"The canyon?" "Every day. But I miss what it represented more than the place itself." She looked at him across the table, her face warm in the firelight.
"The canyon was where I learned I could fight back. Where I learned I mattered. But I don't need the canyon for that anymore. I have you, and I have this."
She gestured around the small house. "This is ours. Nobody can take it from us." "Coleman could try."
"Let him. He doesn't scare me anymore." Rhett reached across the table and took her hand. "You're braver than anyone I've ever met."
"No. I'm just tired of being afraid. There's a difference." Spring came slowly, grudgingly, but it came. They planted corn, beans, squash.
"The Three Sisters," Ayah called them, the crops her people had grown for generations. They planted apple trees that wouldn't bear fruit for years but would live longer than either of them. They planted roots, both literal and metaphorical. The letter from Senator Brennan arrived in June.
Rhett saw the official seal, and his hand started shaking before he'd even opened it. Ayah stood beside him, reading over his shoulder as he unfolded the page. The investigation had taken eight months. Brennan had gathered testimony from dozens of people, including the old woman from Bitter Creek, who traveled all the way to Washington to tell her story.
She'd subpoenaed records, cross-referenced documents, built a case so airtight that even Coleman's friends in the government couldn't ignore it. Coleman had been arrested, stripped of his badge, charged with trafficking, fraud, and conspiracy. He was awaiting trial in a federal prison. Vickers was ruined.
His business seized. His assets frozen. His contracts canceled. Some of his buyers had been arrested too.
Others had fled. And most importantly, the territorial laws that had allowed the whole operation to exist were being challenged. Brennan was pushing for federal oversight. For protections.
For recognition that what had happened was wrong and couldn't be allowed to continue. It wasn't perfect. It wouldn't bring back the people who'd been sold, the lives that had been destroyed. But it was something.
It was justice. Incomplete and imperfect, but real. Rhett set down the letter and looked at Ayah. Her eyes were wet, but she was smiling.
"We did it," she said. "You did it. You're the one who wouldn't give up." "We did it together."
She took his hand. Just like everything else. They stood there in the kitchen of their small house, holding each other. Rhett felt something loosen in his chest that had been clenched tight since Caleb died.
Not forgiveness exactly. The guilt would always be there. Would always be part of him. But maybe that was okay.
Maybe you didn't have to be free of guilt to move forward. Maybe you just had to decide it wasn't going to be the only thing that defined you. The trial was set for August. Brennan wanted them to testify, but she left the choice to them.