“How would you know?”
“Because I was there.”
Thomas launched himself across the room.
“You killed him!”
Caleb caught the boy before his fist connected but did not restrain him violently.
Thomas struggled.
“You killed my father!”
“No.”
“Let him go!” Eleanor shouted.
Caleb immediately released him.
Thomas backed toward his mother.
Eleanor’s voice shook.
“Start talking.”
Caleb looked at the floor.
“Daniel worked for Westward Consolidated Mining.”
“I know.”
“He discovered the company was stealing federal land, bribing territorial judges, and using debt contracts to force immigrant workers into conditions that were practically slavery.”
Eleanor stared.
“Daniel was a timberman.”
“Daniel was also keeping records.”
She remembered.
Her husband writing late at night.
Numbers in notebooks.
Names she never recognized.
He always closed them when she entered the room.
Caleb continued.
“He contacted an investigator.”
“You?”
“No.”
“Then why were you there?”
“Because I was hired to bring evidence east.”
“By whom?”
“A federal marshal.”
Thomas frowned.
Caleb looked directly at Eleanor.
“Daniel had copies of everything. Ledgers. Deeds. Names. Payments. Enough to destroy powerful men.”
“And the mine?”
“They found out.”
Eleanor’s hands began trembling.
“There was an explosion.”
Caleb’s expression hardened.
“Controlled blast.”
“No.”
“Daniel wasn’t underground when it happened.”
She whispered, “Stop.”
“They took him afterward.”
“Stop.”
“I found him two days later.”
“STOP!”
The shout shook the kitchen.
Eleanor gripped the table.
For eighteen months she had imagined Daniel crushed beneath timber.
Dead quickly.
An accident.
A tragedy without intention.
Now something worse was entering the room.
“Did you see him alive?”
Caleb did not answer quickly enough.
Eleanor knew.
“Oh God.”
“He was alive.”
“What did he say?”
Caleb’s face seemed carved from stone.
“He gave me a letter.”
Her eyes widened.
“A letter?”
“I don’t have it anymore.”
“Why?”
“Because it wasn’t written to you.”
The cruelty of those words nearly struck her physically.
“Who was it written to?”
Caleb hesitated.
“Me.”
Silence.
Even Thomas stopped moving.
“What was in it?”
Caleb reached into his shirt.
From beneath the fabric he removed a leather cord.
Hanging from it was a small brass key.
“I’ve carried this eighteen months.”
Eleanor recognized it immediately.
Daniel’s key.
The one he had always worn around his neck.
Caleb laid it on the table.
Her knees weakened.
“His last words were about you.”
Eleanor looked up.
“And the children.”
Caleb’s voice became rough.
“He said they would come for you.”
“Who?”
“The men behind the company.”
“Why would they care about us?”
“Because Daniel hid something before they took him.”
“What?”
Caleb met her eyes.
“The original ledger.”
Eleanor almost laughed.
Not because anything was amusing.
Because the idea was impossible.
“We lost everything.”
“That’s what they thought.”
“Our furniture was taken. Our house searched by creditors.”
“Company men posing as creditors.”
She stared.
Caleb continued.
“Daniel expected it. He told me he’d hidden the evidence somewhere nobody would recognize.”
“Where?”
“He wouldn’t tell me.”
“Then why buy us at Covenant Creek?”
Thomas looked sharply toward Caleb.
Caleb slowly sat.
“Because the Bride Society wasn’t helping you.”
Eleanor felt another piece move into place.
“They arranged the auction.”
“Yes.”
“Mrs. Cromwell?”
“Works for Mercer.”
Eleanor remembered the orphan-placement documents.
The cold smile.
The strange insistence that all seven children accompany her west.
