I stood on the blackened earth with Jonah behind me.
“What do you suggest?”
Harlen unfolded a paper. “I know a buyer. He will take the land despite the damage. Enough money for you and Mrs. Holloway to return east comfortably.”
Mae’s married name had not been spoken in town.
I smiled politely.
“You know a great deal about us.”
Harlen’s expression flickered.
“Small town.”
“Small towns must read private letters very quickly.”
The preacher cleared his throat. “Miss Vale, Mr. Pike is only trying to protect you.”
“From the men who burned my barn,” I asked, “or from the land they want me to sell?”
One of the townsmen looked at the ground.
Harlen’s pleasant mask thinned.
“You are young. You do not understand how dangerous stubbornness can be.”
Jonah stepped forward. “She understands.”
Harlen looked at him with open contempt.
“And you? Still playing guardian? How many lives must suffer because Jonah Blackwood decides something belongs to him?”
My head turned sharply. “What does that mean?”
Harlen kept his eyes on Jonah.
“Ask him about Thomas Blackwood. Ask him why one brother came home and the other didn’t. Ask him why his claim papers vanished. Ask him why his brother’s bride-to-be married another man rather than stand beside him.”
Jonah went pale beneath his tan.
I saw the wound land.
Harlen saw it too.
And smiled.
That was his mistake.
I took one step toward him.
“You came here with a buyer’s paper before the ashes cooled. You knew my grandmother’s family name though I never told it to you. You warned me against Mr. Blackwood because he is the only man on this mountain Victor Harrow fears. So I will tell you this once, Mr. Pike. I am not selling.”
Harlen’s smile vanished.
“You will regret that.”
“No,” Mae called from the porch, her voice thin but sharp as a needle. “She will not. But you may.”
He left with the paper unsigned.
That night, Jonah tried to leave.
I found him saddling his horse beneath a moonless sky.
“Where are you going?”
“To find Bram Lyle.”
“And do what?”
His silence answered.
I stepped into the blackened shadow of the barn.
“If you kill him, they will make every lie true.”
“Mara—”
“No. They have waited seven years for you to become the monster they invented. Do not hand them your soul because they frightened me.”
His hands clenched on the saddle.
“They burned your barn.”
“Yes.”
“They could have burned you in your bed.”
“Yes.”
“I cannot sit still and wait.”
“I am not asking you to sit still.” I moved closer. “I am asking you to fight smart.”
He looked down at me, anguish naked in his eyes.
“I know how to stop men,” he said. “I do not know how to fight smart when someone I love is threatened.”
The night stopped.
Someone I love.
I forgot the cold. The ash. The danger watching from the pines.
“You love me?”
Jonah closed his eyes briefly, as if the truth hurt on its way out.
“Yes.”
I stepped close enough to touch his hand.
“Then stay.”
His breath shuddered.
“For once,” I whispered, “let someone carry you back from the edge.”
He bowed his head.
I wrapped my arms around him, and after a long rigid moment, Jonah Blackwood held on to me like a man who had survived winter by refusing shelter and had only just realized he was freezing.
We did not find Bram Lyle.
Bram found Mae.
It happened two days later near sunset, while I was at the well and Jonah was repairing the back fence. Mae had insisted on walking the short path behind the cabin to gather wildflowers for the table. She had seemed stronger lately, proud of it, stubborn enough to make me believe the mountains had given her a few stolen years.
Then came the scream.
Not Mae’s.
A man’s.
Jonah dropped the fence rail and ran. I seized the pistol from the porch and followed.
We found Mae sitting in the dirt beside the trail, pale but conscious. Bram Lyle knelt nearby, one hand clamped around his bleeding forearm. Mae’s sewing scissors lay between them.
“I told him,” Mae said breathlessly, “that if he wanted to drag an old woman through the woods, he should choose one without sharp objects.”
Bram cursed.
Jonah lifted him by the collar and slammed him against a tree.
“Who sent you?”
Bram spat. “Go to hell.”
Jonah’s fist drew back.
I caught his arm. “No.”
He trembled with restraint.
I stepped close to Bram, pistol steady.
“You tried to abduct my grandmother,” I said. “You are bleeding badly. If Mr. Blackwood leaves you here, wolves may find you before your friends do. If you answer my questions, I will bind that arm.”
Bram’s eyes darted between us.
“Harrow,” he said. “Victor Harrow. Pike works for him.”
“Why the land?”
“Survey line. Old map. Rowe had it. Said he sent it with the old woman because nobody would search a grandmother’s Bible.”
My heart lurched.
Mae went very still.
“My Bible?” she whispered.