“Every day.”
His throat tightened.
“What did she say?”
“That you were stubborn.”
“That sounds like her.”
“She said you could tell when someone was hurting even when they tried to hide it.”
Eli gave a bitter laugh.
“She remembered me better than I remember myself.”
Ada’s expression softened.
“She loved you.”
“Then why disappear?”
Ada hesitated.
“Because she had discovered something.”
Silas Crowe had been stealing from travelers for years.
At first small amounts.
A coin purse.
A watch.
Goods from freight wagons.
Then the thefts grew.
Silas began learning which travelers carried large sums.
Nathaniel suspected him.
Ruth confirmed it.
She had recognized a silver brooch Silas possessed—one belonging to a woman who had vanished on the northern road.
That discovery frightened her.
Ruth intended to report him in the next town.
She never made it.
“What happened?”
Eli whispered.
Ada’s voice trembled.
“Silas sent a telegram under another name telling someone Ruth had died.”
Eli closed his eyes.
His telegram.
The message that had ended his world.
Silas had sent it.
“Where is she buried?”
Ada looked at him.
“That’s what my father tried to discover.”
“You said you met her.”
“I did.”
“Did Silas kill her?”
“I don’t know.”
Eli stared.
“You don’t know?”
“She disappeared one night.”
Nathaniel searched.
Silas insisted Ruth had recovered and left.
Nathaniel did not believe him.
Three weeks later, Nathaniel disappeared too.
Silas claimed he had fallen from a horse.
No body was shown.
Only later did Ada discover a patch of disturbed earth behind the stable.
Years passed before she understood what likely lay beneath it.
“Why didn’t you go to the law?”
“I tried.”
She had been fifteen.
Silas produced documents showing Nathaniel owed him the station.
He produced another ledger showing Ada inherited the debt.
The county sheriff happened to be Silas’s cousin.
Ada’s complaint vanished.
Then Silas told her exactly what would happen if she kept speaking.
No one would believe an orphan girl over a respected businessman.
And if she ran?
He would report her as a thief.
So Ada stayed.
Not because she accepted the debt.
Because she was waiting.
“For what?”
“Proof.”
She reached beneath a flour shelf.
Her fingers found a loose board.
Behind it was a folded piece of paper.
She handed it to Eli.
It contained numbers.
Dates.
Names.
Amounts.
“What is this?”
“Copies from Silas’s private ledger.”
Ada’s voice changed.
For the first time since Eli had met her, there was steel in it.
“I have been copying it for eleven years.”
Eli looked up sharply.
Ada’s shoulders were no longer curved.
Her eyes were no longer frightened.
The invisible kitchen woman disappeared before him.
In her place stood someone patient enough to survive eleven years beside the man she believed murdered her father.
“You stayed on purpose.”
“Yes.”
“You could have died.”
“I nearly did twice.”
“Why keep doing it?”
“Because men like Silas count on people forgetting.”
She looked toward the wall separating them from the station.
“They count on women like me being too frightened to remember.”
Eli looked at the paper again.
“There’s enough here to hang him.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because they’re copies.”
“Where’s the original?”
“I don’t know.”
“Silas does?”
“He keeps it somewhere inside the station.”
