Matthew Collins had spent years trying to correct what happened.

There was one more letter.

Sarah found it folded inside his Bible.

Unlike the first, this one was addressed to her.

She read it alone.

Then brought it to Jack.

They stood beneath the cottonwood tree behind the ranch.

Lucy and Gracie were building a snow fort nearby.

“What does it say?” Jack asked.

Sarah handed him the letter.

Matthew had written it weeks before entering the Silver Crown mine for the final time.

Sarah,

If anything happens to me, find Jack Callahan.

I learned his full name today from an old county ledger.

I have not yet had the courage to face him.

Tell him his daughter lived.

Tell him I am sorry.

And if he hates me, he has earned the right.

Jack lowered the page.

Sarah wiped tears away.

“He knew.”

“Yes.”

“He was going to come here.”

“Yes.”

Jack looked toward Gracie.

The little girl stumbled in the snow.

Lucy caught her.

Both laughed.

For a strange moment Jack felt anger.

At Matthew.

At Merritt.

At the epidemic.

At every accident that had stolen six years.

Then something else came.

Compassion.

Matthew had been twenty-two.

Frightened.

Powerless beneath a doctor’s order.

And he had carried the guilt for the rest of his life.

Jack folded the letter.

“What do you want me to do with this?”

Sarah looked at him.

“Whatever you need.”

Jack walked toward the fireplace that evening carrying Matthew’s confession.

Sarah expected him to burn it.

Instead, Jack placed it inside the cedar chest beside Mary’s wedding ring.

“Why keep it?” she asked.

Jack closed the lid.

“Because the worst thing a man ever did shouldn’t always be the only thing remembered about him.”

Sarah stared.

Jack continued.

“He tried to fix it.”

“He failed.”

“So have I.”

He looked toward Gracie playing beside Lucy.

“But sometimes someone else finishes what we couldn’t.”

Sarah began crying.

Jack reached for her.

This time she came willingly.

Winter passed.

Sarah stayed.

Not because Jack rescued her.

Because eventually neither of them could imagine her leaving.

She ran the ranch household and insisted Jack pay her proper wages.

He complained.

She threatened to leave.

He paid.

Lucy returned to Callahan Ranch slowly.

Her old room frightened her at first.

It belonged to a five-year-old she remembered only in flashes.

For several nights she slept in the west room with Sarah and Gracie.

Then one afternoon Jack found Lucy standing beside the rocking horse.

She touched its carved mane.

“I remember this.”

Jack leaned against the doorway.

“You called him Thunder.”

Lucy smiled.

“That’s a terrible name.”

“You chose it.”

“I was five.”

“Exactly.”

She laughed.

Jack had forgotten how much her laughter sounded like Mary’s.

Some memories returned.

Most did not.

Jack eventually learned not to mourn the missing pieces.

Lucy was not a ghost restored exactly as she had been.

She was eleven.

She loved arithmetic.

She hated sewing.

She climbed trees recklessly.

She liked horses but preferred dogs.