One girl was clearly Clara.
The younger one—
Silas stopped breathing.
He brought the photograph closer.
The younger girl had dark hair.
A narrow chin.
Large gray eyes.
Eyes he had seen every day for nine years.
Not May’s.
Sarah’s.
Silas’s hands began trembling.
“No.”
Clara started crying.
“Silas—”
“No.”
He turned the photograph over.
Written in faded ink:
Clara, age 16. Eliza, age 6.
Silas stared at Clara.
“My wife’s name before we married was Eliza.”
Clara covered her mouth.
Silas backed away.
“Sarah Eliza Vale.”
Clara sobbed.
“I know.”
The world tilted.
“You knew?”
“I suspected when you told me your name.”
“My name?”
Clara reached into the chest.
She pulled out a letter.
Old.
Creased.
Opened hundreds of times.
“My sister wrote me once.”
Silas took it.
The handwriting stopped his heart.
Sarah’s handwriting.
He knew every curve.
Every slant.
Dear Clara,
I do not know whether this will reach you. I do not know whether you still want to hear from me.
My name is Sarah now.
I have married a good man named Silas Thorne…
Silas stopped reading.
He looked up.
“You had this?”
“It arrived fifteen years ago.”
“And you never came?”
Clara’s face collapsed.
“I tried.”
“What does that mean?”
“I went to Nebraska.”
“When?”
“Fourteen years ago.”
Silas stared.
“You came to our farm?”
“No. I reached the county.”
“Then why didn’t you find her?”
Clara’s voice shrank.
“Because I was afraid.”
Silas laughed bitterly.
“Afraid?”
“She wrote that she was happy.”
“She was your sister!”
“I thought I had already ruined enough.”
“How?”
Clara closed her eyes.
And finally the truth came out.
“When Eliza was fourteen, Father tried to marry her to a man forty years older.”
Silas’s blood chilled.
“I helped her run.”
“But you said you had already left.”
“I lied.”
Clara looked at him.
“I came back secretly. Gave her money. Put her on a train east.”
“Why?”
“Because I thought it was the only way to save her.”
Clara’s tears fell freely.
“Father discovered what I’d done. He swore he would hunt her down. So I told everyone I didn’t know where she had gone.”
Silas slowly understood.
“You protected her.”
“I thought I did.”
“Then why carry this guilt for twenty years?”
“Because the man Father wanted her to marry…”
Clara’s voice broke.
“…was my husband’s brother.”
Silas stared.
“Your husband knew?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“He spent years looking for Eliza too.”
Silas felt sick.
“Why?”
Clara’s eyes went dark.
“Because his brother believed he owned her.”
The room went silent.
Silas looked at the photograph again.
Sarah.
His Sarah.
The girl Clara had spent half her life trying to find.
May stepped into the room.
“Papa?”
He looked down.
She held one of the photographs.
“Is that Mama?”
Clara knelt.
“Yes, sweetheart.”
May smiled innocently.
“You knew my mama?”
Clara could barely speak.
“She was my little sister.”
May’s eyes widened.
Silas’s heart cracked.
“Then…”
May looked at Clara.
“You’re my aunt?”
Clara nodded.
“Yes.”
May flung herself into Clara’s arms.
Clara made a sound like someone being wounded and healed at the same time.
She held the child fiercely.
Silas watched.
Every suspicion he had carried shattered.
Clara had not wanted to steal his daughter.
She had recognized the last living piece of the sister she had lost.
Then another thought struck him.
“You knew from the first day.”
Clara shook her head.
“I suspected.”
