Whatever the truth was, Daniel would rather lose her than become another reason she was afraid.

He reached for the shirt he had placed across the chair.

“I’ll sleep in the barn.”

The mattress creaked.

“Please don’t leave.”

Daniel froze.

The September wind brushed against the cabin walls.

The fire snapped.

Slowly, he turned around.

Emily sat upright now, clutching the blanket to her chest.

Her face had gone pale.

“There is something I should have told you before we married.”

Daniel lowered the shirt.

“What?”

She swallowed.

“I was married before.”

The words struck him with such force that for a moment he thought he had misunderstood.

“You were… widowed?”

Emily’s silence answered him.

Daniel stared at her.

“Emily.”

“I thought he was dead.”

Something cold moved through the room.

“What do you mean, you thought?”

Her hand disappeared beneath the blanket and emerged holding a folded scrap of paper.

“I found this inside my wedding bouquet.”

Daniel crossed the room only when she held it toward him.

Their fingers did not touch.

The paper contained seven words.

A HUSBAND DOESN’T STAY DEAD BECAUSE YOU WISH IT.

Beneath them was a single letter.

C.

Daniel read it twice.

Then a third time.

“Who is C?”

Emily’s voice became almost inaudible.

“Caleb Rusk.”

Daniel sat slowly in the chair near the bed.

And Emily began telling him the story she had spent seven years trying to bury.

She had been seventeen when her mother died.

Her father had been gone since she was six, killed, Emily had always been told, in a logging accident somewhere in Colorado.

That left her alone with a small house in Nebraska, forty acres of nearly worthless farmland, and one narrow strip of property her mother refused to sell.

Emily never understood why.

The land lay far west in Wyoming Territory.

Her mother possessed only the deed.

She had never even seen the place.

After the funeral, Emily discovered debts.

Then more debts.

Within months the Nebraska property was lost.

She took work at a boarding house.

That was where Caleb Rusk found her.

“He was kind at first,” Emily whispered.

Daniel said nothing.

“Too kind, I suppose.”

Caleb was older.

Handsome.

Confident.

He brought flowers when Emily finished working.

He repaired a broken window without being asked.

He spoke about California, Oregon, Montana—places Emily had only seen printed on maps.

When he proposed after four months, she believed God had finally sent her someone who would keep her from being alone.

They married before a traveling justice outside North Platte.

“And then?”

Emily stared into the fire.

“Three weeks later he hit me for the first time.”

Daniel’s jaw tightened.

She saw it.

“Please don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Look like you’re going to kill someone.”

“I haven’t decided that yet.”

Despite everything, a tiny sound escaped her.

Almost a laugh.

It disappeared quickly.

Emily continued.

Caleb learned about the Wyoming deed.

At first, he simply asked questions.

Where was the land?

How many acres?

Who had owned it before Emily’s mother?

Was there water?

When Emily couldn’t answer, Caleb became obsessed.

“He said my mother must have hidden something valuable from us.”

Then the beatings worsened.

Caleb forced her to sign papers.

Emily refused.

One winter night, drunk and furious, he pushed her against a stove and demanded the deed.

She had hidden it inside the lining of her mother’s sewing box.

When she still refused, he dragged her toward the table.