“Sir, This Boy Lived With Me in the Orphanage…” Widow’s Daughter Said — Millionaire Cowboy Went Pale

Chapter 5

The wind had come up hard by evening, worrying the eaves of the manor like a dog with a bone, and snow had begun to rattle against the glass. In the east wing, Sadie Baird sat on the braided hearth rug with her knees drawn up, and the fire painted her face in gold. She had been quiet for a long time, and when she finally spoke, her voice was so small that Kora had to lean in to hear it.

“Ma. I’m scared.”

Kora came and sat down beside her on the floor, an unladylike thing to do in a grand house, and wrapped her arms around the girl. “You did a good thing,” she said again, into the top of Sadie’s head. “Whatever comes, you told the truth, and the truth is a strong shield. That is what your grandpa always said.”

“Grandpa,” Sadie whispered, and the word was warm as a coal in her chest. “He was a cavalryman. He marched all night through the mud to save a line at Coldwater Ridge. He said the truth was a shield.”

“Then you come from a long line of people who stand fast,” Kora said.

There was a soft knock, and the bolt drew back. Jonas Pike came in, closing the door carefully behind him, and pulled a chair up to the fire across from them. In the lamplight his weathered face looked older, gentler, and somehow heavier.

“Sadie,” he said, and the girl looked up at him squarely, which he liked at once. “You told Mr. Traven you knew the boy from the foundling home. Now I need you to think back, a long way back, to the night visits. Did anybody ever come to the home at night? Visitors. People who did not come to see the children.”

Sadie nodded slowly. “The black buggy,” she said. “It came after dark. Mama— Mrs. Harlow would make us all go to bed early when the black buggy came, and then she would light the lamp in her office and pull the curtain. We weren’t to look. We weren’t even to make a sound.”

“Did you ever see the man who got out of it?”

“Once.” Sadie’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I was sick with a fever and I was in the washroom at the window, and I saw him get out of the buggy. Tall. A long dark coat. He stood in the yard and he yelled at Mrs. Harlow through the window, pointed his finger at her through the glass, and — and I saw his hand.” She shuddered. “He wore a ring. A heavy silver ring, with a big blue-green stone in the middle. It caught the lamp light when he moved, and I thought, that man is the devil, because devils wear rings like that.”

Jonas had gone very still. “Blue-green stone,” he repeated. “Turquoise, would you say, girl?”

“I don’t know what it’s called,” Sadie said. “It was the color of the river before a storm.”

“And the man, he was yelling. Do you remember any of his words?”

Sadie closed her eyes, and the memory came back to her in pieces, sharp-edged as broken china. “He said — he said, ‘You will call him Micah.’ And then he said, ‘Elias is dead and buried. Do you understand me, woman?’ And Mrs. Harlow, she said yes, sir, over and over, only her voice was shaking like a leaf in a ditch.”

Jonas stood up slowly, and Sadie, watching him, saw something happen to his face that made her afraid for the second time that night.

“Thank you, Sadie,” he said very gently. “You are a brave girl. Just stay here with your ma, and don’t mind the storm.”

He was in the corridor before the bolt had finished sliding, and he did not go to the study. He went to the front of the house, to the tall window beside the door, and stood where he could see the long drive and the gates showing black through the falling snow. Then he walked back through the house, past the grandfather clock that was just beginning to gather itself to strike eight, and let himself into the study without knocking.

“The man in the buggy,” he said. “The ring. It’s his, Garrett. It’s the turquoise ring Otis wears on his right hand, the one he bought in Santa Fe and never takes off. Every man in the territory could identify it.”

Garrett Traven was standing at the window with his back to the room, and he did not turn around. “She heard the name,” he said. “She heard the devil himself put a name on my son and bury him out loud, in front of a child, ten years before I was allowed to know he was anything but lost.”

“He is coming,” Jonas said.

“I know.”

The grandfather clock in the main hall finished gathering itself and struck eight, and the heavy front door of the manor creaked open on the wind. They both heard it: the stamped snow of boots in the foyer, the cheerful, carrying voice of a man who had just ridden in out of the weather and expected to be welcomed.

“Garrett!” the voice called. “I could not bear the thought of you sitting alone on this night. I brought brandy — the good bottle, from the cellar. God knows you’ve earned it.”

Garrett Traven turned from the window, and on his face was a mask he had not worn in a decade — the mask of the broken, defeated father, the man who had long ago accepted that his son was a name on a stone. He let his shoulders slump. He let his eyes go wet.

“Otis,” he said, and his voice cracked, beautifully, on the syllable. “You should not have come out in this weather.”

The man in the foyer stamped his boots and laughed, and in the firelight his heavy silver ring flashed green through the air as he shook out his coat.

“My dear brother,” Otis Traven said, “what is family for, if not the nights we cannot face alone?”