I had carried another copy of that image in my Bible for fourteen years.
My fingers went numb.
Rose stared up.
“You know them?”
I could barely speak.
“Where did Martha get this?”
“I don’t know.”
“Rose.”
She recoiled.
I lowered my voice.
“I’m not angry.”
She looked at the photograph.
Then pointed.
“That one.”
Her finger touched Lucy.
My daughter.
My lost little girl.
“My mama looked like her.”
The room tilted.
“What?”
“Older.”
I sat down hard.
Rose stepped closer.
“Mama had those eyes.”
My heart pounded so violently I heard blood rushing in my ears.
“Your mother’s name.”
She shook her head.
“Tell me.”
“Martha said—”
“Please.”
That word came out broken.
Rose looked frightened.
Not of me.
For me.
Finally she whispered:
“Lucille.”
The name struck harder than a bullet.
My daughter had been christened Lucille Catherine Carver.
Lucy.
I closed my eyes.
“No.”
Rose kept speaking.
“Sometimes Martha called Mama Lucy when she thought I was asleep.”
I gripped the edge of the chair.
Fourteen years.
Fourteen winters.
Fourteen birthdays spent setting flowers beside an empty grave marker because there had been no body to bury.
“Your mother…”
My voice failed.
“How old was she?”
“Twenty-five.”
Lucy would have been twenty-five.
I looked at Rose.
Brown hair.
Gray-green eyes.
A faint dimple in her left cheek.
Lucy had that same dimple.
I had simply been too blind to see it.
Rose Kelly was my granddaughter.
The realization should have filled me with joy.
Instead, rage arrived first.
Because if Lucy had survived…
Someone had kept her from me.
Someone had let me mourn a living child.
And now she was dead.
I opened the first letter.
The handwriting destroyed whatever doubt remained.
Papa,
I don’t know if this will ever reach you. Martha says Creed still controls the post office records, so we cannot use your name openly…
I stopped breathing.
The next sentence blurred.
I read on.
We survived the crossing. Mama was hurt badly. Mr. Creed told us your house burned and you were dead. I believed him for years.
I looked at Rose.
“Where’s Martha?”
“I don’t know.”
The floor creaked behind us.
“Put down the letter.”
Virgil Lomax stood in the doorway.
Revolver drawn.
Two men appeared behind him.
Rose grabbed my hand.
Lomax smiled.
“You should’ve listened to the sheriff.”
I folded the letter.
“You’ve got a problem, Virgil.”
“Do I?”
“I read it.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me.”
He raised the pistol.
“No,” Rose whispered.
Lomax ignored her.
“Judge Creed wants the box.”
“You tell Creed he can come ask.”
“He already did.”
Lomax stepped inside.
Then a shotgun clicked behind him.
Everyone froze.
A woman’s voice said:
“Take one more step toward my family, Virgil, and you’ll leave this house horizontally.”
Lomax turned.
An older woman stood behind him.
Thin.
Dust-covered.
Bruised along one temple.
Her iron-gray hair hung loose from beneath a battered hat.
A shotgun rested against her shoulder.
I had never met Martha Baines.
Yet when she looked at me, every year between then and fourteen summers ago seemed to collapse.
