He was afraid of something else.

The judge adjourned until records could be examined.

Outside, Caleb pulled Rowan aside.

“You saw him.”

“Yes.”

“He expected the disease argument.”

Rowan nodded slowly.

“But not the note.”

Caleb looked toward Voss leaving the courthouse.

“Then your uncle meant something else.”

That night Caleb finally confessed.

“My name isn’t Caleb Shaw.”

Rowan stared across the kitchen table.

He removed a folded document from his coat.

“My name is Caleb Hawthorne.”

Rowan stood so quickly her chair toppled.

“Hawthorne?”

“My father owned the breeding company.”

She backed away.

“You knew from the beginning.”

“Not everything.”

“You came here because of the geese?”

“I came because of Silas.”

“Silas is dead.”

“I know.”

Pain crossed Caleb’s face.

“My father died believing Silas betrayed him. He said Mercer stole breeding stock and destroyed their work.”

“And you believed him?”

“For years.”

Rowan’s throat tightened.

“So what changed?”

“I found Voss’s account books.”

He placed a small ledger on the table.

“Payments to a freight man. Payments to an arsonist. Payments to a clerk who altered ownership papers.”

Rowan opened the ledger.

Dates.

Names.

Amounts.

The year of the first fire.

“You had this the entire time?”

“No. I found it last month in a storage chest belonging to my father.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Caleb looked ashamed.

“Because there’s something else.”

Rowan waited.

“My father wasn’t innocent.”

The room became very quiet.

“He and Voss planned the fire together.”

Rowan closed her eyes.

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“But Silas survived.”

“Yes.”

“And saved the records.”

“Yes.”

“And apparently saved the breeding line somehow.”

Caleb nodded.

Rowan thought.

“If the original flock died, where did these eggs come from?”

That question changed everything.

The eggs had been described as a shipment.

But from where?

Miriam had assumed they were descendants.

Voss had claimed ownership.

Yet nobody had traced their origin.

Caleb looked at her.

“We need the driver.”

They found him two counties west.

His name was Peter Lyle.

He lived above a livery stable and began trembling the moment Rowan mentioned the eggs.

“I didn’t know,” he said.

“Know what?”

“That anyone would save them.”

“Who hired you?”

“Voss.”

“To dump them?”

Peter nodded.

“Where did you pick them up?”

He hesitated.

Caleb slammed the door.

“Answer.”

“An old property outside Briar Glen.”

“What property?”

Peter swallowed.

“A farm owned by Silas Mercer.”

Rowan felt the floor vanish beneath her.

“My uncle owned no other farm.”

Peter looked confused.

“Well, somebody did. Papers said Mercer.”

“Take us there.”

The property lay hidden behind cottonwoods twelve miles from Briar Glen.

The farmhouse was abandoned.

The barn was not.

Inside they found pens.

Incubators.

Breeding records.

Feathers.

Feed sacks.

Fresh droppings.

Someone had been raising geese there until very recently.

Rowan entered a back room.

On the wall hung a photograph.

Three men stood beside a flock of enormous marsh geese.

One was Elias Voss.

One was Caleb’s father.

And one was Silas Mercer.

But there was a fourth person.

A young woman.

Rowan stepped closer.

Her heart stopped.

She knew that face.

She had seen it in the only photograph she possessed of her mother.

Eleanor Mercer.

Rowan’s mother had supposedly died when Rowan was six.

“What is this?” she whispered.

Caleb moved beside her.

The inscription beneath the photograph read:

Marshline founders, 1885. S. Mercer, E. Mercer, J. Hawthorne, E. Voss.