William tells me it’s called Fort Hamilton, and that gives me pleasure.
“Welcome to Hamilton’s Diggings,” he says, calling the team to a halt in front of two sturdy log cabins and watching me for a reaction. I make sure not to give him one, even as I wonder how he can possibly live in this place. For his cabin has no glass upon the window openings, and the door stands partly ajar.
He jumps down from the wagon, then comes round to assist me.
Entering the little hovel, I find naught but a rude bedstead with some dingy quilts and buffalo robes, an oaken table, a pair of wooden stools, and a few shelves of books. All is as tidy as can be with the wind blowing through the windows and door, which has only a string latch upon it. I step closer to the books, smiling to find the works of Voltaire, in French.
At forty, William has never married. This cabin makes it clear that he has no intention of doing so. And I worry that he’s going to spend the rest of his life alone.
Come home with me, I want to say. We’ll make things right.
But when I turn, I find my son observing us taking in his space, and I can’t say a word. His smile is slow in coming, as if he thinks I won’t approve of his living conditions, and perhaps I don’t, but finally his grin is there illuminated by blue eyes so like Alexander’s.
But otherwise, he’s different from Alexander in every way. As if by design. And that brings me to why I’ve come. I give Lysbet a look that fortunately she understands. “Let’s go explore the fort,” she says to her husband.
And when they depart, I turn to my son. “I wish to say something, William, and I need you to hear me.” There’s a hesitancy in his gaze when he nods, as if he’s been anticipating this. “I know what you suspect about your father disappoints you, but he wasn’t a perfect man.”
“Mother—”
“Please,” I say, needing him to hear me. “The truth is, William, no union is perfect. We stumble. We fall. We hurt the ones we love.” I think back on Lafayette’s wisdom and draw strength from it. “But the measure of a man, of a life, of a union of man and wife or even country is not in the falling. It’s in the rising back up again to repair what’s broken, to put right what’s wrong. Your father and I did that. We always did that. He never stopped trying until the day he died. And neither will I.”
William’s gaze is uncertain, and then he blinks and looks away. Swallowing hard, he says, “I’m glad you were able to find your peace with him.” When he looks back at me, his blue eyes are blazing with that achingly familiar illusion of violet. “But I’ve been shaken in my conviction of who I thought he was. Or hoped he was. And there’s no way to repair that, for me. No way to make it right between a father and a son. Not with him gone.”
The pain in his expression threatens to break my heart, because I’ve felt that pain. I’ve worked the same equation. I’ve tried the same case. But unlike my son, I’ve been able to reach a conclusion, and I share this with him now.
“Oh, William,” I say, taking his hand. “No man should be judged only for his best act or his worst. By only his greatness or his flaws.” And no woman either, I think. For if my sister did betray me, did it obliterate all the ways in which she’d been my first and most constant friend?
No, it did not. And I swallow as the thought heals another broken piece inside me.
“It seems, to me,” I continue, “that the only just way to judge a person is by the sum of their deeds, good and bad. And in the balance, your father did far more good than harm. That’s all any of us can aim to do with our lives.”
William’s throat bobs. “I was so small when he died that I can’t remember him well. And yet, I . . . I miss him,” he says, as if both admissions pain him.
Reaching up, I take his face into my trembling hand. The same hand upon which I wear a gold wedding ring inscribed with my name and Alexander’s; a ring that I will never again remove. “I miss him, too. You must know, William. He loved you. And love is a kind of faith. A blessing to everyone it touches. Your father earned my love a thousand times over and I earned his in return. So I ask you to find your peace with your father.”
William looks at me a long moment, and finally, his expression goes soft. “My love for you allows me to do no other than accede to your wishes, Mother.”
Then come home with me, I think. But I decide to savor this victory and put that battle off for later. When I know him a little better. Because the years have made him a stranger, I devote every moment of the time I have in getting to know my son.