When the Colonel Came to the Estate

Her voice broke slightly.

“And then she disappeared.”

The sentence opened something in the room.

Margaret looked at me.

“I became exactly the sort of woman she warned me about.”

I did not know what to say.

An apology spoken too late is still only a seed. It must be watered by changed behavior. Still, the fact that Margaret had spoken it in front of witnesses, without turning it into an excuse, mattered.

She looked at June.

“I am sorry for yesterday,” she said.

Not to the room.

Not to Wesley.

To me.

“To both of you.”

June blinked at her solemnly, as if weighing the sincerity of adults.

I nodded once.

“Thank you.”

It was not forgiveness. Not yet.

But it was a door left unlocked.

Captain Ortiz, who had been examining the sketchbook, suddenly stilled.

“Dana,” he said.

She crossed to him.

He laid the sketchbook open on the desk. The page showed a pencil drawing of the magnolia tree outside the window. Tucked between two pages was a folded piece of paper, much newer than the letters.