Chapter 10 - The Clear Horizon
The late afternoon sun turned the Mississippi Valley into an ocean of liquid copper.
Eliza walked up the narrow foot trail that climbed from the Miller farmhouse to the top of the limestone bluff. She carried Clara in a canvas sling against her chest, the baby’s small face tucked securely beneath her chin, sleeping soundly to the steady, rhythmic thump of her mother’s boots against the limestone path.
Behind her came Wade, holding Owen by the hand. The boy was chattering endlessly about a red salamander he had found beneath a rotting birch log near the spring house, his small legs pumping with tireless, four-year-old enthusiasm.
They reached the summit where the timber gave way to a broad, flat shelf of dolomite limestone that hung four hundred feet above the water.
From here, the entire world opened up.
To the west, the Mississippi River stretched for twenty miles, a vast, silver serpent winding between the dark green bluffs of Iowa and Illinois, its surface broken by small, forested islands where great blue herons nested in the cottonwoods. To the east, the rolling farmland of Jo Daviess County rolled away toward the horizon, an endless patchwork of black dirt, green rye, and dark ribbons of oak timber.
Wade lifted Owen onto his shoulders, the boy’s small hands gripping his grandfather’s silver hair with absolute, fearless joy.
"Look, Mommy!" Owen shouted, pointing toward a tugboat pushing six barges of coal slowly upriver against the current. "A big boat! Can we go on it?"
"Maybe someday, partner," Wade said, his hands holding the boy’s ankles firmly. "When you’re big enough to handle a mooring line."
Eliza stood at the edge of the rock, the cool evening wind whipping her hair across her face.
There were no scars left on her cheek. The bone had healed cleanly, leaving behind only the memory of a sound—a sharp, brittle crack that had shattered a cage she hadn't known she was living in.
She reached down, her fingers sliding into the pocket of her fleece jacket, and pulled out a small, round object.
The mother-of-pearl button.
Wade had found it on the limestone floor of Sheridan Road after the guests had fled. He had handed it to her three weeks later in Galena, without a word, wrapped in a scrap of brown paper.
Eliza held the button between her thumb and forefinger.
It was tiny, fragile, and utterly insignificant—a piece of cheap, polished shell that had once seemed heavy enough to dictate her life.
She stepped to the edge of the limestone ledge.
She didn't look back at the trail. She didn't look back at the years she had spent measuring her voice to avoid another man’s anger.
She opened her fingers.
The wind caught the button instantly, carrying it out over the empty space above the river, a tiny speck of white tumbling through the golden light until it vanished completely into the deep, dark water far below.
"Lizzie," Wade called softly from behind her.
Eliza turned.
Her father was standing in the long grass of the bluff, his silver hair catching the last fire of the setting sun, his grandson sitting high on his shoulders, his face open, steady, and immovable as the rock beneath their boots.
"The wind’s coming out of the north," Wade said, his voice warm and deep against the quiet evening. "We should head back down before the frost hits the beans."
May you like
"Coming, Wade," Eliza said.
She adjusted Clara in the sling, took one last breath of the clean, wild river air that smelled of sweetgrass and stone, and walked down the ridge toward the smoke rising from her own hearth.
