Chap­ter 28: The Last Love begins with Anna Morse, a resilient woman who man­ages both a funer­al home and her own emo­tions in the qui­et town of Lin­field. She had con­sid­ered leav­ing many times, espe­cial­ly after los­ing her hus­band, but respon­si­bil­i­ties and loy­al­ties kept her ground­ed. Although find­ing trust­wor­thy work­ers was a con­stant chal­lenge, she relied heav­i­ly on Nate Tim­blin, a man known for his qui­et strength and reli­able char­ac­ter. Anna had learned the hard way that assis­tance from oth­ers often came with complications—either due to race or roman­tic expectations—but Nate was dif­fer­ent. His depend­abil­i­ty was rare, and that qui­et bond between them had cre­at­ed a foun­da­tion of mutu­al trust. Even when Nate asked her for a ride to Hem­lock Row, she sensed more than he let on. But she didn’t press. Some­times, com­pan­ion­ship speaks loud­er in silence than it does in words.

Their dri­ve togeth­er was one of calm under­stand­ing, with Nate offer­ing few words but immense pres­ence. Anna used the time to dis­cuss minor mat­ters, like a leak in her build­ing, not want­i­ng to con­front the heav­ier issues that lin­gered beneath. She offered Nate a tem­po­rary stay in her home, but he declined with the same qui­et dig­ni­ty he always held. It was ges­tures like these that made Nate invaluable—not just as a handy­man, but as a con­stant fig­ure in Anna’s life. After drop­ping him off, she set off for Read­ing, com­fort­ed by Nate’s will­ing­ness to fix her roof and tend to her space. Mean­while, Nate remained behind, han­dling the tasks metic­u­lous­ly, find­ing peace in sim­ple work. But his mind wasn’t at ease—he had plans for the night, plans tied to Hem­lock Row, plans that bore risks he couldn’t ful­ly mea­sure.

Lat­er that night, Nate pre­pared him­self to walk into dan­ger. With the job com­plete, he orga­nized his tools and stepped into the qui­et, eerie view­ing room. Even the sight of two coffins didn’t faze him—it was part of his rou­tine, part of life in Chick­en Hill. He didn’t fear the dead, only the liv­ing. That fear grew as he made his way along the dark road toward Hem­lock Row, remem­ber­ing that Miggy expect­ed him at exact­ly 11:30. She had promised secre­cy, but Nate was no fool. He knew betray­al often came from those with the best inten­tions. If Miggy lost her nerve or said the wrong thing to the wrong per­son, every­thing would col­lapse. He had spent his life sur­viv­ing under the weight of injus­tice, but this was dif­fer­ent. Now, he wasn’t just fight­ing for himself—he was fight­ing for mem­o­ry, for redemp­tion.

Miggy, wait­ing at her win­dow deep into the night, even­tu­al­ly gave up hope. When she knocked on Bullis’s door, the old man’s words con­firmed her fears: Nate wasn’t com­ing. Bullis, hard­ened by age and expe­ri­ence, had no patience for what he saw as ide­al­ism. He want­ed no part in help­ing any­one escape from Pennhurst or face down men like Son of Man. While Miggy hoped for a mir­a­cle, Bullis only hoped to keep his job. But fate, as always, had oth­er plans. By the time Bullis made his way to the egg cart and began his morn­ing route, some­thing felt off. The ani­mals were too qui­et. The signs were there—nature often sens­es vio­lence before peo­ple do.

Dri­ving the old horse Titus into the morn­ing dark, Bullis fol­lowed his usu­al path, even tak­ing a hid­den tun­nel toward the ward. The silence around him was unset­tling, the fatigue in the old horse trou­bling. He moved through his rou­tine anyway—eggs packed, cof­fee brewed—until he met Son of Man. The ward atten­dant wasn’t like him­self. There was some­thing sin­is­ter in his smile, some­thing the­atri­cal in his words. When Bullis refused to back down, his tem­per final­ly snapped—and so did Son of Man’s restraint. A vicious beat­ing fol­lowed, one masked by a sock to avoid bruis­es, bru­tal and effi­cient. Bullis tried to fight back, but age and pain over­whelmed him. He believed he would die in that tun­nel, that his end had come not by ill­ness, but by the cru­el­ty of a younger man.

But Nate had not failed to arrive. Hid­den with­in the cart itself, beneath egg crates and wood pan­els, he emerged like a specter of jus­tice. His pres­ence halt­ed the vio­lence. Son of Man, frozen by Nate’s grip, couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. For a moment, two men faced each oth­er, not as ene­mies but as oppos­ing legacies—one of pain and one of pur­pose. Nate had endured years of loss, vio­lence, and prison. His was a life scarred by sys­temic fail­ure and per­son­al sac­ri­fice. Yet when he looked into Son of Man’s eyes, he didn’t see a mon­ster. He saw a boy caught in the same web he had once been caught in. It wasn’t hate that moved Nate—it was under­stand­ing.

Still, Nate had no choice. He couldn’t allow more pain to spread, couldn’t risk anoth­er gen­er­a­tion repeat­ing his past. With qui­et res­o­lu­tion, he drove the knife home—ending the threat and per­haps free­ing him­self from the chains of his own his­to­ry. His final words weren’t filled with rage; they were filled with empa­thy. “It ain’t your fault,” he told Son of Man. In that moment, it became clear that Nate wasn’t just aveng­ing the past—he was clos­ing a chap­ter. One writ­ten in pain but end­ing in truth. The sound of the morn­ing train echoed through the tun­nel like a final note in a long-for­got­ten song, as the ghost of the man Nate used to be dis­ap­peared into the ear­ly light.