Nearly.
Sarah and Clara, meanwhile, became inseparable.
They built forts beneath the kitchen table. They fed scraps to the orange cat. Sarah taught Clara to make biscuits. Clara taught Sarah how to imitate Mr. Miller’s enormous mustache using broom straw.
Watching them caused a strange ache in Mary.
There was something between the girls.
Something beyond friendship.
Once, Mary found them sleeping near the hearth, Clara’s golden head resting against Sarah’s dark hair.
Ethan stood beside her.
Neither spoke.
After a moment Mary whispered, “Thomas would have liked this place.”
Ethan swallowed.
“He did.”
Mary looked at him.
“He came here?”
“Once.”
“When?”
“Ten years ago.”
Before Mary had married him.
Ethan stared into the fire.
“He came back after eleven years away. Stayed one night. We argued.”
“About your father?”
“Partly.”
“What else?”
Ethan’s jaw tightened.
“Abigail.”
Mary remembered the name.
His wife.
“What did Thomas have to do with Abigail?”
Ethan did not answer.
Mary’s patience snapped.
“You keep asking me to trust you while feeding me one piece of truth at a time.”
“I know.”
“No, Ethan. You don’t.”
She turned toward him.
“I buried my husband. I sold everything we owned. I held our daughter while she screamed for her father. I came to this miserable town with three coins because Thomas once told me that if I ever had nowhere left, Cedar Ridge was a place where decent people still existed.”
Ethan closed his eyes.
Mary froze.
“Thomas told me to come here.”
Ethan’s eyes opened.
“Yes.”
“You knew I might.”
“Yes.”
“You were waiting.”
Silence.
The truth hit her.
Ethan Cole had not discovered Mary outside Miller’s General Store by accident.
“You were waiting for us.”
“I had been for sixteen months.”
Mary slapped him again.
This time Ethan almost smiled afterward.
“I probably deserved that one too.”
“You think?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you simply write to me?”
“I did.”
“I never received anything.”
“I know.”
His expression darkened.
“Because someone intercepted the letters.”
“Who?”
Before he could answer, a gunshot cracked outside.
Ethan moved instantly.
“Stay here.”
Another shot.
Dogs began barking.
Ethan grabbed his rifle.
Mary followed him onto the porch despite his order.
Snow blew across the yard.
A rider galloped from the barn toward the eastern ridge.
One of Ethan’s ranch hands shouted from the corral.
“Someone cut the south fence!”
Ethan cursed.
“Cattle?”
“Scattered.”
Mary looked toward him.
“This happened during a blizzard?”
“No.”
He stared after the disappearing rider.
“It happened because you’re here.”
The rider left something nailed to the barn.
A single piece of paper.
Ethan tore it down before Mary could read it.
She snatched it from his hand.
Three words had been written in black ink.
SEND THEM AWAY.
Mary felt the cold all the way into her bones.
“Who is ‘them’?”
Ethan said nothing.
“Me and Clara?”
“Yes.”
“Who wants us gone?”
His eyes hardened.
“Abigail’s father.”
The name meant nothing to Mary.
“Silas Harrow.”
That name did.
Everyone in Cedar Ridge knew Silas Harrow.
Banker.
Landowner.
Former territorial judge.
Half the businesses in town carried debts to him.
