“Then we’ll find out.”
They rode until sunset.
Hope fed twice.
Each time, she grew stronger.
By darkness, they reached the ruins of Mission Santa Clara, abandoned after a fire twenty years earlier.
A lantern appeared inside.
Thomas drew his gun.
“Stay behind me.”
A woman stepped from the ruined chapel.
She was perhaps sixty.
Thin.
Gray-haired.
Around her neck hung a silver cross.
“You took long enough,” she said.
Thomas stopped.
“You knew we were coming?”
“I’ve been waiting seven weeks.”
Her eyes fell on Hope.
Then Norah.
Relief crossed her face.
“Abigail found someone.”
Thomas raised the letter.
“My wife wrote this.”
“Yes.”
“Who are you?”
The woman hesitated.
“My name is Sister Agnes.”
Thomas stepped closer.
“What did Abigail mean? Who is Hope?”
Agnes looked toward the child.
Then said words that seemed to stop the night itself.
“Hope isn’t Abigail’s daughter.”
Thomas stared at her.
Norah felt the baby move against her.
“What?”
Agnes continued.
“Abigail’s baby died during birth.”
Thomas staggered backward.
“No.”
“I was there.”
“No.”
“Listen to me.”
“My wife gave birth to Hope.”
“She gave birth to a daughter.”
Agnes’s eyes filled with tears.
“But that child lived less than ten minutes.”
Thomas looked at Hope.
His face shattered.
“Then whose baby is this?”
Agnes looked at Norah.
Not Thomas.
Norah felt something cold move through her body.
“Why are you looking at me?”
Agnes whispered:
“Because she is yours.”
Norah laughed.
A single disbelieving sound.
“No.”
“Norah—”
“My baby died.”
Agnes stepped closer.
“Your baby was born alive.”
The room tilted.
Norah clutched Hope.
“No.”
“I was called to the boardinghouse that night because Mrs. Hargrove feared you would die during labor.”
Norah remembered fragments.
Rain.
Pain.
Mrs. Hargrove.
A cloth pressed over her mouth.
Then darkness.
“When you woke,” Agnes continued, “they told you your daughter had been born dead.”
Norah couldn’t breathe.
“But she wasn’t.”
Thomas stared between them.
“Why?”
Agnes looked at him.
“Because Reverend Bell needed a child.”
Silence.
“Abigail had discovered what Bell had been doing,” Agnes continued. “He controlled three ranch mortgages, including yours. Families who couldn’t pay were forced off their land. Deeds disappeared. Records changed.”
Thomas’s expression darkened.
“My father’s ranch.”
Agnes nodded.
“Your father discovered Bell was forging debt documents. He threatened to expose him.”
Thomas whispered, “Then my father died.”
“Bell called it a riding accident.”
Thomas’s hand tightened around his gun.
Agnes continued.
“Abigail found the original property ledgers. She planned to testify.”
“Why take Norah’s baby?”
“Because Abigail’s child died the same night Norah gave birth.”
Norah felt sick.
“Bell knew Abigail’s death in childbirth would leave you devastated,” Agnes told Thomas. “But if there was a living baby, you would remain tied to the ranch. Easier to control. Easier to threaten.”
