Hadn't hidden anything.
It was simply there.
Growing.
Dependent on people who hadn't yet decided what sort of family they would become.
Gabriel stood for another moment.
Then returned to the house.
He found Clara's supper untouched on the table.
The stew had gone cold.
He looked toward the stairs.
For a moment, he hesitated.
Then he warmed the food.
Placed bread beside it.
Carried the tray upstairs.
And stopped outside her door.
He raised one hand.
Knocked softly.
"Clara?"
There was silence.
Then a faint voice.
"Yes?"
"I brought supper."
A pause.
"You don't have to."
"I know."
For several seconds, nothing happened.
Then the door opened.
Clara stood in the doorway with swollen eyes and loose hair falling around her face.
She looked exhausted.
Gabriel held out the tray.
She stared.
Then accepted it.
"Thank you."
He nodded.
For a moment, neither spoke.
Then Gabriel looked toward her face.
"Have you been sick today?"
She swallowed.
"A little."
He nodded.
"Eat what you can."
Clara's eyes filled.
"Gabriel."
He looked away.
Then said quietly, "We'll talk tomorrow."
She nodded.
"All right."
He turned.
Walked down the hall.
And closed his bedroom door.
Only then did he sit on the edge of his bed and cover his face with both hands.
For the first time in years, Gabriel Morrow cried.
Not because he'd lost the ability to be a father.
He had accepted that long ago.
He cried because, for four days, he had believed his loneliness was ending.
And now he didn't know whether the woman sleeping across the hall had come to love him or simply to escape another man.
Clara woke before dawn.
The house was quiet.
She dressed slowly.
Her stomach felt unsettled, but the nausea passed after she drank a little water.
She sat beside the window and watched the eastern sky lighten.
Then she opened her traveling case.
At the bottom, beneath folded clothes, lay the documents she'd hidden.
Edmund's letters.
The attorney's proposed agreement.
A doctor's note confirming her pregnancy.
And several receipts from her final weeks in St. Louis.
She spread them across the bed.
For a long time, she looked at Edmund's handwriting.
The first letter was affectionate.
He called her clever.
Beautiful.
Different from the women he'd known.
He wrote that he wanted a future with her.
The second contained promises.
He would speak to his family.
Make arrangements.