“You know nothing about marriage.”
“I know Mother was afraid of you.”
He stepped toward me.
Nathaniel moved between us.
Father laughed.
“Already protecting her, Walker?”
Nathaniel’s voice was deadly quiet.
“Yes.”
That single word did something to me no declaration of love ever could.
Father looked toward Victoria.
“And you?”
She stood beside me.
“With her.”
For the first time, the two daughters he had spent years setting against each other were standing shoulder to shoulder.
His power vanished before my eyes.
Then Father pulled a revolver.
Everything happened at once.
Victoria screamed.
Nathaniel reached for his weapon.
The sheriff shouted.
Father aimed not at Nathaniel.
At me.
“You were always the mistake,” he hissed.
The gun fired.
Nathaniel threw himself in front of me.
He fell.
I screamed his name.
The sheriff fired back.
Father collapsed against the porch railing.
His revolver struck the boards.
For several seconds the world became sound without meaning.
Victoria crying.
Men shouting.
My own voice begging Nathaniel to breathe.
Then he groaned.
The bullet had passed through the flesh beneath his shoulder.
He was alive.
I pressed both hands against the wound.
Nathaniel looked up at me.
“Three weeks,” he whispered.
“What?”
“You asked for three weeks.”
Tears fell onto his face.
“You still have four days.”
I laughed and sobbed at the same time.
“Idiot.”
His fingers touched mine.
“Probably.”
Behind us, my father was dying.
And he was laughing.
I looked over.
Blood darkened his shirt.
Still, he smiled.
“You fools,” he whispered.
Nathaniel tried to rise.
“Where is Margaret?”
Father’s eyes slid toward Mrs.
Bell.
And suddenly I understood why the older woman had gone utterly still.
Father coughed.
“Why don’t you ask her?”
Everyone turned.
Mrs.
Bell dropped the tray she was holding.
It shattered.
Nathaniel stared.
“Mrs.
Bell?”
She closed her eyes.
When she opened them again, tears were running down her face.
“My name,” she whispered, “is not Bell.”
Nathaniel stopped breathing.
The woman reached behind her head.
Her hands shook as she removed the pins holding her iron-gray hair.
Then she wiped the powder from one temple with her sleeve.
Beneath the gray appeared auburn.
Faded.
But unmistakable.
Nathaniel made a sound I had never heard from another human being.
A sound of grief, horror and impossible hope.
Mrs.
Bell looked at him.
“My name is Margaret Walker.”
Nathaniel nearly collapsed.
“No.”
Margaret cried openly.
“I’m sorry.”
He backed away.
“You were here.”
“Yes.”
“For three years?”
“Yes.”
“In my house?”
“Yes.”
His voice broke.
“You watched me bury you.”
Margaret covered her mouth.
“I watched you survive me.”
The truth came out slowly.
Three years earlier, Margaret discovered Amos and my father had been stealing from Silver Creek.
She planned to take the evidence to a federal marshal.
Amos intercepted her during the winter storm.
She escaped but fell from her horse near Red Valley.
A woman named Ellen Harper found her and brought her to a deserted line shack.
Margaret was badly injured.
During the next two days, Amos searched for her.
Ellen wore Margaret’s heavy cloak when she rode for help.
She never returned.
Amos found Ellen’s body in the ravine.
Seeing Margaret’s locket around her neck—loaned because Ellen had been frightened traveling alone—he realized he could convince everyone Margaret was dead.
He did.
Margaret survived.
But she also learned something terrible.
“Amos told me Franklin intended to kill you if I returned,” she told Nathaniel.
