The knife fell from the child’s hand.

Eleanor crossed the room before Caleb could stop her.

The boy scrambled backward.

“Don’t touch me!”

She froze.

Her entire body trembled.

“I’m sorry.”

The boy stared.

Eleanor’s gaze dropped toward his left wrist.

“Please,” she whispered. “Can I see your hand?”

He hesitated.

Then slowly, almost suspiciously, he raised it.

Beneath the wrist was a tiny crescent-shaped birthmark.

Eleanor made a sound somewhere between a sob and a gasp.

Eight years earlier, she had kissed that mark.

Once.

Only once.

Before they told her her newborn son was dead.

Her legs gave way.

Caleb caught her before she struck the floor.

“Nathaniel.”

The boy flinched at the name.

Eleanor began crying.

Not delicately.

Not quietly.

She cried like a woman whose grief had been buried alive for eight years and had just clawed its way out of the grave.

“My baby.”

The boy stared at her in horror.

“My baby boy.”

Twenty minutes later, Sarah stood in the doorway.

Then Thomas.

Then James.

One by one, all seven children awakened and gathered in the hall.

Caleb tried to stop them.

Eleanor shook her head.

“No more secrets.”

The children entered slowly.

Nathaniel remained beside the bed.

Sarah studied him first.

She was thirteen, old enough to remember the pregnancy.

“I remember Mama crying,” she whispered.

Eleanor looked at her.

Sarah’s face had gone white.

“When the baby died.”

Thomas frowned.

“But he didn’t die.”

“No,” Caleb said.

Thomas turned toward him.

“Then where was he?”

Caleb’s expression hardened.

“At a place called Mercer Farm.”

The warmth disappeared from the room.

“What’s Mercer Farm?” James asked.

Caleb looked at Eleanor rather than the children.

“A work farm.”

She understood from his voice that the polite words meant something terrible.

“How did he get there?”

Caleb stared toward the fire.

“I don’t know everything yet.”

“Tell me what you do know.”

Nathaniel climbed onto the bed and pulled his knees to his chest.

Caleb lowered his voice.

“Eight months ago, I found three boys hiding inside a freight wagon near Black Ridge. They’d escaped Mercer Farm.”

Eleanor remembered the rumors.

Three dead men above Black Ridge.

Caleb continued.

“One boy died before morning. The other two told me children were being transferred between farms under false names.”

Sarah whispered, “Transferred?”

“Sold.”

Eleanor went cold.

Caleb’s jaw tightened.

“Some became unpaid workers. Some disappeared into mines. Some were given to families willing to pay without asking questions.”

Thomas stepped closer to his mother.

Caleb continued.

“I rode to Mercer Farm.”

“And killed men,” Eleanor said.

“Two.”

The children went silent.

“They tried to stop me from leaving.”

“With Nathaniel?”

“With eleven children.”

Eleanor stared.

Caleb reached inside his coat and withdrew a folded sheet of paper.

It was old.

Creased.

Stained dark at one corner.

“I found a ledger.”

He unfolded it.

Names filled the page.

Dates.

Prices.

Locations.

Eleanor moved closer.

Caleb pointed to one line.

HAYES, ELEANOR — MALE INFANT — PHILADELPHIA — TRANSFERRED WEST — $40.

Her stomach twisted.

“He was sold for forty dollars?”

Caleb nodded once.