Because their loss walked straight into my snow and became my whole world. Eleanor leaned her head against his shoulder, and they sat that way a long while, and the piece of it settled over her so complete that she almost believed nothing could ever disturb it again. She should have known better. The letter arrived a month later, forwarded twice its envelope, soft and creased from travel, and Eleanor recognized the handwriting before she'd even fully pulled it from the stack of mail, and her whole body went still. It was from Boston.
It was from her mother-in-law. She stood in the yard holding it a long time, not opening it, feeling the old cold seep back into her the way it had that day on the church steps. She had thought she was done with these people. She had built a whole new life 1,500 miles from them precisely so she'd never have to hear from them again. And here they were reaching across the country a second time into the middle of her happiness.
Nathaniel found her there. "What is it?" Boston. Eleanor's voice came out thin. It's from her.
From Margaret, my husband's mother. Nathaniel's face hardened. You don't have to open it. Whatever she wants, she's got no claim on you. Give it here and I'll burn it and that'll be the end of it.
For a moment, Eleanor almost let him. It would have been easy. She could hand it over and watch it curl to ash the way Nathaniel had burned Charles Whitaker's offer and never know what was inside and go on with her life. But she had learned something this winter about the cost of running from things. She had learned that the wounds you refused to look at were the ones that never healed the ones a man like Charles Whitaker could reach into and use against you because you'd never faced them yourself.
And she found she did not want to spend the rest of her life flinching every time the mail came. "No," she said. "I'll read it. I want to see what she has to say for herself." She opened it there in the yard, Nathaniel close beside her, and she read it in silence.
And Nathaniel watched her face change as she did. The letter was not what either of them expected. Word had reached Boston, it turned out. Word of the hearing of Charles Whitaker's arrest of the Boston widow, who' brought down a territorial land baron. It had traveled all the way back east and landed on Margaret Whitmore's doorstep, and the woman who had once called Eleanor barren and burdensome had sat down to write to her at last.
She did not apologize. Eleanor noted that immediately. Margaret Whitmore was not a woman who apologized. The letter made that clear in every careful line. But there was something underneath the stiff formal sentences that Eleanor had never heard from these people before, and it took her a second reading to name it.