Chapter 16 - The Hill of Two Crosses
When Hope was old enough to walk, Sahale took her to the hill.
Asa followed.
The little girl toddled between her parents.
At Ruth’s grave, Sahale knelt.
“This is Ruth,” she told Hope.
Asa’s throat tightened.
“And this is Jona.”
Hope touched the flowers.
Sahale never treated Asa’s first family as competition.
She made them part of the story.
That act healed something in him no court, revenge, or passage of time could have healed.
Years passed.
Rich House expanded.
A second building was constructed.
Then a small schoolroom.
Sahale’s eyesight in her stronger eye began slowly worsening.
The news terrified her.
For several days she told no one.
Then Asa found her sitting alone.
“What happened?”
She told him.
He sat beside her.
Sahale waited for pity.
It never came.
Instead Asa asked, “What do you need?”
She began crying.
“Why do you always ask that?”
“Because I don’t know unless you tell me.”
“I may become blind.”
“Then we learn a different way.”
“We?”
“We.”
She laughed through tears.
“You make everything sound simple.”
“No.”
Asa took her hand.
“I just know which things are worth doing even when they’re hard.”
Sahale leaned against him.
The future had changed.
But unlike the frightened woman in the trading post years earlier, she no longer believed change meant abandonment.
She had a home.
A husband.
A daughter.
Work that mattered.
And a name she had chosen.
Still, one unfinished relationship remained.
May you like
Greyhawk was growing old.
And Sahale knew time was becoming something they could no longer waste.
