Someone shouted.
Margaret Bell had moved to Nebraska after losing her baby.
Sadie continued.
“August ninth. Clara Timmons. Male infant. One hundred fifty dollars.”
Mrs. Timmons was standing in the crowd.
She dropped her basket.
“No,” she whispered.
Dr. Mercer stepped forward.
“That ledger is nonsense.”
Gideon moved between him and Sadie.
The doctor stopped.
Mrs. Pritchard recovered first.
“This woman has always been unstable.”
There it was.
The old weapon.
Sadie almost laughed.
Barren.
Widowed.
Pitiable.
Unstable.
A woman could be buried beneath many words while still breathing.
Mrs. Pritchard pointed at Caleb.
“She has kidnapped some unfortunate child and invented a disgusting story because she’s desperate to be a mother.”
Caleb flinched.
Sadie felt Gideon tense.
But before either moved, Caleb stepped forward.
He removed Rebecca’s half of the locket.
Sadie held hers beside it.
The pieces joined.
A murmur rolled through the crowd.
Mrs. Pritchard’s face tightened.
“Jewelry proves nothing.”
“No,” another voice said.
“Maybe this does.”
Reverend Alden turned.
A stranger stood beside the wagon.
Long brown coat.
Silver badge.
Territorial Marshal Jonathan Price.
Two deputies waited behind him.
Price opened a leather case.
“Rebecca Vale mailed copies of this ledger to my office eight weeks before her death.”
Mrs. Pritchard staggered.
Gideon looked stunned.
He had not known.
Neither had Sadie.
The marshal continued.
“She also provided the names of three families who purchased children through intermediaries connected to Oakhaven.”
Dr. Mercer ran.
He made it six steps.
Gideon caught him.
Not dramatically.
He simply reached out, grabbed the back of the doctor’s coat, and lifted him half off the ground.
The entire street went silent.
“Put me down!”
Gideon looked at the marshal.
“Should I?”
Price considered it.
“Eventually.”
Someone laughed.
Then another person laughed.
Not because anything was funny.
Because fear was finally changing owners.
Mrs. Pritchard did not run.
She stood rigid while a deputy approached.
“This is absurd.”
Price held out his hand.
“Your office keys.”
“I do not have an office.”
“The post office.”
“My brother—”
“Your brother confessed yesterday.”
The woman’s face collapsed.
Sadie stepped closer.
“You intercepted Rebecca’s letters.”
Mrs. Pritchard said nothing.
“To me.”
Nothing.
“To Amos.”
Mrs. Pritchard’s lips tightened.
Sadie’s voice trembled.
“You let me bury an empty box.”
That did it.
Something ugly appeared in the older woman.
Contempt.
“You had no business raising a child.”
The crowd recoiled.
Sadie went utterly still.
Mrs. Pritchard’s years of careful respectability vanished.
“Amos owed money,” she spat. “Mercer needed infants. There were families willing to pay. You were poor. What life could you possibly have given that boy?”
Caleb stared at her.
Sadie asked softly, “And the other women?”
Mrs. Pritchard lifted her chin.
“They would have raised them in poverty.”
Mrs. Timmons began crying.
A man beside her restrained her from lunging forward.
Sadie thought she would feel rage.
Instead she felt something colder.
Pity.
Not the kind Oakhaven had given her.
Real pity.
Pity for a woman so empty she had mistaken cruelty for judgment.
“You spent twelve years telling me I was worthless because I had no child.”
Mrs. Pritchard said nothing.
Sadie stepped closer.
“All that time, you knew my son was alive.”
