We do not confront Vane alone.
He nodded.
Then he surprised me by writing:
You are not obligated to come.
I looked at the man whose injured ear I had bandaged that morning.
At the fear he was trying to hide.
At the notebook that had become the bridge between us.
I took the pencil.
For eight days, people have decided what happens to me.
Tonight, I decide.
His eyes filled with an emotion I could not yet name.
He nodded again.
This time, there was no argument.
The old Saint Agnes mine stood beneath a ridge of black pines.
Its machinery had rusted.
Snow covered the abandoned wagon tracks.
The main entrance had collapsed long ago, leaving only twisted timber and heaps of stone.
We approached by the narrow western trail.
Gideon carried a lantern, a coil of rope, and the old survey map.
I carried my mother’s statement inside my coat.
The chapel appeared through the trees shortly after midnight.
It was a small stone building with a broken roof and a square bell tower.
The bell itself was gone.
A wooden beam remained across the empty opening.
We tied our horses among the pines and approached on foot.
Gideon touched my shoulder.
He pointed toward fresh wagon tracks.
Someone had been there recently.
The chapel door stood partly open.
Inside, moonlight fell across a ruined altar.
Broken pews lay scattered across the floor.
I searched the walls for an inscription or hidden compartment.
Nothing.
Gideon examined the tower.
He climbed a narrow ladder until he reached the platform where the bell had once hung.
Then he lowered his lantern.
He pointed beneath the floorboards.
I climbed after him.
One plank had been nailed differently from the others.
Gideon loosened it with his knife.
Beneath it lay a rusted metal box.
I nearly cried out.
We carried it down to the altar.
The lock was corroded beyond use.
Gideon pried it open.
Inside were water-damaged papers, a leather account book, and a small brass plate.
Most of the documents had survived because they were wrapped in waxed canvas.
I opened the account book.
The first pages listed payments for timber, blasting powder, labor, and drainage equipment.
Then I found a series of entries dated October 1860.
Several contained the initials H.V.
Others were marked S.A.
My heart began pounding.
Silas Ashford.
My father.
I turned to the final entry.
It recorded a payment of fifty dollars.
Fifty dollars for the removal of an obstruction at the lower drainage gate.
I stared at the amount.
The same sum my father had accepted for my marriage.
A coincidence, perhaps.
But it felt like a deliberate echo from the past.
I showed Gideon.
He read the entry.
Then he examined the brass plate.
It carried a manufacturer’s number and the name of the company that had installed the mine’s drainage controls.
Beneath those details was an engraved instruction:
Emergency gate release—west chamber.
Gideon searched the map.
He traced a narrow passage running beneath the chapel.
Then he looked at me.
Before he could write, a voice came from the doorway.
“Well, well.
