Asked whether the pine tree beside the cabin had survived lightning.
Asked whether Thomas still swore at mules in church language.
Maeve pressed one hand to her mouth.
Her father had carried an entire lost life inside him.
She had never known.
“Why didn’t he tell me?”
Callaway sat on the opposite side of the room.
“Maybe it hurt.”
“That isn’t enough.”
“No.”
“Maybe he was ashamed.”
“Maybe.”
Maeve looked at him.
“You always say maybe when you don’t know.”
“I try.”
She almost smiled.
Then she remembered she was angry.
The smile disappeared.
“Where are the rest?”
“All there.”
Maeve spent half the night reading.
Callaway returned to the cot.
He did not ask about the bed again.
Neither did she.
By dawn, Maeve knew three things.
Her father had loved Montana.
He had trusted Thomas Callaway.
And something had happened in his final years that made him believe the ranch no longer belonged to him.
One letter mentioned a notice from Mercer Land & Title claiming the property had been transferred.
Patrick had accepted it as true.
Thomas had not.
The correspondence ended abruptly shortly after Thomas’s death.
Callaway had inherited the fight.
Maeve closed the final letter.
“Mercer forged something.”
Callaway looked over from the fire.
“Probably.”
“Probably?”
“We need proof.”
“You have the original deed.”
“He has a later filing.”
Maeve’s pulse quickened.
“Signed by my father?”
“Supposedly.”
“Can I see it?”
“County office.”
“Then we go.”
“Road isn’t open.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow if rain keeps melting the snow.”
Maeve stood.
“Then tomorrow.”
Callaway looked at her.
“You don’t have to fight this.”
She laughed softly.
“You have known me for two months and still say foolish things.”
For the first time since opening the chest, Callaway smiled.
Actually smiled.
It changed his whole face.
Maeve hated how much she noticed.
The next morning they rode to Red Hollow.
The journey took hours.
Maeve wore her thickest coat and sat astride a mare Callaway had trained for her.
They spoke little.
Not because there was nothing to say.
Because too much existed between them.
At the county office, the clerk became nervous the moment Maeve gave her name.
That told her more than any document.
The later transfer had been filed eighteen years earlier.
Patrick Gallagher’s signature appeared at the bottom.
Maeve stared at it.
“That isn’t his.”
The clerk swallowed.
“Ma’am—”
“It isn’t.”
Callaway leaned closer.
He had seen Patrick’s letters.
He knew too.
The capital G was wrong.
Patrick always made the lower stroke long and curling.
The deed showed a short, stiff mark.
Maeve pointed.
“My father signed hundreds of receipts when he worked for the wool cooperative. I watched him write my name a thousand times. This is not his signature.”
The clerk looked toward the back office.
Maeve noticed.
“Who is in there?”
“No one.”