Eleanor closed her eyes.
She remembered the doctor.
The coffin.
Samuel standing beside her afterward, pale and shattered.
Samuel, her husband.
Dead two years now.
“Who did this?”
“That,” Caleb said, “is why the door stayed locked.”
He looked toward Nathaniel.
“Someone knows I found him.”
The following morning, Eleanor stood alone beside the kitchen window while snow fell over the valley.
She had barely slept.
Nathaniel had eventually allowed Sarah to sit beside him.
Not Eleanor.
Sarah.
Eleanor understood.
Blood did not erase eight years.
A mother could recognize her son in one heartbeat.
A frightened child could not be expected to recognize a mother he had never known.
Caleb entered carrying firewood.
“You should eat.”
“So should Nathaniel.”
“He eats when nobody watches.”
Eleanor turned.
“What happened to him?”
Caleb’s silence answered enough.
She closed the distance between them.
“You brought him here months ago.”
“Yes.”
“You prepared seven beds upstairs.”
“Yes.”
“You came to Covenant Creek knowing exactly who we were.”
“Yes.”
“Then yesterday, when I asked why you chose us, you said you didn’t.”
Caleb stacked the wood beside the stove.
“That wasn’t a lie.”
Eleanor waited.
He looked at her.
“I didn’t choose you at the auction.”
Her anger sharpened.
“Three hundred dollars says otherwise.”
“I’d already decided before I arrived.”
“Why?”
Caleb hesitated.
Then removed something from his coat.
A battered black Bible.
Eleanor stopped moving.
It belonged to Samuel.
Her dead husband.
She knew the cracked leather.
The burned corner.
The faded ribbon marking Psalms.
She stared at Caleb.
“Where did you get that?”
“Black Ridge.”
Her fingers went numb.
“That was buried with my husband.”
“No.”
“I placed it beside him myself.”
“You placed a Bible beside a coffin.”
Eleanor’s eyes rose slowly.
Caleb continued.
“You never saw what was inside that coffin.”
“No.”
Her heart began pounding.
“Samuel died after a factory accident.”
“That’s what they told you.”
“I saw his coat. I saw blood.”
“But not him.”
The kitchen seemed to shrink.
Eleanor gripped the table.
“What are you saying?”
Caleb crossed the room and placed the Bible in front of her.
“Your husband found out Nathaniel was alive.”
Eleanor stared at him.
“He found out someone had been taking children from poor families for years. Newborns. Orphans. Children from widowed mothers.”
“No.”
“He started asking questions.”
“No.”
“He followed the trail west.”
“Stop.”
“He contacted me.”
Eleanor struck the table.
“I said stop!”
The children upstairs went silent.
Caleb did not move.
Tears burned Eleanor’s eyes.
“Samuel would never leave us.”
“He didn’t.”
“He was gone two years.”
“He spent those two years trying to come back with your son.”
The words hit her harder than a fist.
Eleanor sank into a chair.
Caleb pushed the Bible toward her.
“Open Proverbs.”
Her hands shook.
She opened it.
A section of pages had been hollowed out.
Inside lay several folded letters.
The first was addressed in Samuel’s handwriting.
My Eleanor.
She stopped breathing.
Caleb looked away as she unfolded it.
If this reaches you, then I failed to return.
Eleanor covered her mouth.
