“No.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
The bitterness was twenty-three years old and still sharp.
“He disappeared from Colorado.”
“Sent attorneys.”
“Never returned.”
“I was indicted.”
“How did you avoid trial?”
“A sheriff named Rowan believed me.”
“He let me run.”
Lavinia whispered:
“You’ve been hiding?”
“First years.”
“And after?”
Amos looked around cabin.
“Then hiding became living.”
“What about Crane?”
“Became president of western division.”
Lavinia’s stomach dropped.
“My father kept him.”
“Yes.”
“That makes no sense.”
“No.”
Amos’s voice hardened.
“That’s why I stopped trying to understand wealthy men.”
Lavinia stood.
“My father hated Gideon Crane.”
“Later?”
“Always.”
“He never mentioned him without anger.”
Amos looked at her.
“Yet he kept him.”
“Not after 1867.”
“What?”
“Crane left Beaumont Continental.”
Amos frowned.
“When?”
“About two years after Black Hollow.”
“Why?”
“My father never explained.”
Amos stared toward old notebook.
The timeline did not fit what he remembered.
Lavinia continued.
“Crane founded Western Meridian Rail.”
“I know.”
“It became our biggest rival.”
“I know.”
“What you don't know is that my father spent twenty years fighting him.”
“Why?”
“He never said.”
Amos stood.
“Your father could have cleared my name.”
“Maybe he couldn't.”
“He owned the company.”
“And yet somebody forged his signature.”
Amos stopped.
Lavinia stepped closer.
“Somebody burned his office.”
“Somebody convinced law officers you were responsible.”
“Somebody apparently forced my father out of Colorado before he could finish what he came to do.”
“You have spent twenty-three years believing his silence meant betrayal.”
“What if it meant he failed?”
Amos’s face tightened.
“Convenient.”
“I am not defending him because he was my father.”
“Yes, you are.”
“No.”
She looked furious.
“If he abandoned you to save his company, then I want to know that too.”
“But I will not accept your anger as evidence.”
Amos stared.
For some reason that sentence struck harder than accusation.
Lavinia continued:
“Why Black Hollow now?”
“What?”
“Why was I sent there?”
“You said your father left you property.”
“He did.”
“Why?”
“I received his sealed instructions after funeral.”
“What instructions?”
She removed a small envelope from inside her coat.
Amos almost laughed.
“You carried paper through a blizzard?”
“It was sewn inside lining.”
She handed it to him.
The letter read:
Lavinia,
If you have this, I failed to tell you something while I still had courage enough to do it aloud.
Go to Black Hollow.
Take no company director.
Trust no one from Western Meridian.
Look for the man who refused to stop digging.
If he still lives, tell him I was a coward for too long.
Then give him what is mine.
—Father
Amos read it twice.
His hands began to shake.
Lavinia watched.
“‘The man who refused to stop digging.’”
Amos whispered.
“That was you?”
“Yes.”
She swallowed.
“My father knew you were alive.”
Amos’s face hardened.
“So he knew where I was?”
“Maybe.”
“Twenty-three years.”
“Amos—”
“Twenty-three years.”
He threw the letter onto table.
“He knew.”
“We don't know that.”