Maribel stiffened.
“What about him?”
“You never speak of him.”
“I speak when necessary.”
“You ask questions about my dead wife.”
“You’re right.”
He waited.
Maribel looked toward the dark bakery windows.
“Elias was kind.”
Nolan said nothing.
“That sounds like a small thing,” Maribel continued. “It isn’t.”
“No.”
“He sang badly. Burned eggs. Could repair a wagon but somehow never a cupboard hinge.”
Nolan smiled faintly.
“He loved the bakery?”
“He tolerated the bakery because he loved me.”
Her smile faded.
“Matthew was our first child.”
“I know.”
“We tried for seven years.”
Nolan’s eyes lowered.
“When he came, Elias cried harder than the baby.”
Maribel pressed her fingers together.
“Two days later, Matthew stopped breathing.”
Nolan’s face tightened.
“Eleven days after that, Elias developed fever.”
“I heard pneumonia.”
“So did I.”
Nolan looked up.
Maribel met his eyes.
“Dr. Venn said pneumonia.”
The room went still.
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing.”
“That wasn’t nothing.”
She pushed back from the table.
“I’m tired.”
“Maribel.”
It was the first time he had used her given name.
She stopped.
Nolan seemed to realize it too.
His voice softened.
“What happened to Elias?”
Maribel looked at the sleeping baby.
Then whispered:
“I don’t know.”
Christmas came white and merciless.
Widow Creek gathered for morning services while Grace slept beneath Maribel’s cloak in the back pew.
Nolan sat beside her.
The sight nearly caused a riot.
Reverend Cooper stumbled twice during his sermon.
Abigail Harper smiled so brightly at anyone who stared that several women were intimidated into facing forward.
Still, Maribel heard whispers.
Indecent.
Unnatural.
Too soon after their spouses.
Poor Evelyn.
Poor Elias.
The words scraped.
Nolan heard them too.
His body grew rigid.
Maribel touched his wrist.
“Don’t.”
“I can hear them.”
“They want you to react.”
“I could oblige.”
“Then I’d have to feed Grace while visiting you in jail.”
He looked down at her hand on his wrist.
Maribel removed it.
After the service, a woman Maribel barely knew stepped directly into their path.
Clara Doyle.
One of the women Nolan had asked for help that first night.
She stared at Grace.
“So she survived.”
Nolan’s voice became stone.
“Yes.”
Clara looked at Maribel.
“It’s a dangerous arrangement.”
Maribel’s smile was cold.
“More dangerous than refusing food to a newborn?”
Clara flushed.
“I had children asleep.”
“So did the cemetery.”
The courtyard went silent.
Clara turned away.
Maribel immediately regretted the cruelty.
Not because Clara didn’t deserve rebuke.
Because Maribel hated what grief could turn her into.
Nolan followed her toward the road.
“That was severe.”
“I know.”
“I liked it.”
She looked at him.
He almost smiled.
Then an elderly man called Nolan’s name.
Sheriff Amos Reed approached.
“Pierce.”
“Sheriff.”
Reed glanced at Maribel.
“Mrs. Quinn.”
“What is it?” Nolan asked.
The sheriff’s expression became serious.
“Someone broke into Raven Hollow last night.”
Nolan went still.
“What?”
“The foreman found a rear window smashed this morning.”
“What did they take?”
“Nothing obvious.”
Nolan’s face darkened.
“Then why break in?”
Reed hesitated.
“They searched your wife’s things.”
Raven Hollow Ranch stood beneath black pines on the northern ridge, its farmhouse tall and weather-beaten against the snow.
