch of you in the night's intimacies.

You sit up against the rough-hewn headboard, the quilt clutched at your collarbone. He kneels before you on one knee, hat already in place, ready for the trail. The dust motes dance in the air. You say nothing, but your eyes—wide and liquid as a startled doe's at the creek's edge—begin to glisten with tears that refuse to fall.

"I have to go," he whispers, his voice like gravel over velvet, "but I ain’t gonna leave you here like this. I need to take you home."

"So I'll stay this way, and won't come out of the bed."

"Eliza, please."

"Please, don't go."

His eyes soften, but the resolve in his tone does not change. "I have to; I've been gone too long. They need me. They all do."

And your tone matches his, only your eyes continue to glisten. "But do they appreciate you? Do they care about you as much as I do?"

"In their own ways, they do." He eyes your exposed shoulder and the way your hair falls against your cheeks and down your neck. His body doesn’t want to go, but he has a family, albeit an unorthodox family: a curious couple and their two unruly sons, and other members that he hadn't yet told you about, but it is his family. The only real family he has ever known. They are outlaws for riches, but it isn’t about the money. Not to Arthur. But he doesn't blame you for how you feel, for you don’t fully understand his ways. But in each act of intimacy, time and again, you have bound your heart to his. Little does he know that he is your family, in an unorthodox sort of way.

"You know that I will come back to you," he attempts to reassure you.

You blink, and a solitary tear falls down your cheek. He reaches up and uses his thumb to wipe it away.

"I know,” you say in a soft whisper, words not coming easily right now. “Please let it be soon."

He finds your waist beneath the quilt's patchwork warmth, his calloused fingers pressing into the soft flesh where his hands had methodically caressed last night. As he stands, he lifts you against him, your bare feet dangling above the packed-in sod. His arms encircle you completely, like iron bands forged in tenderness. He buries his face in the crook of your neck, inhaling deeply—lye soap and woodsmoke and something uniquely yours. His stubble scrapes your skin as he commits this scent to memory, tucking it away like a treasure to sustain him on lonely trails. The ache to return to you burns in his chest, but uncertainty shadows it. Dutch's grand schemes always promise fortune but deliver peril, spinning tales of wealth that end in gunpowder and blood. Arthur has heard Dutch's midnight musings about recruiting more men—safety in numbers, Dutch claims—but they both know the truth: when something needs doing, when lives hang in the balance, Dutch turns only to Arthur, his most loyal soldier.

"Put on your clothes and get’chur things, I'll be outside saddlin’ up Boadicea."

"Okay," you sniff.

He sets you back down and doesn't look at you as he heads out the door. Combing your hair back with your fingers, you locate her clothes off the floor and begin to put them on.

Stepping outside, Arthur breathes the morning air. Hearing birds sing in the distance, he takes a moment to watch the sun rising higher into the sky. He has a long ride ahead of him and will need to leave soon if he is to make it before dark. He locates the saddle resting on a hitching post and lifts it up. Whistling for Boadicea, she comes trotting over to him, whinnying happily.

"Hey, girl," he greets, and he swings the saddle over onto her back. Taking a moment to make sure it is cinched properly, he slips some sugar cubes into her mouth. "There, have this." He takes a brush from the saddlebag and goes over her coat until it begins to shine. The rhythm of the brushing and the steady quiet of the outdoors take his mind to a calm place. He begins to imagine what life could be like if it were always like this. Him having someone to come home to, with maybe a ranch and a family. Dutch and Hosea could finally have the life that they want, and he could go off and find his own.

But he knows what he has to do to get there, and how to go about doing it. That is what he is leaving for. You seem to understand that, and so maybe, one day, it will matter.

He hears the squeak of the door opening and turns to see you in the dress you wore the night before. You have part of your hair pulled up, letting the rest of your hair fall down your shoulders. Your soft, chestnut brown hair. You are the embodiment of femininity: all softness with a fire inside. You swing her coat behind you and begin to slip your right arm into one of the sleeves. You continue to look down at the ground, your lips flattened.

He leaves Boadicea and approaches you tentatively, knowing the delicate state you are in. It has been hard for you, too.

"Hey," he whispers, lifting your chin. You finally lift your eyes to look into his.

You want to tell him you love him, but you are afraid. You are afraid that he won’t say it back.

