Daniel remembered that summer.

He had been told he was visiting Aunt Ruth because his mother was ill.

He turned pages faster.

Then:

October 2. Samuel is gone. I told Martha and Daniel the river took him. God forgive me. The truth is uglier. I paid Marshal Reed to take Samuel east after the Pike boy nearly died. I could not let him remain near Daniel.

Daniel’s hands trembled.

His father had lied.

For years.

Then Emily touched one page.

A later entry.

November 1880. Word reached me from Nebraska. Samuel calls himself Caleb Rusk. He married a girl named Emily Hart. Seventeen. Her mother’s name was Anna.

Emily inhaled sharply.

Daniel read on.

God help me. I know that name.

The next sentence was underlined.

Anna Hart saved Daniel’s life.

Daniel stopped breathing.

“What?”

Emily leaned closer.

Thomas Mercer had written the story twenty years earlier.

When Daniel was four, his father had taken him east while purchasing breeding stock.

A wagon overturned crossing a flooded creek.

Thomas was trapped beneath the axle.

Daniel, unconscious, was swept downstream.

A young woman named Anna Hart jumped into the water and dragged him to shore.

Emily’s mother.

Daniel stared at Emily.

“She saved me.”

Emily covered her mouth.

The journal continued.

Thomas had remained in occasional correspondence with Anna afterward.

When Anna’s husband died, Thomas tried to repay the debt by helping her purchase land in Wyoming.

The Blackwater parcel.

Not worthless land.

A piece of Mercer Valley Thomas had secretly transferred to Anna years earlier.

Why?

The answer appeared three pages later.

Samuel has learned enough to understand Blackwater. I pray he never understands all of it. The railroad survey will come someday. But more important is the spring beneath the eastern bluff. In dry years, it is the only source capable of watering half this valley. Whoever owns Blackwater can someday control Mercer Ranch itself.

Daniel sank onto a crate.

Emily’s mother had owned the key to his ranch.

Samuel had discovered it.

That was why he married Emily.

Not love.

Not chance.

He had hunted down the daughter of the woman who owned Blackwater and married a seventeen-year-old girl to steal her land.

Emily’s face crumpled.

“All of it…”

Daniel looked at her.

“What?”

“The flowers. The kindness. Everything.”

She pressed both hands against her stomach.

“He never wanted me.”

Daniel stood.

“Emily—”

“He wanted a deed.”

Her voice broke.

“I spent seven years wondering what I had done to turn him cruel.”

Daniel crossed the room.

This time he didn’t touch her.

He waited.

Emily looked at him.

Then she stepped forward herself.

Her forehead struck his chest.

Daniel closed his arms around her.

For the first time, Emily chose the embrace before he did.

She wept against him.

Daniel held her while decades of lies seemed to collapse around them.

Then something slipped from the journal.

A sealed envelope.

On the front was Daniel’s name.

For my son, if Samuel ever returns.

Daniel opened it.

Inside was one final confession.

Samuel had returned to Wyoming four years earlier.

Thomas confronted him near Eagle Ridge.

Samuel demanded the Blackwater deed.

When Thomas refused, they fought.

Samuel shoved him from his horse near the ravine.

Thomas survived the fall.

Barely.

A shepherd found him and carried him home.

Daniel remembered that night.

His father had claimed his horse slipped.

Three weeks later, infection killed him.

But Thomas had written the truth before he died.