“Let’s see.” Journey opened the email and they both began to scan the contents. “Okay. Oh. Damn. He was posthumously declared innocent.”
Reno jumped up with such force that the chair he was sitting in fell back and hit the floor. “Christ Almighty.”
She could hear the tears in his voice. “I’m so sorry, Reno.” She kept reading. “Wait. Come back. Look.”
“What’s the use. He’s dead.”
“No. Remember the date. He isn’t dead yet.” She opened an attachment. “Oh, my God. It was Saul.”
“What?” Reno rejoined her. “Saul cleared my brother?” He looked at the date. “Why, he was an older man when he did this.”
She covered his hand with hers. “He loved you so much. He wanted to do what he could to honor you and those you loved.”
“But there was nothing in the journal about it.”
“That journal doesn’t extend this far in time. It ends a lot sooner,” Journey checked the dates again. “This says 1902. Who knows? There may be another journal somewhere that covers this time period.”
“And the book the librarian read was published in the 1880’s wasn’t it?”
“I believe so.” Journey pointed at another attachment. “Look, this file is labeled evidence.”
Reno nudged her to one side and she gladly gave him the chair, moving to the one he’d vacated. He was the one who needed to read this.
“Saul researched the records that the original lawyer had gathered for me. He found the drummer boy alive and well and living in Fairfax. It says here that his name was Jerome Grassley. He gave a sworn affidavit that Cole shared no secrets or strategies with the Confederacy.”
“Well, that’s good.”
Reno read on. Opening another attachment. “Well, hell. Dammit! I should’ve known. Why in hell didn’t I think of this?”
“What?” She leaned nearer to see what he was seeing.
“Jubal Pierce. He was the one who turned Cole in. He was the one who started this whole tragedy by making a false accusation.”
“Who is Jubal Pierce?”
Reno was still deep in thought. “Pierce was the traitor. Not Cole!” He blinked and looked back at Journey. “Jubal was a damn thorn in our side from the very beginning. He hated us all because we exposed a racket that he was running to make money off the war. Lord, he had it in for Cap. Jubal even tried to kill him once. Later, he attempted to pull a dirty trick on our Captain.” Reno let out a wry laugh. “Of course, his attempt at meanness turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to Kingston Ramsay.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, Boone and Jericho contacted the Hearts and Hands column of the Waco newspaper to find a mail-order bride for King. They had no idea the newspaper was owned by Jubal Pierce.” He managed a smile at the memory. “Fancy wasn’t the woman who Boone and Jericho picked out. They’d found some little blonde who made them think of King’s former fiancé. Jubal thought he would cause trouble for the Captain and us by sending Fancy instead…because she didn’t look like the other woman.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, she wasn’t as pleasing to the eye.”
“What? I’ve seen Fancy’s picture and she was beautiful.”
“She is beautiful,” Reno corrected her. “When she first came, however, she was almost starved to death.” He smiled sadly. “Love made Fancy beautiful.”
“Love makes us all beautiful.” Journey kissed him on the cheek. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
He took the time to hold her close, then hit the flat of his hand on the table. “Do you know how helpless this makes me feel? He was innocent! He died for nothing!”
Journey rubbed his back. “Reno, there’s something you’re not considering.”
“What do you mean?” he asked morosely.
“If…when you go back, you know how to help Cole. You won’t have to spend the time searching for Jerome Grassley and you’ll know about Jubal Pierce. You can take this information Saul found in 1922 back to 1869. You can use it to save your brother’s life.”
“I just hate Jubal is already dead. King shot him when he tried to hurt Fancy.” He pondered things for a moment. “Hell, what does that matter? If I can save Cole, that’s what I’ll do.” Reno took both her hands in his, then raised them to his lips. “Journey, I believe if I can return to the past, I can make all of this right.”
* * *
Feeling as if they’d made some progress, Journey and Reno decided to spend the remainder of the day making memories. She asked him what he would like to do or see. “Maybe a day trip to Houston, we could see the ship channel, NASA headquarters, and maybe visit a winery on the way back.”
He surprised her by requesting to just spend the day with her – talking and getting to know one another. “That doesn’t mean we can’t have a bottle of wine,” he conceded.
“Sounds ideal. How about if we take that wine to the creek and have a picnic? How does that sound?”
“Like my kind of day.” He rubbed his hands together in anticipation of what lay ahead.
“Don’t let me forget to run the vacuum and the dust mop through the house before I go to bed. I don’t want Aunt Myra to say I didn’t keep her house clean.”
Reno gave her a funny look. “Let’s do it first and get it out of the way. I’ll help. And I don’t have any idea what running a vacuum is, but I want that job. It sounds fun.”
“Say no more.” Journey proceeded to introduce Reno to the vacuum cleaner. “This handy contraption uses an electric motor that spins a fan to suck in air and small dirt and dust particles with it. The air pushes it out the other side into
