Part 4
Vashti arrived wearing black instead of gray.
It made her seem harder.
Thaddius climbed from the carriage looking uncomfortable.
He stared at the cabin as though it had personally betrayed him.
Sibila stood on the porch.
“Morning.”
Vashti looked past her through the open doorway.
“We understand you’ve discovered certain objects.”
“I’ve discovered several.”
“Inside Father’s house.”
“My house.”
Thaddius cleared his throat.
“Now, Sibila.”
It was the first time he had used her name.
“The will gave you the structure.”
“And everything in it.”
“That’s debatable.”
Winstead had anticipated this.
Sibila produced a copied clause.
“Together with all fixtures, furnishings, contents, improvements, enclosed goods, articles, and personal effects remaining upon the premises.”
Thaddius flushed.
Vashti did not.
“Your grandfather was an old man.”
“He was ninety-four.”
“Precisely. His intentions may not have been clear.”
“They were clear enough when he gave you six thousand dollars.”
That struck.
Thaddius looked at his boots.
Vashti climbed one porch step.
“We are family.”
Sibila almost laughed.
“You laughed when you gave me the key.”
“I did not.”
“Your husband did.”
“He was surprised.”
“He wiped tears from his eyes.”
Thaddius turned toward the carriage.
“Vashti, perhaps—”
“Quiet.”
The word came out softly.
He obeyed.
Sibila noticed.
For the first time she understood their marriage.
Thaddius’s weakness was not cruelty.
Cruelty required intention.
His great failing was surrender.
He had spent decades allowing Vashti to choose what he would do and then persuading himself that choosing nothing made him innocent.
Vashti looked at Sibila.
“What do you want?”
“My home.”
“You have it.”
“Then why are you here?”
Vashti’s mouth tightened.
“Because objects belonging to the Fenimore family should remain with the Fenimore family.”
“I am the Fenimore family.”
“No. You are a Renshaw.”
There it was.
Simple.
Clean.
The thing beneath everything.
Sibila went inside.
She returned carrying the unsent letter from Rosalyn.
Vashti recognized the handwriting before Sibila said a word.
Color drained from her face.
“Where did you get that?”
“My grandfather kept records.”
Thaddius turned.
“What is it?”
Vashti ignored him.
Sibila descended one step.
“My mother wrote to her father. Someone kept her letters from leaving.”
Silence.
“Grandfather wrote to her. Someone kept his letters from leaving.”
Thaddius looked confused.
Then afraid.
“Vashti?”
She still did not look at him.
Sibila continued.
“Thirty-seven letters.”
Vashti’s composure cracked, but only for a second.
“Your grandfather was confused in his later years.”
“These began when he was sixty-four.”
“He misplaced things.”
“The letters he carried himself were mailed. The letters he gave you weren’t.”
Thaddius sat heavily on the carriage seat.
“Is that true?”
Vashti turned on him.
“Oh, don’t begin.”
His face changed.
“Is it?”
“You knew Rosalyn was trouble.”
“I knew you disliked her.”
“You complained about her every night!”
“I complained.”
He stared.
“I didn’t steal mail.”
Vashti’s jaw hardened.
Sibila suddenly understood that one part of her assumption had been wrong.
Thaddius might have failed his sister.
He might have taken too much money.
He might have laughed at Sibila.
But he had not known everything Vashti had done.
That did not absolve him.
It made the betrayal sadder.
Vashti looked back at Sibila.
“Rosalyn would have ruined this family.”
“How?”
“She would have married that laborer.”
“She did.”
Vashti froze.
Sibila held up the letter.
“Samuel Renshaw. My father.”
“Then she proved me correct.”
“By marrying somebody she loved?”
“By throwing away her name.”
“My name kept me alive just fine.”
“You grew up in a county institution.”
Sibila flinched.
Vashti saw it.
She had found the old bruise.
For a heartbeat Sibila was four again.
Eight.
Twelve.
Standing in line.
Eating cold oatmeal.
Wearing someone else’s shoes.
Vashti took another step.
“And that, child, is precisely what happens when women act on sentiment rather than judgment.”
Temperance appeared around the side of the cabin carrying a basket.
She had heard enough.
“Vashti Fenimore, you haven’t improved with age.”
Vashti’s face tightened.
Temperance put the basket down.
“You drove that girl out.”
“I protected a household.”
“You poisoned it.”
“I prevented scandal.”
“You created thirty-three years of grief.”
Thaddius covered his face.
Vashti turned.
“We’re leaving.”
“No,” he said.
Everyone looked at him.
Thaddius stood slowly.
“No.”
Vashti stared as though a chair had spoken.
He faced Sibila.
“I want to see the letters.”
“Why?”
“Because Rosalyn was my sister.”
“You let her leave.”
Pain moved through his face.
“Yes.”
“Did you stop Grandfather from finding her?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“I don’t know what Vashti did.”
His voice rose.
“But I know what I did.”
He looked older suddenly.
“I chose peace in my own house.”
Temperance said nothing.
Thaddius’s eyes filled.
“Every time Vashti said something about Rosalyn, I let it pass because disagreeing meant three days of cold supper and slammed doors. When Father defended Rosalyn, I told him Vashti only wanted what was proper because I wanted the argument ended.”
He swallowed.
“The morning Rosalyn left, I watched from upstairs.”
Sibila went still.
“You saw her?”
“She stood on the road with a carpetbag.”
“Did you go after her?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“I told myself Father would.”
“Did he?”
“By the time he knew, the stage had gone.”
Sibila stared.
Thaddius whispered, “I’ve regretted that window for thirty-three years.”
