Then Mave left.
Winter came early to Blackwater Ridge.
Anna did not call her Mama.
Not at first.
Mave never asked her to.
They learned each other slowly.
Anna hated porridge.
Loved horses.
Cheated shamelessly at checkers.
Sang while doing chores.
And, to Caleb’s despair, adored peppermints.
One evening Mave found Anna in the barn feeding three of them to the same mare.
“That horse will lose every tooth she has.”
Anna grinned.
“She likes them.”
Mave laughed.
Caleb stood in the doorway.
Something about the scene changed his face.
Mave knew why.
They had lost seven years.
But standing there counting what had been lost would only allow Silas and Edna to steal more.
So they built.
Not the old marriage.
That surprised Caleb.
When the legal documents proved their marriage had never been dissolved, he quietly offered to arrange one if she wanted.
“You would?”
“If that’s what freedom means for you.”
Mave studied him.
The man in her recovered memories loved him.
She was not that woman anymore.
Not completely.
And neither was he the man in the photograph.
Too much had happened.
“We start again,” she told him.
“As what?”
“Two people.”
A faint smile touched his mouth.
“I think I can manage that.”
“You managed it badly the first time.”
He laughed.
The sound unlocked another memory.
This one did not hurt.
By spring, she sometimes reached for his hand without thinking.
By summer, Anna began referring to Caleb as Papa again. She had faint memories of him from early childhood visits to the mission—visits Mother Agnes later remembered a scarred rancher making year after year while searching records for his missing wife and child, never realizing the quiet little girl playing in another building belonged to him.
That knowledge devastated Caleb.
“I was twenty yards away from her.”
Mave held his face.
“You didn’t know.”
“I should have.”
“Then I should have remembered.”
He closed his eyes.
She whispered, “We cannot punish ourselves using knowledge we only have now.”
It was advice she learned to give herself too.
Almost one year after the morning Silas tried to sell her, Mave stood beneath the apple trees at Blackwater Ridge.
New blossoms covered the branches.
Anna raced through them chasing a yellow ribbon caught in the wind.
Caleb approached carrying two cups of coffee.
Mave accepted one.
“You’re staring again.”
“At what?”
“Me.”
“I spent seven years looking for you. Apparently I developed the habit.”
She smiled.
Her memories had returned gradually.
Not all.
Some doors remained locked.
Perhaps forever.
She had stopped forcing them.
The life in front of her mattered too.
Anna screamed happily when she captured the ribbon.
Caleb watched her.
“There’s something I never told you.”
Mave groaned.
“No.”
He blinked.
“No?”
“If another secret comes out of this family, I’m moving east.”
He laughed.
“This one’s harmless.”
“Those are famous last words.”
He reached into his pocket.
A folded paper.
Mave immediately narrowed her eyes.
“What is it?”
“Something Mother Agnes mailed yesterday.”
He handed it over.
The paper was old.
