At long last, I am back in Henshaw. My old friend Roger has received me; I cannot return to the family home knowing she’s there, idly working away under my siblings’ noses.

It’s been so long. A flock of farmers from Kentucky have taken root here, claiming acres upon acres on what used to be the town outskirts. The plantations have taken up all the better farmland to the South, from what Roger’s told me. The dry goods store has been sold to the Longworths; Old Bill Aster’s traveled West to pan for gold. More stores are being built alongside it; they’re even considering building a saloon, which is going to make preaching here much harder. We even have a doctor now, a wiry nervous man from Illinois. No more travelling twenty miles to see Doctor Barlow. We spoke shortly after he arrived at the dry goods store, his slave(?) carrying boxes out while we discussed Eastern schools.

Roger’s not even as I remember him. By his own reckoning, he left town to join a trapping expedition and he came back with 200 dollars in beaver skins. We talked deep into the night yesterday about his adventures, the woodsman he saved from falling through the ice, the bear he supposedly killed with a knife. Manhood came upon him when I wasn’t looking. His embrace is still haphazard as ever and his enthusiasm remains unchanged; he is still Roger Macy, as he once was, as he most likely will always be. But still, he’s not the one I knew.

Only one thing here is truly the same. I haven’t seen her yet, but I’m certain she knows I’m here. I can’t give her time to plan. I strike tonight. May God protect me.