Vashti snapped, “Enough.”
“No.”
For the first time he shouted.
The sound frightened even him.
“No, Vashti. Enough was thirty-three years ago.”
They left separately.
Thaddius walked down the mountain.
Vashti took the carriage.
The next week became dangerous.
Rumors spread.
Collectors wrote.
Newspapers heard there might be a lost collection of American mountain carvings.
Pembroke returned with a photographer.
Sibila refused him.
Then somebody tried the cabin door after midnight.
The lock held.
Sibila sat in the dark holding Rafe’s old shotgun until dawn.
Nothing was taken.
Rafe slept in the woodshed the next three nights.
“You don’t have to.”
“I snore. Consider it punishment.”
The thirty-day condition was approaching.
On the twenty-eighth day a storm came down from the Alleghenies.
Rain became sleet by afternoon.
Wind hammered the ridge.
A hemlock fell across the road.
Sibila and Rafe spent hours clearing branches while Temperance kept the stove hot.
By dark, the temperature plunged.
One of the cabin shutters tore loose.
Sibila climbed onto the porch roof with a rope around her waist while Rafe shouted from below.
“That ain’t worth dying over!”
“Window breaks, we’ll freeze!”
“Window glass is cheaper than funerals!”
She repaired it anyway.
Her hands were numb when she came down.
That night the chimney drew poorly.
Smoke filled the room.
Sibila crawled onto the hearth coughing and found windblown debris blocking part of the flue.
She cleared what she could from below.
Near midnight the fire burned clean again.
Temperance was asleep in the chair.
Rafe snored near the door.
Sibila sat with a blanket around her shoulders and looked at Absalom’s carvings wrapped safely in oilcloth.
She thought about the thousand dollars.
Then the six thousand.
Then the money Thaddius might have taken.
None of it mattered while sleet hit the roof.
A house mattered.
Dry wood mattered.
People mattered.
She finally understood the lesson hidden inside the thirty days.
Money was useful.
Home was different.
On the thirtieth morning, the storm broke.
The mountains emerged white under a hard blue sky.
Sibila woke to wagon bells.
Ellery Winstead had come up the ridge with the county sheriff.
Thaddius rode behind them.
Vashti did not.
Winstead entered, removed his gloves, and looked around at the cabin.
“Thirty consecutive days.”
Sibila nodded.
“What happens now?”
The old lawyer took a document from his coat.
“Now we read the rest.”
Absalom had created a second estate.
Not money in a bank.
Property.
Timberland.
Twenty-eight acres beyond Sibila’s seven.
Mineral rights along the western slope.
A half interest in two commercial buildings in Tarnwick.
And a trust holding payments from furniture designs Absalom had licensed to a manufacturing company in Pittsburgh.
Winstead read the estimated value.
Sibila sat down.
Thaddius closed his eyes.
It was worth more than everything he had received.
“Why wasn’t this in the first will?”
Sibila asked.
Winstead read Absalom’s explanation.
Because those who measure worth only in cash must be permitted to choose cash.
If Sibila comes to the ridge and remains, she has chosen the place.
The rest follows the place.
Thaddius whispered, “He knew.”
Winstead looked at him.
“Your father understood both of you.”
But there was more.
The trust had one final clause.
If evidence were discovered proving that any heir knowingly interfered with Absalom’s attempts to contact Rosalyn or Sibila, all discretionary benefits granted to that heir could be challenged for fraud.
The room went silent.
Sibila looked at Thaddius.
He looked toward the fire.
Then he reached inside his coat.
“I brought something.”
He placed a small wooden hawk on the table.
Sibila stopped breathing.
Its grain matched the bird from the wall.
Same wings.
Same branch.
Same turn of the head.
Rosalyn’s hawk.
“My mother took that,” Sibila whispered.
Thaddius nodded.
“Vashti had it.”
“How?”
“I asked her last night.”
His face was gray.
“She finally told me.”
He sat.
“The morning Rosalyn left, she stopped at the house once more after Father had gone to the shop. Vashti met her. Rosalyn gave Vashti a letter for Father.”
Sibila looked at the unsent envelope.
“That letter.”
“Maybe the first of many.”
Thaddius nodded toward the hawk.
“Years later Vashti went to Marberry.”
“Why?”
“To make certain Rosalyn would not come home.”
The words fell hard.
“She found her.”
Temperance stood.
“What?”
“1859.”
Sibila could barely speak.
“My mother was alive.”
“Yes.”
“Vashti saw her?”
“Yes.”
The room seemed to tilt.
“What did she tell her?”
Thaddius cried then.
Not loudly.
An old man’s tears, ashamed of arriving decades too late.
“She told Rosalyn that Father had disowned her. That he had burned her letters. That he intended everything for me.”
Sibila’s hands shook.
“And she believed her?”
“Why wouldn’t she?”
“What happened to the hawk?”
“Rosalyn gave it to Vashti.”
“Why?”
Thaddius looked at the little bird.
“She said if Father wanted nothing of her, then he should have back the last thing she’d carried from his house.”
Sibila reached for it.
Her mother had touched this wood.
Held it as a child.
Taken it east at twenty.
Kept it through marriage.
Widowhood.
Poverty.
Then surrendered it only after being convinced her father had stopped loving her.
Sibila pressed the bird against her chest.
“What did Vashti do with it?”
“Put it in a trunk.”
“For twenty-seven years?”
“Yes.”
Something inside Sibila changed.
The anger did not grow.
It became colder.
Cleaner.
She looked at Winstead.
“What happens now?”
The lawyer folded his hands.
“Now, Miss Renshaw, you decide whether you want justice or revenge.”