The judge ordered Silas’s financial records seized.
Within a month investigators uncovered forged deeds stretching across seventeen years.
Two bank managers admitted accepting bribes.
A retired clerk produced copies of documents Silas believed destroyed.
The fortune was smaller than it had once been.
But it was still significant.
Significant enough that Nora could have left Sorrow Creek forever.
She could have gone east.
Bought a fine home.
Hired servants.
Never scrubbed another pot.
Never patched another shirt.
Never woken before sunrise because six boys consumed breakfast as though famine were pursuing them personally.
Instead, three days after the ruling, she sat at the Greer kitchen table with Harlan.
The boys were asleep.
Snow pressed softly against the windows.
Harlan turned his coffee cup between his hands.
“You don’t have to stay.”
“I know.”
“The marriage can be annulled.”
“I know.”
“You have money now.”
“So do you.”
“No.”
Harlan shook his head.
“The ranch portion is yours.”
“Half belongs to Eleanor’s sons.”
“They’ll receive it.”
“And the rest?”
“Nora.”
She leaned back.
“Why are you trying so hard to send me away?”
His jaw tightened.
“Because I won’t have you believing you owe us anything.”
“I don’t.”
“You came here because Thomas tricked you.”
“Yes.”
“You stayed because of Eleanor.”
“At first.”
Harlan looked up.
“At first?”
Nora’s heart began beating harder.
She hated that.
Harlan Greer was much easier to manage when he was merely an exhausted stranger.
She folded her hands.
“I have spent most of my life being told what happened to me.”
He listened.
“Eleanor died. The money was gone. I was alone. My choices were limited. Then I received a letter saying a widower needed a wife, and again I thought my choices were limited.”
She looked toward the staircase.
“Then I arrived here.”
A smile touched her mouth.
“There was a four-year-old destroying cornmeal.”
From upstairs came Rue’s sleepy voice.
“I heard that.”
Nora closed her eyes.
Harlan laughed.
It was the first full laugh she had ever heard from him.
Rue shouted, “It was already bad!”
“Go to sleep!” Harlan called.
Silence returned.
But something had changed.
Nora looked across the table.
“I came here because I thought I had nowhere else to go.”
Harlan waited.
She reached for his hand.
“I am staying because I finally have somewhere I want to be.”
Harlan stared at their joined hands.
“Nora…”
“I am not Eleanor.”
“I know.”
“I will never be Eleanor.”
“I know.”
“And if you ever compare my biscuits to hers, I will poison you.”
His mouth twitched.
“Her biscuits were terrible.”
Nora smiled.
“Good answer.”
His thumb moved gently across her knuckles.
“What happens now?”
Nora looked toward the table.
“The same thing that happened the first night.”
“What’s that?”
“We feed the children.”
“And after that?”
