“No.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Am I your son?”
“Yes.”
“That ain’t what he asked.”
Miriam felt tears rise.
Silas said nothing.
Eleven years earlier, before Peter, before poverty, before Isaac’s death, Miriam had been twenty years old and newly married.
She and Isaac had tried desperately to have a child.
Twice she became pregnant.
Twice she lost the baby.
The second loss nearly killed her.
Then one August night, Isaac returned home carrying an infant wrapped in a bloodstained wool blanket.
He told Miriam the child had been found beside an overturned wagon forty miles north.
The mother was dead.
No father could be located.
Miriam had asked questions.
Hundreds.
Isaac had answers for all of them.
Too many answers, she realized now.
But grief had made her willing to believe miracles.
She had held the baby.
He had wrapped one tiny hand around her finger.
And Miriam had loved him before sunrise.
She had named him Jonah.
“Isaac told me your parents were dead,” she whispered.
Jonah’s face had gone white.
“You ain’t my ma?”
She crossed the room and took his face in her hands.
“I am your mother.”
“But—”
“I did not give birth to you.
That is true.
But I fed you through fever.
I sat awake every night when you had the cough.
I taught you letters.
I buried your first dog with you.
I watched you take your first steps across our kitchen floor.”
Her voice broke.
“There has never been one day of your life when you were not my son.”
Jonah started crying.
That was almost worse.
Jonah rarely cried.
Miriam pulled him against her.
Peter began crying too, though he barely understood why.
Across the room, Silas Crowe turned his face away.
And for the first time Miriam understood something dangerous.
Silas was crying too.
Minutes passed.
Perhaps longer.
Then came another sound.
Not wind.
Bells.
Faint.
Approaching through the storm.
Silas wiped his face and moved toward the window.
“Someone’s coming.”
Miriam’s blood chilled.
“Who would be traveling tonight?”
Silas did not answer.
The bells grew louder.
Soon lantern light appeared through the snow.
One wagon.
Three mounted riders.
Silas reached beneath his coat and pulled a revolver.
Miriam stared.
“Who are they?”
“I was hoping they wouldn’t find me.”
The first rider entered the yard.
Even through the frost, Miriam recognized him.
Alden Rusk.
Banker.
Store owner.
Church treasurer.
The most respectable man in Red Ash Crossing.
He was also the man who had denied Miriam credit two weeks earlier.
The man whose wife had stopped bringing church baskets.
The man who held the note against Miriam’s cabin.
Miriam looked at Silas.
“What does Rusk want with you?”
Silas checked his revolver.
“He doesn’t want me.”
He glanced toward Jonah.
“He wants whatever Isaac left behind.”
