Anna moved to the window and watched the darkness swallow him.
“He's still hiding something,” she said.
Samuel nodded.
He knew it too.
That night, Samuel did not sleep.
He sat at the kitchen table with the documents spread before him while Anna rested in the bedroom. The fire had burned low, and the wind moved against the eaves.
He read Dr. Harris’s letter until he could recite the words.
Then he examined the original medical notes.
They contained a series of clinical observations, descriptions of the surgery, and recommendations for follow-up treatment. Several pages had been written in Dr. Lang’s hand.
One page was missing.
The notes jumped from the day after surgery to the following week, leaving a gap where the physician had apparently recorded his first assessment.
Samuel compared the dates.
The final report had been signed two days after Thomas purchased the bank draft.
There was another discrepancy.
The report claimed that a second examination had confirmed the diagnosis.
But the hospital register showed that Samuel had been unconscious during the period in question.
He could not remember such an examination.
He could not remember being asked to consent to one.
And according to the nursing records, he had been too ill to leave his bed.
Samuel felt the room tilt.
He took out a sheet of paper and began writing down the dates.
The accident.
The surgery.
Thomas’s visit.
The bank draft.
The final report.
The letter from Dr. Harris.
A pattern emerged, but it was not yet complete.
There was one more detail he could not explain.
At the bottom of the bank draft, beneath Thomas’s signature, appeared the initials E.W.
Samuel stared at them.
E.W.
He had seen those initials before.
On the old property ledger.
On a series of contracts their father had signed before his death.
On the papers transferring a portion of the family’s timber rights to a Helena company.
The initials belonged to Edward Whitaker, their uncle.
Edward had died three years earlier.
For most of Samuel’s life, he had considered his uncle a shrewd but harmless businessman. Edward had helped Joseph negotiate land purchases and had occasionally loaned money to ranchers in difficult circumstances.
He had also been the person who encouraged Thomas to pursue his expansion plans.
Samuel had not seen him in years.
He looked again at the bank draft.
Why would their uncle's initials appear on a payment made to Dr. Lang?
Samuel searched the remaining papers.
The third sheet was a letter from Dr. Lang to an unnamed recipient. The top portion had been torn away, leaving only the body and signature.