"Jim McCoy! You'll catch your death," Cordelia whispered urgently, ushering him into the warm kitchen.

The only light in the dim room came from the hearth where a low fire burned. Jim was shivering. It was still late winter and the storm outside was threatening to change from rain to sleet. He sank into a chair beside the warm flagstones. Cordelia threw another bundle of kindling on the flames and put a kettle on.

"What are you doing here? Hannah is abed. It's almost midnight."

Jim didn't argue as she helped him off with his drenched coat and hung it to dry beside the fire. "I-I couldn't sleep. I needed to see you. There is something I need to tell you."

Cordelia drew her shawl tighter about her shoulders, suddenly recalling how she had been similarly dressed the first time she had met Jim. It had been the same kind of setting as well. She had answered the door to her father's home in the middle of the night wearing nothing, but her shift. Jim seemed less concerned now about disturbing her.

Wringing his trembling hands before the fire, he muttered his thanks as she handed him a mug of strong tea. Holding her own cup, Cordelia sat beside him and waited for him to speak. Jim McCoy was not the kind of man who rushed into a conversation. 

"It's about money."

Cordelia quirked an eyebrow. "Money?"

"Yes. Your money. What you deserve."

"My inheritance?"

"Not just that." Jim took a steadying breath. "What I've got to confess might make you hate me, but I need to do what's right after so much wrongdoin'. I have recently come into some money that is yours by rights."

"... what are you talking about-"

"I'm talkin' about why your husband asked for an annulment."

Cordelia's mind went blank. Wetting her dry lips, she turned her focus on the fire. "What do you know about that?"

"I was the one who told him to do it."

Her pulse thudded in her ears. Sitting forward in her seat, Cordelia forced herself to focus through the shock. "Why?"

"I thought it was for your own good. You married Cap Hatfield because you had no other choice. But you did have a choice. Back east, there was a certain party huntin' for you, men who were very influential... a politician or something."

"R-Rogers?" Cordelia stuttered.

"Yes, that's the name. They've been looking for you. Perry Cline corresponded with them and told me about it. How there was a reward for any word of your whereabouts. They are willing to help you settle back up north."

Marshall Rogers had come through, but too late. Three months too late. So much had happened, too much for her to return to the girl that she had been when she'd first arrived in the Tug River Valley. There was no way she could return to Springfield to become the wife of Marshall Rogers.

"But how- how did you get word to my-" Cordelia checked herself. The word 'husband' hurt to speak. She cleared her throat. "How did you get word of that to the Hatfields?"

"I saw Cap on Thacker Mountain the day we killed Jim Vance. I shot him, but then I let him go," Jim said, staring into the mug of tea with a vague smile.

"Why did you do that?"

"So he could return to you and send you away. So you could leave this place of death and darkness for good. So you could go home to Massachusetts." He peered up, lips parting as his eyes followed the curves of her face. "I've never forgotten how you spoke of your home back east that first time we met. We were looking at your ma's painting. I have failed you so many times, but I wanted to give you what I could."

Wasn't this what she had always wanted? Jim McCoy had seen it through. This nightmare could finally be put behind her. But the dream, the imperfect, beautiful dream of her marriage to Cap, was that something she was willing to make herself forget?

"He didn't fully explain why he wanted to... be rid of me." Cordelia turned from Jim, her chest tightening. "But now I know why."

"That's not all." Jim set the mug down on the table behind him. He dug into the pocket of his coat and pulled out an envelope. "This is for you."

It was very fine stationary. Cordelia opened it and slid out a cheque from the United Bank of Springfield for a considerable sum of money. She smoothed her fingers over the numbers, her brow furrowing.

"By all rights, it should go to you. Rogers sent Perry Cline the reward money on finding you. The train tickets Perry gave you were from Rogers as well. I took this from his office. He was going to split the sum with me, but it made me sick to think about... profiting off your misery like that-"

"Jim, this could buy you land, your own land to farm. Acres and acres," Cordelia said, slipping it back into the envelope and trying to push it back into his hands. "I can't do that to you. I'll be able to survive on what was left to me by my cousin-"

Jim shook his head and gripped her hands. "I could never call myself an honorable man again if I did that."

"But what about you!?"

