She simply placed one hand against his shoulder and waited.
Finally, Gideon looked up.
His voice broke.
“If Matthew's alive, why didn't he come home?”
Elena swallowed.
“I don't know.”
Gideon stared toward the dark window.
Then he noticed something inside the watch that hadn't been there ten years earlier.
A narrow strip of paper beneath the inner cover.
He carefully unfolded it.
Only six words had been written.
The cattle ledger. Your father knew.
Gideon's expression changed again.
His father had been dead for fourteen years.
And the ledger mentioned in Matthew's note was supposed to have burned in a fire fifteen years earlier.
He looked toward Elena.
“There's something else.”
She waited.
Gideon closed the watch.
Then whispered, “If my brother's telling the truth, the man who took him didn't just steal ten years of our lives.”
His eyes hardened.
“He stole half the valley.”
The rain struck the windows harder.
Thunder rolled across the mountains.
And somewhere in the darkness beyond Cedar Hollow, a man who had been presumed dead for ten years was trying to reach the brother who had never stopped mourning him.
But Gideon didn't yet know that Matthew's return threatened more than the powerful cattle broker's reputation.
It threatened a fortune built on forged papers, stolen livestock, and the disappearance of men who had asked too many questions.
And the woman holding Gideon's face so tenderly was about to discover that her own family had unknowingly preserved the final piece of evidence.
The evidence Elias Rusk had spent ten years trying to destroy.
The first time Elena Whitmore entered Cedar Hollow, nobody looked at her face.
They looked at her body.
She remembered the stagecoach driver's expression when he saw her waiting beside the road with two enormous carpetbags.
She remembered how carefully the company had to arrange suitable seating before the journey.
And she remembered the passengers who stared, whispered, and smiled whenever they believed she couldn't hear.
Elena had learned to endure such things.
At four hundred kilograms, she occupied more space than most people expected a woman to occupy. Ordinary chairs were often unsuitable, narrow doorways required planning, and traveling demanded patience and arrangements that wealthier, smaller women rarely needed to consider.
She had spent years adapting.
Her clothing was carefully tailored.
She used sturdy furniture.
And she had become skilled at organizing her working environment so that she could accomplish difficult tasks without exhausting herself unnecessarily.