Chapter 8 - The Return to the Ridge
Two days later, the southbound express train pulled into the small brick station at Bedford, Illinois.
The morning sky was clear, a crisp, bright blue that reflected off the frost covering the red oak leaves along the rail line. The air smelled of wood smoke, dry corn stalks, and cold earth—the clean, open air of the prairie that had nothing to do with the heavy, industrial fog of Chicago.
Mara stepped off the metal passenger stairs onto the wooden platform, carrying her small brown cardboard suitcase in her left hand.
She wore her plain gray wool coat and a simple black scarf tied around her hair. Her face was pale, dark circles beneath her eyes from three nights of little sleep, but her posture was straight, her chin lifted as she looked down the main street of her home town.
The station master—an old man named Mr. Miller who had known her father for twenty years— execution stood near the baggage cart, leaning on a wooden broom.
He stopped sweeping when he saw her, his sharp blue eyes squinting through his wire-rimmed glasses.
“Mara?” he called out, his voice cracked with age. “Mara Collins?”
“Good morning, Mr. Miller,” Mara said, stepping down the platform toward him.
The old man set his broom against the wall, looking at her simple gray coat and the cardboard suitcase in her hand. “I heard you were up in Chicago, working for those big folks near the lake.”
“I was,” Mara said softly.
“Your aunt said you were coming home,” Mr. Miller murmured, casting a glance down the road toward the county courthouse at the end of the street. “The sheriff’s office put up the notice for the tax auction yesterday morning, Mara. They’re selling the six acres behind the creek on Friday.”
Mara did not answer with words.
She reached into her coat pocket, pulled out a small canvas pouch, and untied the leather string. She took out five hundred dollars in crisp, green government bills—part of the money Luca had pressed into her hand before she left the mansion—and showed them to the old man.
Mr. Miller’s eyes went wide behind his spectacles. He looked at the money, then at her face, his mouth opening slightly in surprise.
“Where in God’s name did you get that kind of money, girl?” he asked, his voice dropping into a hushed whisper.
“Honest work, Mr. Miller,” Mara said calmly, retying the leather string around the pouch. “Where is Sheriff Thomas?”
“In his office,” Mr. Miller said, pointing toward the red-brick courthouse at the end of the street. “He’s filling out the auction dockets right now.”
Mara nodded, picked up her suitcase, and began walking down the gravel road toward the courthouse.
The town was quiet. Smoke rose straight up from the chimneys of the small frame houses lining the road, and off in the distance, she could see the jagged white limestone cliffs of the old quarry where her father had worked thirty years ago.
She walked up the steps of the courthouse, pushed open the heavy double doors, and walked into the sheriff’s office.
Sheriff Thomas—a heavy, red-faced man with graying hair sitting behind a littered oak desk—looked up from his papers as she entered.
“Mara,” he said, surprising himself. “I didn't expect to see you back here before Friday.”
“I’ve come to clear the account, Sheriff,” Mara said simply.
She walked to the desk, set her suitcase on the floor, and laid five hundred dollars in crisp bills flat on his green blotter, right on top of the red auction notice bearing her family’s name.
Sheriff Thomas stared at the stack of bills. He picked them up, counted them twice with a wet thumb, then looked up at her with a mix of surprise and sudden respect.
“Four hundred and twenty dollars owed,” the sheriff murmured, pulling out his brass seal and red ink pad. “Plus eighteen dollars in court fees.”
He stamped the tax receipt with a sharp, heavy thud, signed his name at the bottom in dark blue ink, and slid the paper across the desk to her.
“The land is yours, Mara,” Sheriff Thomas said softly. “Free and clear. No one can touch it now.”
Mara took the stamped receipt, folded it neatly into four quarters, and placed it inside her coat pocket beside her mother’s cotton sachet.
“Thank you, Sheriff,” she said.
She picked up her suitcase, walked out of the courthouse, and began the three-mile walk up the dirt road toward her mother’s house on the ridge.
The walk was long, but her boots felt light against the hard-packed gravel. As she climbed the final hill, she saw the house standing among the bare oak trees—a small, single-story frame house with a tin roof, a front porch with three wooden steps, and a small garden plot behind the well pump.
It was plain, weathered, and simple.
Mara walked up the porch steps, pulled the iron key from her pocket, and unlocked the front door.
The inside smelled of dry cedar, cold plaster, and old paper—a dry, clean smell that belonged entirely to her family. She set her suitcase on the wooden table near the window, opened the glass panes wide to let the cold prairie air fill the room, and stepped out onto the back porch.
May you like
She looked out over the six acres of sloping land, past the brown grass of the pasture, toward the quiet woods along the creek.
For the first time in seventeen months, Mara Collins sat down on the top step, rested her elbows on her knees, and took a long, slow breath of air that belonged to no one else in the world.
