He unfolded it.
If Corvin ever finds this, then Abel has failed to destroy everything.
Corvin stopped.
Sena stood beside him.
The old man waited several feet away.
Corvin continued reading.
My dear boy, there is no gentle way to tell you what we did.
His hands began shaking.
Abel was paid to guide soldiers into Red Basin.
He told himself the people here were enemies.
I told myself I knew nothing.
Both were lies.
Corvin swallowed.
When the shooting ended, Abel found a child beneath a dead horse.
Corvin stopped breathing.
Sena closed her eyes.
The elder lowered his head.
Corvin looked between them.
“No.”
Nobody spoke.
He continued.
The child was perhaps two years old.
His mother had carried him toward the rocks.
She was wounded, but alive.
The letter blurred.
Corvin blinked hard.
Abel took the boy.
“No.”
His voice broke.
He told me the mother would die before morning.
Corvin stared at the words.
She did not.
Silence filled the ranch yard.
She followed us for seven miles.
Corvin’s knees weakened.
I heard her calling for her son.
The paper shook violently.
And God forgive me, I did nothing.
Corvin lowered the letter.
Sena was crying now.
Not openly.
One tear moved down her cheek.
He looked at the old man.
“Who?”
The elder stepped forward.
His face seemed to have aged twenty years since sunrise.
He pointed toward Corvin.
Then toward himself.
Sena whispered:
“His grandson.”
Corvin could not move.
She shook her head.
Then corrected herself.
“No.”
Her voice cracked.
“My English…”
The elder placed his hand against his chest again.
Then pointed to Corvin.
Sena looked directly into Corvin’s eyes.
“His son.”
The world disappeared.
The ranch.
The soldiers.
The smoke from the burned table.
Everything.
Corvin heard only those two words.
His son.
The gray-haired man was not a chief who had ridden to demand revenge.
He was Corvin’s father.
His real father.
Corvin looked at him.
Really looked.
The nose.
The deep-set eyes.
The shape of the jaw.
Things he had seen in his own mirror without ever knowing where they came from.
The old man said something.
His voice broke midway.
Sena translated through tears.
“He says your mother searched for you until she died.”
Corvin stumbled backward.
“No.”
“She never believed you were dead.”
“No.”
“She went to settlements.
Missions.
Army camps.”
Corvin covered his mouth.
“She asked about a boy with a mark here.”
Sena touched her left shoulder.
Corvin’s blood froze.
Beneath his shirt, on that exact spot, was a pale crescent-shaped birthmark.
Abel had always told him it was a burn from infancy.
Corvin pulled open his shirt.
The old man saw the mark.
A sound escaped him.
Not a word.
A father’s grief compressed into one broken breath.
He crossed the space between them.
Then stopped.
He did not touch Corvin.
He waited.
That hurt more than anything.
Thirty years of waiting had taught him not to reach for a son who might pull away.
Corvin looked at Sena.
“Who are you?”
She wiped her cheek.
“Your mother had another child.”
Corvin stared.
“Years after you were taken.”
