He remembered.
“You wouldn’t come close enough to hand it to me.”
“You looked like you’d shoot me with your eyes.”
“I might have.”
Caleb smiled.
Mae rested her hand beside his.
Not touching.
Almost.
“You gave me distance.”
He looked at her.
“At the time, I hated you for it.”
“Why?”
“Because you made me choose whether to come forward.”
Caleb was silent.
Mae’s fingers moved.
They touched his.
“Later, I realized that was the first choice anyone had given me in years.”
Caleb turned his hand beneath hers.
Mae let him hold it.
Behind them came Anna’s voice.
“Caleb!”
He turned.
Anna was waving something near the house.
A letter.
She approached slowly.
Her face looked strange.
“Came from Helena.”
“For me?”
“No.”
She handed it to Mae.
Mae examined the envelope.
No return address.
Inside was a single page.
She read it.
Then read it again.
Caleb noticed the color drain from her face.
“What?”
Mae handed it to Anna.
Anna stared.
Then laughed.
Not happily.
In disbelief.
“What is it?”
Caleb demanded.
Anna handed him the letter.
The handwriting belonged to a clerk in the territorial records office.
During the investigation into the Drayton estate, officials had uncovered a sealed birth register from twenty-five years earlier.
Mae’s mother had given birth at home.
The attending doctor recorded two children.
Twins.
Mae stared across the spring.
Caleb lowered the letter.
“You had a sister?”
“I never knew.”
Anna continued reading.
The second infant had supposedly died hours after birth.
But the death certificate was false.
The signature belonged to the same doctor Gideon had bribed in three property transfers.
Caleb felt cold despite the evening warmth.
“What happened to her?”
Anna turned the page over.
There was one final notation.
A name.
The surviving twin had been given to another family.
A family whose own infant had died that night.
Anna looked toward Mercy Bend.
“No.”
Mae whispered, “What?”
Anna’s expression had become almost stunned.
“The family name.”
Caleb took the paper.
He read it.
Then looked toward the refuge house.
Toward the woman standing on the porch.
Beatrice Drayton.
Mae followed his gaze.
Her breath stopped.
“No.”
Beatrice saw them looking.
Slowly, she came down the steps.
Mae held up the letter.
Beatrice stopped walking.
And in that instant, Mae knew.
“You knew.”
Beatrice’s eyes filled.
Mae’s voice rose.
“You knew!”
Caleb stepped back.
Anna covered her mouth.
Beatrice approached with tears running down her face.
“My mother told me when Gideon died.”
Mae stared at her.
“Your mother?”
Beatrice nodded.
“She was the midwife.”
The truth emerged piece by piece.
Mae’s mother had delivered twin girls.
Gideon already intended to seize Larkin Spring.
Two female heirs complicated everything.
So the second infant vanished from the records.
Beatrice’s parents raised her as their own.
Years later, Gideon Drayton unknowingly married
the second Larkin heir.
Beatrice discovered the truth only months before Mae escaped.
Which meant Gideon’s entire plan had contained one fatal mistake.
He had spent twenty years believing there was only one woman in Mercy Bend who legally controlled Larkin Spring.
There had always been two.
Mae stared at Beatrice.
“My aunt?”
Beatrice shook her head slowly.
Then smiled through tears.
“No.”
She stepped closer.
“Your mother and I were born twenty-three years apart.”
Mae frowned.
Beatrice touched the letter.
