Old Wounds, New Mercy — Alice Adams

At about five the old man comes back. The doctor thinks Adams will pull through; it is like last spring. Lamb asks, awkwardly, whether Adams said anything about him. Then he states the glue business in two words: the process belonged to him, and Adams walked off with it. Alice answers that papa improved it so much it was virtually his. Lamb's eyes flash, then soften. Perhaps that was the way of it, he says. Anyhow, it is right for her to stand up for her father.

He has come to set things straight. He hardly noticed Walter was still working for him, and when one of his sons raised it, he told him to shut up. It now seems Walter stayed because he could not leave without being found out. Adams's brooding, Lamb says, made him suspicious of every kind of meanness. The company will not press charges if the family makes restitution, though Walter must keep out of the state. And one thing Adams said has stuck in his craw: that the quarrel meant little to Lamb and everything to the Adamses. It meant more to Lamb than she might think. But he has lived long enough to know that circumstances can beat the best of us. Tell him I said the best of us, he says, and his lips twitch. He quotes the prayer about forgiving those who transgress against us. It is time they both quit such foolishness.

At the door he remembers the money. Adams's little plant could compete with his for a while, and its lease on that big lot might be useful. He will buy both, quietly, for about ninety-three hundred and fifty dollars: enough to clear the mortgage on the house and Walter's debt, with a little over. Alice's eyes fill until she sees him only as a blur. She will tell her father, she promises. Through her tears she gives him an almost radiant smile. He will be better, she says. They all will.