Abigail loved him especially hard that night.
At sixty-three, Simon suffered a serious fever.
For the first time, Abigail thought she might lose him.
He lay in the same bed where she had once awakened terrified.
Now she sat beside him.
A physician came from town.
Simon drifted in and out.
One night he opened his eyes.
Abigail held his hand.
“You staying?”
Her heart cracked at the familiar question.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
He smiled weakly.
“You remember when you asked me to share this bed?”
“You asked me.”
“I improved the proposal.”
“You did not.”
“I said forever.”
“You did.”
Simon closed his eyes.
Abigail panicked.
“Simon?”
He opened one eye.
“Still here.”
“Do not joke.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
He survived.
Abigail never let him forget how frightened she had been.
Simon never apologized for giving her something worth fearing to lose.
They grew old.
Not gracefully every day.
Simon’s back hurt.
Abigail’s mobility decreased.
They hired help.
A practical necessity she initially resisted.
Simon reminded her:
“Needing hands is not surrender.”
She glared.
“You enjoy quoting my lessons at me.”
“Immensely.”
A young couple eventually moved into a smaller cabin nearby to help manage the property.
Their children treated Abigail and Simon like grandparents.
One little girl crawled into Abigail’s lap—carefully—and asked:
“Were you always this big?”
The girl’s mother nearly died of embarrassment.
Abigail laughed.
“Not when I was your size.”
The child nodded.
“Grandpa Simon says there’s more of you to hug.”
Simon immediately stared at the ceiling.
Abigail turned slowly toward him.
“Grandpa Simon says what?”
The child repeated it.
Simon cleared his throat.
“Children misunderstand things.”
The girl shouted:
“No, I don’t!”
Abigail laughed until tears came.
Her body became a source of warmth, humor, familiarity—not shame.
Something she could never have imagined in Josiah’s drawing room.
At seventy, Abigail returned once to the Prescott property.
The old house had changed owners.
She did not enter.
She stood near the road.
Simon beside her.
“That window.”
She pointed.
“My room.”
Simon looked.
“The side door?”
“There.”
“That where you escaped?”
“Yes.”
They stood quietly.
Abigail expected triumph.
Instead she felt sadness for the woman she had been.
Terrified.
Believing escape meant failure.
She whispered:
“I thought running made me weak.”
Simon said:
“Running from a cage seems sensible.”
She smiled.
“You always simplify.”
“Useful skill.”
Abigail touched his arm.
“What would you have done if I had chosen to return to Sterling?”
Simon thought.
“Tried to convince you not to.”
“And if I insisted?”
His answer came slowly.
“Taken you where you asked.”
Abigail looked at him.
Even after all these years, that answer mattered.
Freedom had never depended on making the choice Simon preferred.
That was why choosing him had been possible.
When Simon died, he was eighty-one.
Abigail was seventy-five.
Winter again.
Of course.
Snow fell through the night.
He was not ill for long.
Old age simply narrowed him.