Dr.

Vale had arrived before anyone summoned him.

He had insisted Nolan remain outside the bedroom during the most difficult part of labor.

After the delivery, Nolan had heard Eleanor shouting.

Not from pain.

From anger.

Then the room became quiet.

When he was finally allowed inside, Grace had already been wrapped tightly.

Eleanor was fading.

“She grabbed my wrist,” Nolan told Maribel one evening.

They sat beside the fire while Grace slept between them in a basket.

“She said something.”

“What?”

Nolan stared into the flames.

“

Don’t let Vale take the baby.

”

Maribel went still.

“I thought she meant Grace shouldn’t leave the room.

Vale said Eleanor was delirious.”

“Did you believe him?”

“I did then.”

“And now?”

Nolan looked toward Grace.

“No.”

A cold feeling moved through Maribel.

“What happened to Eleanor’s baby things?”

“Upstairs.”

“Everything?”

“I suppose.”

“Did she keep a journal?”

Nolan’s eyes narrowed.

“Yes.”

“Can we look at it?”

He hesitated.

Then nodded.

Eleanor’s journal sat inside the drawer of her bedside table.

Most entries were ordinary.

Weather.

Ranch accounts.

Books.

Plans for the nursery.

Then, beginning two months before Grace’s birth, the handwriting changed.

Shorter entries.

Nervous entries.

November 7.

Another woman lost her child under Vale’s care.

November 19.

I saw Mrs.

Harker’s baby carriage behind his surgery.

She buried her infant yesterday.

December 2.

Asked Ruth Mercer.

She became frightened and told me never to mention it again.

Maribel’s pulse began racing.

Ruth Mercer had served as Vale’s midwife for twenty years.

Nolan turned the page.

December 11.

There have been too many.

December 17.

He knows I am asking questions.

Then came the final entry.

Written the day before Eleanor died.

If anything happens to me, the truth is beneath the dead.

Nolan stared at the sentence.

Maribel whispered, “What does that mean?”

Neither knew.

Until the next morning.

Maribel was helping Mrs.

Bell sort linens when she noticed a black mourning ribbon inside an old drawer.

It reminded her of Matthew’s funeral.

The tiny coffin.

The snow.

The undertaker refusing to open the lid.

Her heart suddenly stopped.

“The truth is beneath the dead.”

She dropped the linens.

Nolan found her already pulling on her coat.

“What happened?”

“I need to go to the cemetery.”

“Why?”

She looked at him.

“Because I never saw Matthew after Dr.

Vale said he died.”

Nolan’s face changed.

Twenty minutes later, they were riding toward Widow Creek.

The cemetery keeper initially refused.

Then Nolan Pierce placed both hands on the man’s desk and said five words.

“Dig up the child’s coffin.”

The keeper dug.

Snow fell softly as shovels struck frozen earth.

Maribel stood beside Matthew’s grave with Nolan behind her.

She felt sick.

Perhaps this was madness.

Perhaps grief had finally shattered something inside her.