Geraldine,

I need you to believe that I'm doing all of this for a noble cause. My mother

What I did in the graveyard was a fool's plan and I'll never

If I can prove that I never broke the law, will you promise not to

It's not just for her, it's for all of humanity. She's the only key to

The thought of dying in this place horrifies me and it's nearly happened three times. The terror is

He'll say I'm evil but ask him about what he did during the solstice and see what he

I'm human. Despite all of this, I swear I'm just human and I'm trying to

She was right. There’s so much I’m not telling you, and I don’t even know where to start. Maybe I’m just overthinking it. You’re smart. Smartest person in town. Smart enough to understand. But so was Bean in his day.

I need to do this, somehow. It’s clear the Marshal and Matilda aren’t going to leave me alone, and Bean will look for every opportunity to try and push me out. They know about Francois now; it’s only a matter of time before someone finds out he’s financing the expedition. I don’t have the time to handle this extraction by extraction, even if I was willing to try the graveyard again. I’ll need help, and you can’t help unless you understand why.

She wasn’t right about everything. I don’t need to control you; I’ve never been able to; you do whatever you want no matter what I say. I fear your rejection.

[Letter was found among Victor Freestone’s abandoned effects. Does not appear to have been sent at any point.]

Hi, Geraldine,

I need to apologize. I feel like I’ve been doing that to you a lot lately.

I'm sorry I tossed your dress into the lake, I was just fed up with the circus and

I shouldn't have kept implying you two were rolling in the hay, but I'm still 50% certain that

I wasn't the one who classified you as a law enforcement asset, but I did treat you as one and

I shouldn't have kissed you by surprise but if you want me to kiss you properly

My god, I can’t even write an apology that sounds authentic. Have I had that little practice? There has to be a way to do this that’s honest but also doesn’t sound like “Hi, I’ve been toying with you on and off since we met for various reasons, please keep talking to me despite that, I am so lonely”.

Good lord, since when do I get lonely? I suppose I’ve lost the social circles I had back East, and my reception here has always been chilly. Bean’s the only one who seeks me out and I can tell he’s holding his tongue constantly.

I hate how lost I’ve been over the past few days, trying to figure out what to focus on. Arguably, the best thing I can do right now is focus on my training, and start my new career as a Marshal’s assistant. I get to spend the next ten, twenty years of my life defending the country from the worst it has to offer, and Henshaw can deal with its own matters until it becomes a Marshal issue. That’s the smart, respectful choice. It’s trusting everybody here to be reasonable adults who can solve their own problems. And I need to be a better person. I dropped my entire life back home to try and be a better person because this pretty young dabbler thought I could. She’d love to know that I could be that good.

But I can’t trust Freestone to be a good person. Not without someone taking him to task. And if the law can’t, I have to do it personally.

He lied to me. He lied about a lot of things, but I think he snuck one lie past me near the end. I’ve listened to the recording a dozen times and I don’t believe him when he says he thinks I’m a good person; I don’t even think he believes it when he says he’s a good person. And if that’s the case, I agree with him. I can do better; maybe he could too if he put his mind to it. We’re not awful human beings. But that takes effort. That takes prioritization. You have to choose it. He’s too paranoid to choose it, and I suppose I’m too spiteful. I don’t care how scared he is, how much he needs to protect whatever shameful secret he’s been hiding all this time. He does not get to loom over me on his high horse and say I’m the same thing as Rosalee Campbell. I just need to take him down a notch. Just one single notch. I don’t need him burnt or hanged or killed even a little bit. He’s wrong about that too.

It all comes back to Geraldine. Nothing shook him that night more than the idea that she was learning about him behind his back; it would be so easy to exploit that. But I’ve already betrayed her trust so many times. I need to get this apology right, stop toying with her and start talking to her. I need her to trust me. And if I can do that, maybe I won’t feel guilty about telling her all the things Freestone’s hiding from her. Maybe she’ll leave Henshaw with me instead of that judgmental prick.

[Journal entry was found in the New Marshal Initiative archives under case MO70.]