"Pap is too ill. Too sick with drink and grief to tend his own crops anymore. I'm the only son he's got left. His lands are quickly becoming mine anyway." He braced a hand against her neck. "I cannot give you anything, but this. Please, I ask only that you take the money for a new life far from here. I only wish I could share it with you."

With a sad smile, Cordelia looked down at the envelope in their joined hands. "But you would never leave your family."

"I cannot," he answered, gently but firmly. "Not now."

"I wouldn't ask it of you."

 Jim rose to his feet and grabbed his coat steaming in front of the fire. The storm was lessening outside. Cordelia followed him to the door. He paused after opening it and tapped his fingers on the splintered edge.

"Your marriage to Cap. Why-"

Cordelia passed a hand over her eyes. "Honestly, I can't makes heads or tails of it myself."

"Was he good to you?"

Perhaps good would never be a word to apply to their match. But the intense, natural understanding of another human's soul? Yes, Cap had been that to her. Even more now that it seemed he had ended their marriage so she could be free of that life. But how could she say those things to Jim? How could she explain something that had happened so simply in her heart?

Jim took her silence to mean something else. "Did you love him?"

"I think I'll be asking myself that for the rest of my life," she answered bluntly.

With a curt nod, Jim put on his hat and walked out into the misty winter's night.

The next morning, Hannah helped her pack her meager belongings. Cordelia didn't mention Jim's midnight visit in case Perry Cline asked her about the missing cheque. No doubt, he would be panic stricken when he found it missing. Cordelia garnered some comfort from that thought.

"The train leaves at noon," Hannah said, snapping the latch on the bag they had purchased in town. "We have a little time before we need to leave for the station."

Cordelia turned to her former housekeeper. "I'm going to send you some money as soon as I get back to Springfield-"

"No. Don't think of it."

"Hannah. Please. I want to do what I can for you... and for your sister. You said they are planning on sending her away to a special hospital up north?"

Hannah nodded, pressing her lips together and resting a hand at her breast. "Perry Cline has convinced Randall that it's for the best."

Tossing in bed the previous night, Cordelia had mulled over her options. She had considered asking Hannah this later on, but now she wondered if it would be the best time for it. Her stomach lurched as she led her to the kitchen table. Cold morning light poured into the room, icicles dripping on the porch outside from the icy gale the night before.

Cordelia drew a deep breath, Hannah studying her quizzically.

"I have a proposition. 

***

Another ice storm howled, ravaging the land by the time the train left the station for Washington. Cordelia would board another from there for Boston and then go by stagecoach to Springfield. The journey would take nearly two days. 

Freezing rain pelted the window of her compartment. The red leather seat was stiff and uncomfortable, but after a long, sleepless night, Cordelia dozed off as soon as they started down the tracks. Her father's bag remained in her lap, empty except for her mother's brooch. 

She had lost so much since arriving in the Tug River Valley. All her possessions and heirlooms, almost everything of sentimental value had been destroyed. Her father was dead. She hadn't even had the chance to tell him goodbye and apologize for the anger that she'd borne against him for so long.

Cordelia Robertson had no room in her heart for anger anymore. She had seen first hand what unmitigated wrath could do. She had committed murder, killing the man who had killed her father, and it had brought her no peace. That was something else she would take with her. 

Swept clean of ghosts, she felt new. It was as though she had been baptized and risen from the waters born again.

Cordelia blinked awake and peered out into the gloom. A thin layer of frost coated her window making the world outside appear dreamlike. Beyond the skeletal trees of a passing copse, a hill came into view. Cordelia rubbed her eyes and squinted.

A single rider watched the train from the top of the hill. It was too far for her to see him, but somehow she knew who it was. She knew that was the last she would ever see of Cap Hatfield. But she would always call him husband in her heart till the day she died.

She pressed the flat of her hand against her middle, a small, mute future waiting there under her fingers. The first time she'd carried Cap's baby, she had felt hollow and wiry, but this one was different. Her nerves hummed with life, expectation swelling in her chest like the first burst of dawn. 

Though she only carried with her one carpet bag of belongings, a far cry from the dozens of boxes that she'd brought with her down south, Cordelia Robertson was leaving with more than she could ever have imagined.