Page 33 of Mail-Order Lady

“James was seven. He could bring her tea.” A pause. “Thomas was still a tot. He just made her laugh when she held him.”

It was hard to miss what he didn’t say.

She gave it words, but kept her voice soft. “And you were in between.”

“I was in between.” He shifted the reins from one hand to the other. “Too young for the outdoor work. Old enough to understand I wasn’t helpful.”

The wagon rolled through a shallow rut, rocking them sideways.

“Mrs. Wang had been gathering plants. She did that—she knew which ones helped fevers come down. Then she came to me one afternoon with a little bundle.” He paused. “Showed me the leaves. Told me she needed more of them, that it was urgent. That Mother’s fever was bad.”

He stopped.

The horses plodded on. A jay called from somewhere in the pines.

“I knew the plant she meant.” His voice had dropped, and she had to lean to catch every word. “She’d shown it to me before, when we’d walked out together in the mornings. I knew the shape of the leaf. I was certain I knew.”

She kept her hands still in her lap. Kept her face toward the trail ahead.

“I found what I thought was the same plant. The leaves were nearly identical—same serrated edge, same general shape. I was proud of myself.” Another pause so long the wagon had time to creak through another rut and settle again. “I brought back the wrong one.”

She didn’t move.

“She died two days later.” He said it the same way he’d said five—plainly, without dressing it in anything. “I realized afterward that I’d picked the wrong plant. I don’t know if Mrs. Wang ever used what I brought. I never asked. I couldn’t—” He stopped again. Cleared his throat. “I believed for a very long time that I had killed my mother by bringing back the wrong leaf for her tea.”

The ache in her chest pressed tighter. That little boy. What could she say to help in even a tiny way?

“Robert.”

“I know the logic of it.” His voice had gone careful again, but differently than before. Not guarded—more like a man handling an old injury he’d learned to work around. “She was already dying. The fever had gone too far before I ever went out to look for plants. Nothing I did could have changed the outcome. I understand that now.”

But the way he said now told her everything about then.

She turned to look at him, though he kept his gaze on the trail ahead. The line of his jaw was set in that way he had—not clenched, but held, as if the muscles beneath had learned the position and stayed in it.

Somewhere in that small boy’s chest, the guilt had settled in before anyone thought to reassure him he wasn’t responsible. Before reason had a chance to get there first.

“Did someone ever—” She stopped. Chose the words more carefully. “Did Bea ever tell you that it wasn’t your fault?”

“Later. When I was older.” He shifted the reins. “By then I’d believed it for so long, hearing the truth didn’t change anything.”

She pressed her lips together to hold back all the reassurances pressing inside her. What could she say that would truly help? He’d carried this weight so long the pain had stopped feeling like a burden and started feeling like a room he simply lived in.

She needed to use something more than words.

Before she could stop herself, she reached across the small distance between them and wrapped her hand around his, where it rested on his leg. She gave a single squeeze, the way you’d press your hand to a wound to distract from the pain or slow the bleeding.

Then she pulled back.

He glanced at her, and the look he gave stopped the breath in her throat.

It was only a moment—a single unguarded second, before his eyes went back to the road and his jaw settled into its usual line. But in that second, he’d looked at her with…

Not gratitude. Not the settled, courteous warmth he offered when she did something kind.

This look made her fingers tighten in her lap. It was the gaze of a man who had been offered water after a long thirst and couldn’t quite believe it was real.

What in the wide blue sky did she do with that? What should she do?