His mother, Eleanor Drayton, helped hide bruises with high collars.

Doctor Bell described cracked ribs as riding injuries.

Silas Drayton, Owen’s father, called marriage a private matter.

Mae endured it because she believed there was nowhere else to go.

Her father had died when she was fifteen.

Her mother died five years later.

The Larkin ranch was swallowed by debt.

The Draytons bought it.

Then Owen married her.

Caleb leaned against the fireplace.

“Why now?”

Mae stared toward the window.

“Because three nights ago I found something.”

She reached beneath the hem of her dress.

Caleb looked away instinctively.

“Not that.”

She pulled loose several stitches.

Inside the lining was a narrow folded piece of paper.

She placed it on the table.

Caleb unfolded it.

Rows of names had been written in fading ink.

Beside them were acreages and dates.

Harlan Pierce — 640.

Etta Webb — 320.

Samuel Cobb — 1,280.

Joseph Larkin — 4,900.

Caleb frowned.

Mae pointed toward her father’s name.

“Every person on that page lost land to the Draytons.”

“Through debt?”

“So they claimed.”

Her finger moved.

Each name had a symbol beside it.

A crescent.

Caleb looked at the burn on Mae’s shoulder.

His stomach turned.

“Where’d you get this?”

“Silas’s office.”

“There’s more?”

“A ledger.”

“How much more?”

Mae looked at him.

“Twenty years.”

Caleb sat slowly.

Mae explained that she had entered Silas’s study looking for a deed Owen had mentioned while drinking.

Instead she found a false cabinet back.

Behind it was a ledger detailing payments to county officials, falsified debts, altered property surveys, and settlements with families whose land the Draytons wanted.

Some names had the word CLOSED beside them.

Others had TRANSFERRED.

A few simply carried a black X.

“My father’s had an X.”

Caleb felt a chill.

“How did he die?”

“Barn fire.”

“Your mother?”

“Fever.”

Mae looked at the paper.

“At least that’s what I was told.”

Caleb examined the names again.

Something bothered him.

One line near the bottom had been smudged by age.

N.

Rusk.

His hand went still.

“What?”

Mae leaned closer.

Caleb folded the page.

“Nothing.”

But it wasn’t nothing.

Rusk wasn’t a common name in Mercy Bend.

And twenty-two years earlier, Caleb had had a sister.

Nora.

Sixteen years old.

Brown-haired.

Stubborn.

Always singing while she milked cows.

One autumn she disappeared.

The sheriff claimed she’d run away with a traveling salesman.

Caleb’s father searched until winter killed him from pneumonia.

Caleb searched another ten years.

He never found Nora.

He stopped searching when everyone he questioned either laughed or threatened him.

Caleb had been twelve when she vanished.

He still remembered the red ribbon she wore that final morning.

He had spent twenty-two years hating himself because he’d been too young to save her.