Nora’s unease deepened.
“Well?”
Harlon looked at her.
“Where did you learn this recipe?”
“My mother.”
“What was her name?”
Nora hesitated.
“Beatrice Callaway.”
The biscuit slipped from Harlon’s fingers.
It struck the floor.
Thomas stood abruptly.
“Pa?”
Harlon stared at Nora as though she had become a ghost.
Then his expression hardened.
“You need to leave.”
Nora blinked.
“What?”
“Tomorrow morning.
I’ll take you back to town.”
Six boys froze.
Nora slowly placed the spoon down.
“I traveled nearly fourteen hundred miles.”
“I know.”
“You wrote me sixteen letters.”
Harlon’s brow furrowed.
“No.”
The kitchen became so quiet Nora heard grease crackling in the pan.
She stared at him.
“What did you say?”
“I said I never wrote you.”
Her heart began pounding.
Nora reached for her satchel.
“I have them.”
She pulled out a carefully tied bundle.
Letters she had read every night on the journey west.
Letters that described drought.
Cattle.
Six difficult boys.
Loneliness.
A wife buried on a hill beneath a cottonwood tree.
Harlon took the first letter.
His eyes moved across the page.
Then the second.
The third.
His face changed.
“This isn’t my handwriting.”
Nora felt the ground beneath her life disappear.
“Then whose is it?”
Harlon slowly raised his head.
His gaze moved past her.
Toward Thomas.
The boy had gone white.
“Thomas.”
Thomas backed toward the wall.
“Son.”
“I can explain.”
Nora looked between them.
Then understood.
A fourteen-year-old boy had brought her halfway across the country.
“You wrote these?”
Thomas shook his head quickly.
“Not all.”
“Thomas.”
“I copied some.”
Harlon’s voice cracked like a rifle.
“Copied them from what?”
Thomas’s eyes filled.
He looked toward the staircase.
“Ma’s box.”
Harlon stopped breathing.
“What box?”
Thomas began crying.
Not loudly.
That somehow made it worse.
“I found it last winter.”
Harlon took a step toward him.
“What box?”
“Under the floorboards in your room.”
Silence.
“There were letters,” Thomas said.
“And newspaper advertisements.
And one had Miss Callaway’s name.”
Nora felt cold crawl through her.
“My name?”
Thomas nodded.
“She wrote it before she died.”
Harlon staggered back.
“No.”
“I thought…”
Thomas wiped his face.
“I thought maybe she knew who we needed.”
“You forged my name.”
“You wouldn’t ask anyone.”
“You lied to this woman.”
“You wouldn’t ask!”
Thomas screamed the words.
Everyone jumped.
His chest heaved.
“Ru burned himself twice!
Porter’s boots don’t fit!
Eli hasn’t been to school in three months because you need him fencing!
Cade barely sleeps!
Reeve cries when he thinks nobody hears him!”
Harlon stared at his son.
Thomas’s voice broke.
“And you act like killing yourself in the pasture will somehow bring Mama back.”
Nobody moved.
Harlon looked as if Thomas had struck him.
Then Ru spoke.
“Can Nora stay?”
Nora shut her eyes.
Harlon looked toward his youngest son.
Ru had biscuit crumbs on both cheeks.
“Please?”
Harlon looked at Nora again.
Shame replaced anger.
“I’m sorry.”
Nora laughed once.
It was a broken sound.
“For which part?”
“All of it.”
“You didn’t ask me here.”
“No.”
“You don’t want a wife.”
Harlon hesitated.
“That isn’t what I said.”
“You told me to leave.”
“Because something is wrong.”
“With me?”
“With this.”
He lifted the forged letters.
“With why Miriam had your name.”
Miriam.
His dead wife.
Nora looked toward Thomas.
“May I see the box?”
Harlon’s answer came instantly.
