Page 10 of Mail Order Mercy

She washed the cut with warm water and a bit of soap, then wrapped it with clean cloth from her sewing basket. Her fingers were gentle, but not timid. Albert watched the bend of her head, the loose strands of hair near her cheek, the concentration in her eyes. For one breath, he saw Dorothy not as Henry’s widow, not as a duty he had failed, but as a woman sitting close enough that he could feel the warmth of her hand through the bandage.

The tenderness of her hands frightened him more than the cut did. Pain had a place and a reason. This new awareness of Dorothy had neither, at least none he was willing to admit, and Henry’s shadow still stood beside the table.

Dorothy tied the bandage firmly. “There. Try not to bleed through it before morning.”

Albert forced a smile. “I’ll do my best.”

Dorothy did not release his hand right away. “Was it like Henry’s accident?”

Albert’s throat tightened. “No. Not really. But for a moment, I remembered too much. I did not mean to bring it here,” Albert said. “The memory, I mean.”

Dorothy’s fingers tightened around the edge of the bandage. “It was already here.”

Dorothy looked toward the stove, though Albert did not think she was seeing it. “The morning Henry died, we quarreled over kindling.”

Albert stayed very still.

“It was foolish,” Dorothy said. “He had meant to split more before leaving, and I was tired, and Tommy had been up half the night. I told him he remembered everyone at the mill before he remembered his own stove. He laughed at first, but I would not laugh with him. Then he said he would do it when he came home.”

Her voice broke on the last word. “He never came home. That was the last thing I said to him. A complaint about kindling.”

She had never spoken the words aloud because saying them made the guilt sound childish and terrible at once. A quarrel over kindling. A tired wife’s sharp tongue. A husband who never came back to hear the apology she had meant to give him at supper. Dorothy had carried hunger, cold, and fear, but this was the burden she had never managed to set down.

Albert turned his bandaged hand palm up beneath hers. “Dorothy, Henry knew.”

“You cannot know that.”

“I can.” Albert’s voice roughened. “A man knows whether he is loved. Henry knew every time you packed his dinner, every time you mended his shirt, every time you waited up because the mill kept him late. One quarrel over kindling could not undo years of love.”

“He talked about you that day,” Albert said.

Dorothy looked up quickly. “He did?”

Albert nodded. “He said you were the only woman in Alaska who could scold a man over kindling and still make him eager to go home.”

Albert had carried that memory of Henry’s last morning like something too painful to touch. Now he was glad he had not buried it with all the others. If one sentence could loosen even a thread of the guilt Dorothy had tied around herself, then he owed her every honest memory he had. Henry would have wanted that too. Henry would have wanted Dorothy comforted, even if the comfort came from the friend who had failed her first.

For a moment, Albert wished Henry were there to tell him what was allowed. Could a man comfort his friend’s widow without betraying him? Could he care for the children because he loved Henry and still feel something of his own taking root in the same soil? He did not know where the line stood, only that every day near Dorothy moved him closer to it.

A tear slipped down Dorothy’s cheek, but this time her mouth softened with it. “That sounds like him.”

For the first time, she let herself imagine Henry laughing after he left the cabin that morning instead of walking away hurt. The thought did not erase the ache, but it loosened something clenched tight beneath her ribs. Maybe love had been larger than her last words. Maybe Henry had known that better than she had.

Dorothy pressed her lips together, but tears filled her eyes. For six months, she had carried that final morning like a stone in her apron pocket, always there, always pulling at her. Albert had not taken it away, but he had put his hand under some of its weight.

Tommy chose that solemn moment to tip the water basin off the table.

Water splashed over Albert’s boots and ran beneath the chair in a clear, determined stream. Tommy stared at it, round-eyed and silent.

Albert looked down at his wet boots, then at Tommy. “Well now. I see how it is. You waited until I was wounded and then tried to drown me.”

Tommy’s mouth fell open. “I did not!”

“My boots are swimming. That is evidence.”

Tommy looked down at Albert’s boots with great interest. “Do boots know how to swim?”

“Mine are learning,” Albert said. “They may need lessons from yours.”