Caleb dancing badly in a kitchen.
Caleb carrying sacks through rain.
Caleb kneeling beside a river with a ring.
Caleb kissing her forehead.
Caleb asleep with one hand resting over her swollen stomach.
Swollen.
Mave froze.
Her hands moved toward her belly.
A cry escaped her.
The blue blanket.
The baby.
She looked at him.
“We had a child.”
Caleb began to cry.
Not quietly.
Not like a proud man hiding grief.
He wept as if seven years had finally reached him all at once.
“Yes.”
Mave grabbed his shirt.
“A baby.”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
His face changed.
And she knew immediately there was another wound waiting.
“The attack happened three weeks after she was born.”
“She?”
Caleb nodded.
“A daughter.”
Mave felt milk ache in breasts that had been dry for years.
Impossible.
Memory lived in the body even when the mind had been robbed.
“Her name?”
Caleb whispered, “Anna.”
Mave collapsed against him.
“Where is she?”
“We thought she died.”
The words struck like bullets.
Mave shoved away.
“Thought?”
“We never found her body.”
“What does that mean?”
Caleb wiped his face.
“When I woke after the attack, you and Anna were gone.”
That night, Mave remembered fire.
She woke screaming.
Caleb entered only after Ruth called permission from the doorway.
Mave sat upright.
“Edna.”
“What?”
“She was there.”
Caleb froze.
“The night of the attack?”
“No.”
Mave pressed her palms against her eyes.
“Before.”
The memories came broken.
Pregnancy.
Rain.
A small farmhouse where Caleb had stopped because labor began too early.
A gray-haired woman rolling up her sleeves.
Edna.
“She delivered Anna.”
Caleb sat slowly.
“I never saw the midwife’s face well. The storm had knocked out half the lamps.”
“She knew me.”
“Yes.”
Mave understood.
That explained Edna’s terror the morning Caleb arrived.
Not the scar.
Not entirely.
Edna Lark had recognized Caleb first.
The following morning Caleb sent riders toward town.
They returned with Sheriff Amos Reed and Doctor Hollis.
Silas arrived two hours later with Edna.
Silas stormed into the yard.
“She belongs with me!”
Mave stood on the porch.
Those words no longer frightened her.
Caleb stepped beside her.
“She belongs to herself.”
Sheriff Reed lifted a hand.
“We settle this calmly.”
Silas waved their signed contract.
“He cheated me.”
Caleb produced his copy.
“You sold a woman you had no lawful authority to sell.”
Silas’s confidence faltered.
“What nonsense?”
Doctor Hollis removed his spectacles.
The doctor looked sick.
Mave stared at him.
“You told me I was barren.”
Hollis swallowed.
“I told Silas there was no evidence you were.”
Silas spun toward him.
“You lying bastard.”
The doctor backed away.
“I examined Mrs. Lark four years ago. I told you she showed signs of having delivered a child previously.”
Mave went numb.
Four years.
Four years ago, Silas had known.
“He said what?”
Doctor Hollis looked ashamed.
“He paid me to tell you otherwise.”
Silas lunged.
Caleb intercepted him.
Sheriff Reed drew his revolver.
“Enough!”
Mave stared at the man she had called husband.
“Why?”
Silas spat blood where Caleb had struck him.
“Because you were useless either way.”
