Eleanor stared at the scar.
For a moment, she was no longer standing inside a mountain cabin in the winter of 1887.
She was thirteen years old again, lying on the frozen bank of a Colorado river with snow melting against her eyelashes. She remembered black water, a broken wooden bridge, and the sensation of being dragged toward a gap beneath the ice.
Then she remembered a boy.
A thin, dark-haired boy who had crawled across the collapsing riverbank to reach her, wrapping one arm around her waist while broken wood struck his chest.
He had kept her head above the water.
He had pushed her toward safety.
And when she lay shivering beside him afterward, she had pressed a tiny silver pendant into his hand.
A heart.
Her mother's silver heart.
She'd whispered, “Keep this until I can thank you properly.”
The boy had tried to smile.
Then his eyes closed.
She never saw him again.
The adults told her he had died.
For nineteen years, she carried the memory of that nameless boy like a small, private sorrow.
Now she looked at Caleb's scar.
And remembered the injury on the boy's chest.
The strange movement beneath his skin.
The frightened way he had tried to hide it from the people gathered beside the river.
Her knees weakened.
“Caleb,” she whispered, “where did you get that scar?”
He looked down.
“A river.”
Eleanor stopped breathing.
“What river?”
He hesitated.
“North Fork of the Silver Elk. Near the old Bell crossing.”
She covered her mouth.
Caleb frowned.
“Eleanor?”
Her eyes filled.
“Nineteen years ago?”
He stared at her.
Then nodded.
For several seconds, the room was silent except for the wind.
Finally, she whispered, “There was a little girl.”
Caleb went completely still.
“A girl who fell through the ice.”
His expression changed.
Eleanor took one trembling step toward him.
“She gave you something.”
Caleb's hand moved instinctively toward the leather cord around his neck.
He looked down.
Then slowly drew it from beneath his shirt.
A small silver heart rested against his broad chest.
The metal was scratched.
The chain was long gone.
But the tiny engraved flower on its surface remained visible.
Eleanor recognized it instantly.
A sob escaped her.
“Oh, dear God.”
Caleb stared.
For a moment, his face seemed almost empty of understanding.
Then he whispered, “You?”
Eleanor began crying.
“It was me.”