“But before I came?”
“Yes.”
Nora slapped him.
The sound cracked through the kitchen.
Thomas stepped forward.
Harlan lifted one hand, stopping him.
He did not touch his cheek.
Did not defend himself.
Nora’s whole body shook.
“You married me knowing your dead wife was my sister?”
“I never—”
“You wrote to me.”
His eyes changed.
And suddenly Thomas whispered, “No.”
Nora turned.
Thomas had gone pale.
“Thomas?”
Harlan looked at his eldest son.
Something unspoken passed between them.
Thomas swallowed.
Then said the words that changed everything again.
“Pa didn’t write those letters.”
Silence.
Nora stared.
Thomas’s eyes filled with shame.
“I did.”
For several seconds, Nora could hear nothing except the ticking clock.
“You?”
Thomas nodded.
“I found Mama’s journal after she died. She wrote about you. Said she’d located a church record in Missouri. She knew Aunt Beatrice had taken you east.”
Nora’s mouth went dry.
“So you pretended to be your father?”
Thomas looked seventeen then.
Not the hard young man from the barn.
Just a frightened boy.
“The ranch was falling apart. Pa hardly slept. Cade quit school half the time to help. Eli fought everybody. Rue tried to cook. Reeve started wetting the bed again.”
“Thomas,” Harlan warned quietly.
“No. She ought to know.”
Tears stood in Thomas’s eyes.
“Mama’s last pages said if anything happened to her, we should find Nora Callaway. She wrote that you were the only blood family she had left.”
Nora’s anger faltered.
Thomas continued.
“I found your address. I wrote once telling you Nell Greer had been your sister.”
“What happened?”
“You never answered.”
Nora frowned.
“I never received such a letter.”
Thomas nodded.
“That’s what I figured. Then I saw a matrimonial notice at the feed store. A widow farmer got a wife from Nebraska.”
Harlan rubbed a hand across his face.
Thomas looked miserable.
“I thought if I wrote as Pa… you’d answer.”
“You forged a marriage.”
“Yes.”
“Thomas!”
“I didn’t know the minister would actually file it!”
Despite herself, Nora almost laughed.
Instead, she covered her face.
Harlan spoke.
“The marriage isn’t legal.”
She lowered her hands.
“What?”
“I didn’t authorize the proxy. Thomas signed my name. The minister had no valid authority from me.”
“So I am not your wife.”
“No.”
Strangely, that hurt more than Nora expected.
She despised herself for noticing.
Harlan continued.
“When the minister’s letter reached me last week telling me my bride was coming, Thomas confessed.”
“And you didn’t stop me?”
“I sent a telegram.”
“The stationmaster said the telegraph line had been down for four days.”
“I know.”
“So you hid on the ranch all day?”
His face hardened with shame.
“I rode halfway to town three times.”
Nora blinked.
“I didn’t know whether telling you the truth on the station platform would be crueler than bringing you here first.”
“And apparently you decided abandoning me with a trunk was the gentlemanly option.”
“No,” Harlan said. “I decided badly.”
That answer was so simple that Nora had nothing ready for it.
Then she remembered the Bible.
The locket.
Her sister.
“My sister knew I was alive.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t she come for me?”
