“Against Silas Vane? Maybe not.”

Nora lifted another envelope.

It bore one word.

Eleanor.

Inside was a second document.

Nell’s handwriting.

A list of dates.

Payments.

Names.

And one sentence heavily underlined.

Silas knows what his father did. He offered me five thousand dollars to burn the proof. When I refused, he said accidents run in the Callaway family.

Harlan sat very still.

Nora looked at him.

“You knew about this?”

“No.”

His voice had changed.

Nora realized with a chill that she was looking at a man learning, for the first time, that his wife’s death had almost certainly been murder.

His fist closed.

Thomas stepped closer.

“Pa.”

Harlan stood.

Nora blocked him.

“No.”

“Move.”

“You walk into town angry, Vane wins.”

“He killed my wife.”

“And if you get yourself hanged for killing him, your sons lose both parents.”

That stopped him.

Nora’s eyes burned.

“He took my father. Maybe my mother. He took my sister.”

She pressed the papers flat.

“He does not get you too.”

For the first time, Harlan looked at Nora not as a responsibility someone had delivered to his door.

He looked at her as an equal.

“What do you suggest?”

Nora thought of Aunt Beatrice.

Of a childhood spent moving whenever money ran low.

Of letters that had apparently never reached her.

Then she remembered something.

“Aunt Beatrice kept every piece of paper she ever received.”

Harlan frowned.

“She had a blue cedar trunk. After she died, I left it with the church because I couldn’t carry everything west.”

“Nell’s first letter might be there.”

“Maybe more than that.”

Harlan grabbed his coat.

“We’ll go back for it.”

Nora shook her head.

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because Vane doesn’t know we’ve found this.”

“How do you know?”

Nora looked toward the window.

A horse stood on the distant ridge.

Its rider was watching the house.

“I think he does now.”

The first attack came that night.

Not with bullets.

With fire.

Cade smelled smoke before anyone else.

“Barn!”

Harlan exploded from his chair.

The boys ran for buckets.

Nora seized Rue before he could follow.

Flames crawled up the hayloft wall while the older boys formed a line from the pump.

Harlan and Thomas dragged horses through smoke.

Nora worked beside Cade until her palms blistered.

They saved the animals.

They saved half the barn.

But by dawn, the winter hay was gone.

Pinned to the door was a piece of paper.

LEAVE CALLAWAY DEAD.

Harlan stared at it.

Nora stood beside him.

Rue clutched her skirt.

“What does it mean?”

Nora looked down at the little boy.

“It means somebody is frightened.”

Harlan glanced at her.

She met his eyes.

“And frightened men make mistakes.”

That morning Nora baked biscuits.

It seemed absurd.

Their hay had burned.

A murderer controlled the town.

Her dead sister had reached across twenty-three years and turned six strangers into family.

And Nora baked biscuits.

But when she set them on the table, every boy appeared.

Rue climbed into his chair.

Reeve sat beside Nora.

Thomas waited until she had taken one before eating.

Harlan poured her coffee.

No one mentioned it.

Yet Nora understood.