Chapter 12 of 12·6 min read·That evening and the following morning
The Years He Bought
I took the account book down again after the lamps were lit.
The house had gone quiet around me. Somewhere beyond the cabins, a child laughed, then was hushed. I sat at the table with my brother’s book open to the page where he had written Josiah’s age and address. Beneath the entry, the blank space still seemed to accuse him. I ran a finger along the binding, more from restlessness than purpose.
The leather lifted at one corner.
I fetched a small knife and eased the loose strip back. A folded piece of paper had been tucked beneath it. It was thin and yellowed, worn soft where the binding had pressed against it. My brother’s hand showed through the fold.
For a while I did not open it. It seemed wrong to find a man’s private words after he was dead. Then I thought of how many private words he had kept from me while alive, and unfolded the paper.
The date was from eleven years before.
*The collector has granted my request. The claim will not be taken before Evelyn reaches twenty-one. I asked for time, and that is all he would grant. No other term is written here.*
Below it, in a different ink, he had added more.
*I will not tell her while she is a child. I mean to find the old record and learn whether there is any lawful way out. If I tell her now, every year will belong to this thing. She deserves some years that are hers.*
There was a gap of several years before the next lines. The letters leaned harder, as if his hand had been tired.
*I have not found the record. I should tell her. I have said that for too long. I wanted to spare her fear, and then I wanted to spare myself the look she would give me. That is not the same thing.*
I read that last sentence twice.
It did not make him blameless. It did make him plain to me in a way the account book had not. He had asked for time because he believed time could be used. He had kept silent first for my sake, then because he could not bear what his own silence had become.
The note did not say what he had paid. It said no other term was written there. That was not the same as proof there had been no price, or that he had understood every one of the collector’s rules. But the Rider had confirmed the request was permitted. Eleven years. The span between a child and a woman grown.
My brother had bought those years, and I had lived them without knowing there was a clock.
I carried the paper to Vincent’s room. The door stood open, and he was sitting at the small desk with his hat beside him. He looked up from a sheet of writing when I came in.
Next
A rider will search for St. Brigid’s register, which may contain the maternal covenant record her brother never found.
“For you, yes.” He set down his pen. “What is it?”
I handed him the note. He read it once, then again, without speaking. The lamplight caught the pale line of his cheek and the stubble along his jaw. When he looked up, he did not try to tell me what I ought to feel.
“He meant to find a way out,” I said. “Then he failed. Or thought he had.”
“Did he tell you that in other words?”
“No. He told me I was too young to worry about grown folks’ troubles.” I sat across from him. “I believed him because I wanted to. I suppose that makes the lie easier to bear and harder to forgive.”
Vincent folded the note along its old creases. “He did give you those years.”
“He also chose for me what I could stand to know.”
“Yes.”
I had expected him to defend my brother. His agreement left me with nowhere convenient to put my anger. I picked at the edge of my bandage. The burn had mostly closed, though the skin beneath it still tightened when I moved my hand.
“Would you have done the same?” I asked.
He looked at the note in his fingers. “I have kept things from people because I thought the truth would hurt them. Sometimes I was right about the hurt. That does not make me right to choose for them.”
“And the thing you keep from me?”
His gaze held mine. “I told you what I am.”
“You told me what you drink.”
“I told you I was a vampire.” He hesitated. “There may be things I have not explained well. But I will not ask you to trust a version of me that is easier to look at.”
I believed him. That was not the same as being unafraid, but it was something I could choose without handing him the choice itself.
“I don’t want you to be careful with me by keeping me ignorant,” I said. “If you think I cannot bear a truth, tell me the truth and let me bear it.”
“I will try.” His voice was quiet. “And if I fail, you may tell me so.”
The room was warm from the lamp, but his hand, resting on the desk, looked cold. I placed mine beside it. He did not reach for me. He waited, and I understood the waiting as an answer.
I touched his knuckles. “I am not asking you to be harmless.”
“No,” he said. “You would have to be a fool to ask that.”
There was affection in his voice, and weariness, too. I leaned across the narrow desk and kissed him.
He kissed me back carefully, as if restraint were a habit he had mistaken for virtue. His mouth was cool against mine. When he drew away, his eyes searched my face.
“Was that a mistake?” he asked.
“I don’t know yet.” My cheeks felt warm. “But it was mine.”
His hand turned beneath mine, palm up. I let my fingers rest there. The moment did not solve anything between us. It did make one thing clearer: I could want him without owing him my judgment, and he could want me without claiming it.
When I returned to the table, I read the note once more. At the bottom, almost hidden in the fold, my brother had written a place name: *St. Brigid’s register, San Luis Valley. Mother’s people.*
I knew the valley by name. I knew nothing of the register.
Mateo was still awake in the yard, checking the day’s tallies by lantern light. I found him with his ledger open on a crate. He glanced up as I came near.
“You found something,” he said.
“A note. My brother asked for a delay until I was twenty-one. He meant to use the time to find a way out. He never did.”
Mateo’s pencil stopped. “And the silence?”
“He wanted me to have a childhood without this hanging over it. Then he was ashamed to tell me how long he had kept it from me.”
Mateo’s expression softened, though he did not offer an excuse on my brother’s behalf. “That sounds like a man who loved you and did you wrong.”
“Yes. Both.”
He closed the ledger. “What do you need?”
“Help finding out whether that church register still exists. Not help deciding what I should do with what we find.”
“I can send a rider to San Luis. If the place is there, someone will know.”
“Will that put anyone in danger?”
“Not if we ask quietly. And you can say no.”
I considered it. The pale Rider’s claim had not grown weaker, but neither had it grown clearer. I did not want the settlement paying for my family’s old bargain. Still, the people here had freely offered me sanctuary, and asking for a name or a record was not asking them to bleed for me.
“Ask,” I said. “Only for the register. No one is to challenge the collector on my account.”
Mateo nodded and made a note in the margin.
I kept my brother’s paper. It did not absolve him, and it did not answer what the original covenant said. But now I knew the shape of his choice. He had tried to buy me years in which I could be a girl, then a young woman, before I had to become the last issue of anything. When the years ran out, he had not found the answer he wanted.
I had the years now. They were not enough, but they were mine to use.
Before I went to bed, I put the note inside the account book—not behind the binding again, but where I could find it. In the morning, a rider would go looking for St. Brigid’s register. Whatever my brother failed to learn, I would read for myself.