“I knew Maeve Vale.”
“How?”
He looked toward the horizon.
“She was family.”
Mave laughed bitterly.
“Convenient.”
“I understand why you don’t trust me.”
“No, you don’t.”
Her voice broke.
“You know what it’s like to have strangers tell you what your own memories mean? Edna did that for six years. Every question I asked, she answered. Every dream I described, she explained away.”
She pointed at the road behind them.
“Now you appear and do the same thing.”
Caleb nodded slowly.
“You’re right.”
Again, no argument.
No anger.
He held the photograph toward her.
“Keep this.”
She did not take it.
So he placed it on the wagon seat.
“You decide what you believe.”
They continued north.
Blackwater Ridge appeared two days later beneath a darkening sky.
It was nothing like the Lark farm.
Pine-covered slopes rose behind broad pastures. Cattle moved like brown stones across the grass. A large timber house stood beneath cottonwoods beside a river.
Mave saw smoke curling from the chimney.
Something inside her twisted.
She knew this place.
Not consciously.
Her body knew it.
At the gate, her hands began shaking.
At the barn, she knew there would be a well around the corner.
There was.
Before entering the house, she knew three steps on the porch would creak.
The first did not.
The second did.
The third did.
Mave stopped.
Caleb watched her.
“You remember?”
“No.”
But she did.
Somewhere below language.
The front door opened.
An older woman hurried onto the porch.
She had white hair and a round, weathered face.
When she saw Mave, the bowl in her hands crashed onto the boards.
“Oh, dear God.”
Mave stepped backward.
The woman began crying.
“Maeve?”
Caleb said gently, “Ruth, give her room.”
Ruth covered her mouth.
“I’m sorry.”
She retreated inside.
Mave looked at Caleb.
“Everyone here knows me?”
“Some do.”
Inside, the house smelled of cedar, bread, and beeswax.
Mave gripped the back of a chair.
A staircase curved upward.
There should be a crack in the fourth banister post.
She looked.
There was.
Her knees weakened.
Then she saw the portrait.
It hung above the fireplace.
A young couple stood before a church.
The bride was herself.
Mave moved closer.
The groom was tall, smiling, clean-shaven.
Gray-eyed.
Mave looked at Caleb.
Then back at the photograph.
The groom’s face was younger.
Unscarred.
But the eyes—
“No.”
Caleb closed his eyes.
“You asked who I was.”
Mave could barely speak.
“No.”
“My full name is Caleb Gideon Vale.”
She stared at him.
“I was twenty-eight in that photograph.”
The room spun.
He removed his coat.
Then his collar.
A jagged scar disappeared beneath his shirt, far larger than the one on his face.
“The men who attacked our wagon left me for dead.”
Mave gripped the mantel.
“Our wagon?”
He nodded.
Her eyes returned to the wedding photograph.
“You’re saying…”
His voice cracked.
“I’m saying you were my wife.”
Mave’s legs failed.
Caleb caught her before she struck the floor, then immediately released her into Ruth’s arms.
Fragments tore through her mind.
