“I made one for you.”

“What?”

“The others were ordinary.”

Eli remembered the plate.

Two biscuits.

One had tasted like his mother’s kitchen.

He had eaten the other later.

He had been too overwhelmed to notice the difference.

Ada sat opposite him.

“When I saw your name written in the register, I thought my heart was going to stop.”

“Why?”

“Because Ruth told me you might come west someday.”

Eli looked at the letter.

Ada continued.

“She gave me that letter the night before she disappeared.”

“Then you knew she was leaving?”

“No.”

“She told me that if a man named Elijah Marsh ever entered Crestfall, I was not to trust the name alone.”

Eli frowned.

“How was I supposed to prove it?”

Ada looked toward the stove.

“With the biscuits.”

Silence filled the kitchen.

Eli understood.

The pepper.

The honey.

The exact method.

A recipe only Ruth and her son would recognize.

“She said you would remember?”

“She said you would ask who baked them.”

Eli stared at Ada.

The hairs on his arms rose.

“My mother predicted that?”

Ada smiled faintly.

“Her exact words were, ‘My boy never could eat something good without wanting to know who made it.’”

Eli laughed.

Then he covered his face.

The laugh broke apart.

For several minutes, he cried.

Ada sat quietly.

Finally he opened the letter.

My dear Elijah,

If this reaches you, then something has gone wrong.

Eli stopped.

His hands trembled.

He continued.

I need you to know first that I did not leave because I stopped loving you.

There are things I learned after your father died that placed you in danger.

Men were using the stage roads to rob travelers, and your father discovered them.

His death was not the accident we were told it was.

Eli’s vision blurred.

His father.

Thrown from a horse, they had said.

Ruth had discovered otherwise.

She had begun searching.

That search led her to Crestfall.

Mr.

Bell has agreed to help me.

His daughter Ada is a serious little thing who watches the world more closely than most grown people.

I have taught her your favorite biscuits because I need one small thing in this ugly business to remain good.

Eli looked across the table.

Ada wiped tears from her cheek.

He returned to the letter.

If you meet Ada someday, be kind to her.

She sees more than people realize.

Then came the final paragraph.

Eli read it once.

Then again.

He lowered the paper.

“What?”

Ada asked.

He could not speak.

“What does it say?”

Eli looked at her.

“My mother didn’t ask you to wait for me.”

Ada became very still.

“No.”

“She asked you to run.”

Ada looked down.

Eli read aloud.

“Ada, if my son ever finds this place, give him the letter and then leave Crestfall with him.

Do not stay for revenge.

A house is not worth becoming a ghost inside it.”

Ada closed her eyes.

“You read that?”

“Yes.”

“All thirteen years?”

“Yes.”

“And stayed anyway.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Ada’s answer was barely audible.

“Because my father was beneath the ground outside.”

Eli had no argument for that.

After a moment he turned the page.

There was one additional line.

Different ink.

Added later.

Elijah, should you ever find her, please remember this: rescuing someone is not the same as seeing them.