Silas looked at letter.
“I stayed nine days.”
“Before I left she gave me this.”
“For me?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you bring it?”
“She told me not to.”
Clara’s eyes narrowed.
“What?”
“She said only give it to you if…”
He stopped.
“If what?”
Silas looked uncomfortable for first time.
“If your father ever tried to trade you.”
Clara’s breath left.
“What did you say?”
“She said those words?”
“Yes.”
“Why would she think that?”
Silas shook his head.
“I don’t know everything.”
“She knew your father better than I did.”
“She said grief frightened her more than poverty.”
“She said he had started drinking heavily after your youngest brother’s first sickness.”
“That was years before cholera.”
“Yes.”
Clara stared at envelope.
Silas continued quietly.
“She told me if she died before you were grown and Ephraim ever started measuring your life against his survival, I was to get you somewhere safe.”
Clara looked up.
“And today?”
Silas nodded.
“I came to Harlan’s because Pike sent word your father was asking what a woman could be traded for.”
Cold moved through Clara.
“Harlan knew?”
“Not about letter.”
“Only that I asked him to tell me if Ephraim started trying to marry you off for debt.”
Clara’s anger rose.
“You have been watching me?”
“No.”
“Then how—”
“I come down three times a year.”
“I asked Pike if you were alive.”
“That’s all.”
“Why not tell me?”
“Because your mother told me not to unless time came.”
Clara laughed bitterly.
“So everybody gets instructions except me.”
Silas’s face tightened.
“Yes.”
The agreement startled her.
“You think this is acceptable?”
“No.”
“Then why obey her?”
“Because I owed her my life.”
“And I became how you repaid debt.”
“No.”
“That is exactly what happened.”
Silas stepped back as though her words physically struck.
Clara picked up the envelope.
Her fingers trembled.
“Did you read it?”
“No.”
“Never?”
“No.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“You shouldn’t because I say it.”
He pointed toward wax.
“Your mother sealed it.”
The seal was broken now where age had cracked, but not opened cleanly.
She could see fibers still joined beneath fold.
Clara swallowed.
Silas moved toward hearth.
“I’ll go outside.”
She looked.
“In storm?”
“Stable.”
“Why?”
“So you can read without me.”
He took his coat.
Clara said:
“Wait.”
He stopped.
She hated how quickly he listened.
It gave her power she had not expected and did not know how to use.
“Why did you give my father supplies?”
Silas looked at her.
“Because if I took you and left him starving, you’d believe his hunger was your fault.”
Clara’s throat closed.
Silas continued.
“And because whatever he did today, freezing him to death wouldn’t make you free.”
He opened the door.
Wind roared.
Then he stepped out.
Clara stared after him.
She locked the door.
Not because Silas told her.
Because she wanted to.
Then she sat at the table beneath lantern light and opened her mother’s letter.
My darling Clara,
If this reaches your hands, then something I feared has happened, and I am sorry beyond words that I am not there to stand between you and it.
Clara stopped.
Tears blurred the ink.
She wiped them angrily.
Continued.