But you say nothing.

He reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out a spare key to the padlock. He takes your left hand and gently places the key into your palm.

"Here. Now you can come here anytime. If you need to get away or wait for me. You'll have a safe place to go."

You only nod, but you are grateful.

"I'll see you soon," he forces a smile and leans in to kiss you. When his lips touch yours, you don’t respond, which saddens him, and he pulls away. "Let me take you home."

***

The ride was quiet, but you held onto him tightly, conveying more than you were willing to say. He wasn’t much of a conversationalist like he usually is, often regaling you with tales of his adventures and the more mild dangers he encounters. Instead, he kept to the road, watching the world pass by as you both made your way back toward town.

Wisps of chimney smoke curl against the morning sky like ghostly fingers beckoning you home, the town's silhouette shimmering in the distance. Arthur pulls Boadicea's reins with a gentle tug, her hooves crunching to a halt on the frost-dusted path. He dismounts in one fluid motion, his spurs jingling softly as his boots hit the ground. His face is a mask of practiced stoicism as he extends his weathered hand to help you down, his calloused palm rough against your skin.

Once your feet touch the earth, Arthur's lips part slightly as if to speak, his eyes flickering with unspoken words. He leans forward, the familiar scent of leather and tobacco enveloping you, before he catches himself and pulls back. His jaw tightens as he swallows whatever goodbye he'd intended. With a sharp inhale, he turns away, the leather of his saddle creaking as he mounts Boadicea again. The mare's muscles ripple beneath her chestnut coat as they trot away, kicking up small clouds of dust. You force your gaze toward town, each step on the rutted road deliberate, your throat burning with the effort of holding back tears that threaten to spill like summer rain.

But you turn back.

And you start to run to him.

"Arthur!" you cry at the top of your lungs, your voice cracking as you sob. "Arthur!"

He whips around at the sound of your voice, his eyes widening beneath the shadow of his hat. Without a moment's hesitation, he slides from Boadicea's saddle in one fluid motion, his boots kicking up dust as he sprints toward you. The carefully constructed walls around his heart crumble with each thundering step.

His calloused hands find your waist, lifting you as if you weigh nothing. Your skirts billow around you both like a storm cloud as he crushes you against his chest. You cradle his stubbled face between your trembling palms, tasting salt and desperation as your lips collide. A sound escapes you—half-sob, half-moan—that seems to echo across the empty plains. His mouth moves against yours with the urgency of a dying man granted one final wish, the scent of leather and gunpowder filling your senses.

"I've got to go," he rasps against your lips, his voice rough as gravel, warm breath mingling with yours in the cold morning air.

"I know," you whisper through tears that leave glistening trails down your flushed cheeks, the words barely slipping through the narrow space between your still-hungry mouths.

His arms loosen reluctantly, lowering you until your feet touch the cool, hardened earth. His fingers linger at your waist, digging slightly into the fabric of your coat as if anchoring himself against the current pulling him away. Finally, with visible effort, he pries himself from you, each inch of separation a fresh wound, and you force your hands to fall away from him, surrendering to the inevitable.

"Goodbye, Eliza."

"Bye, Arthur." You step back, and he jogs back to Boadicea. Getting on her quickly, he gallops off, not looking back this time. You hold out a hand, a desperate attempt to reach him, to be with him for as long as you can, not waving, but as much of a goodbye as any other. "Come back to me!"

Thank you for reading!

I want to extend my gratitude to all of you who have stuck with me for over a YEAR to read what I have written. It means so much to me that you would take the time to read over 500,000 words and either leave a like, reblog, or a comment. Really, I appreciate it so much. I also want to honorably mention HHwrds, @fofokaifu, tffjr83, and @photo1030 for your consistent feedback and praise. I really looked forward to reading what you had to share, and, to be honest, it really helped motivate me to keep going. Thank you for sticking with me this long!

If you're interested, I have a "soundtrack end credits playlist" for you to enjoy. These are some of the songs that would frequent my head (in addition to the ones I'd quote/share at the beginning of each chapter). Here is the post (songs listed not in any particular order).

What's next? Well, I'll be finishing my rewrite of High Sierra and hopefully onto SMALLER projects. lol This fic is over 550,000 words!!!

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