So when I tell you, later, that I believed her, that I said I believe you and meant it with my whole heart, I need you to know that it came only after three days in which I had believed the opposite, and that the believing was, in part, an act of repentance.

I had failed her first.

Almost everyone failed her first.

The difference between me and the rest of the town was not that I never doubted.

It was that when the truth showed its face, in the mud, under a pine tree, I let it change my mind, and did not, out of pride or embarrassment, cling to the comfortable story I had already invested in.

That is the only thing I can claim any credit for.

Not faith.

Just the willingness, when I was proven wrong, to actually change.

Chapter 2 — The Woods

I found her by accident, taking a shortcut through the damp pine forest to reach the family sawmill, when a small scrap of white caught my eye among the mud and the fallen leaves.

It was a torn piece of lace from her wedding dress.

I will not describe the state I found her in at length, because she did not survive it in order to become a spectacle, and because the memory belongs to her more than to any reader.

It is enough to say that she was lying beneath a great pine tree, cold and barely conscious, with marks on her wrists and ankles that told me, without any further explanation, exactly what kind of three days she had endured — the marks of a person who had been bound, and held, against every wish of her own.

A woman does not run away from a wedding and end up like that.