Mary felt sick.

“What did Thomas do?”

“He left.”

“And later married me.”

“Yes.”

Mary closed her eyes.

Was everything false?

Had she merely been the life Thomas chose after losing the one he wanted?

Ethan seemed to read her thoughts.

“He loved you, Mary.”

“You cannot know that.”

“I can.”

“How?”

Ethan finally withdrew the letter.

Thomas’s letter.

The one Ethan had carried for sixteen months.

He held it toward her.

“Because the last six pages are about you.”

Mary read the letter alone.

She sat beside the bedroom window while snow melted from the eaves outside.

Thomas’s handwriting blurred through her tears.

He had written it days before his death.

Ethan,

I should have told Mary everything years ago, but cowardice wears many respectable faces, and mine wore the face of protecting her.

Mary stopped reading.

Started again.

Thomas confessed his true name.

His father’s death.

Abigail.

Sarah.

He described returning to Cedar Ridge and learning his child had survived.

He described standing outside Abigail’s window and watching six-year-old Sarah sleep.

He had wanted to take her.

Then Harrow had threatened Abigail with scandal and threatened Thomas with arrest.

Thomas left to protect them.

Years later, Thomas met Mary.

I did not marry Mary because I forgot Abigail. I married Mary because I finally understood that loving someone who is gone does not forbid loving someone who remains.

Mary covered her mouth.

Further down:

Mary saved me without knowing I needed saving. Clara gave me a second life I had no right to expect.

And then:

I have learned Harrow never destroyed the evidence concerning Father. Abigail found it among his papers. Ethan, you must clear our name, because if anything happens to me, Clara may someday carry the weight of a crime I did not commit.

Mary frowned.

Evidence?

The final paragraph made her blood run cold.

I believe Harrow knows I am trying to expose him. If I die before I reach Cedar Ridge, do not accept the first story you are given about how it happened.

Mary stopped breathing.

Thomas had not believed himself safe.

His death had been called an accident.

A logging wagon.

A broken axle.

Mary ran downstairs.

Ethan was in the kitchen.

“Harrow killed him.”

Ethan stood.

“I think so.”

“You knew?”

“I suspected.”

She thrust the letter against his chest.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because suspicion isn’t proof.”

“Where is Harrow?”

“Gone back to town.”

Mary stared toward the window.

Then she remembered something.

Thomas’s belongings.

After his death, everything valuable had been sold.

Everything except one small wooden box Clara refused to surrender.

A box Thomas had carved for her.

Mary ran upstairs and pulled it from beneath the bed.

Ethan followed.

She opened it.

Inside were buttons, ribbon, two stones Clara believed were diamonds, and a broken pocket watch that had belonged to Thomas.

Mary lifted the watch.

It had never worked.

Thomas had forbidden anyone to repair it.

She stared at Ethan.

“He once told me this watch contained the only thing he inherited from his father.”

Ethan took it.

The rear casing appeared ordinary.