“I told him not to.”
Anger flooded her.
“Of course you did.”
Lucien did not defend.
“You all keep protecting me with silence.”
“Yes.”
“At least you admit it.”
“Yes.”
“That doesn’t make it better.”
“I know.”
Sadie pushed away from table.
She walked to window.
Snow pressed against the lower panes.
Her father’s handwriting seemed burned into her vision.
Land.
Railroad.
Cobb.
Lucien.
Everyone arranging her life in rooms where she had not been allowed to stand.
She turned.
“You said you asked Cobb for me.”
“Yes.”
“Why not come to me?”
Lucien looked down.
“I tried.”
“When?”
“October.”
“I never saw you.”
“Cobb said you’d gone to Helena.”
Sadie stared.
“I have never been to Helena.”
“I learned that.”
“How?”
“Mrs. Palmer.”
The boardinghouse owner.
Sadie felt dizzy.
“What did she tell you?”
“That Cobb threatened to close her place for unpaid taxes if she spoke to me.”
Sadie sat down.
Slowly.
“The town traded me because he told them you demanded a wife.”
“Yes.”
“And you gave them food because…”
“They were starving.”
“You would have given it anyway?”
Lucien was silent.
Sadie looked up.
“You would have.”
“Yes.”
Her throat closed.
“The six wagons were never payment.”
“No.”
“Cobb knew?”
“Yes.”
Sadie laughed again, but this time tears came.
“So he sold me for food you had already agreed to give.”
Lucien’s voice was quiet.
“He used the bargain because it made you disappear without questions.”
Sadie covered her mouth.
For ten years she had believed being unwanted made her safe from schemes.
No inheritance.
No family.
No value.
She had been wrong.
She had value.
That had made her dangerous.
Lucien moved one step toward her.
Stopped.
“Sadie.”
She raised a hand.
“No.”
He stopped.
“Don’t comfort me.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“What were you going to do?”
“Ask whether you wanted water.”
That was such a Lucien answer that she started crying harder.
He remained where he stood.
Sadie cried until she hated herself for it.
Then wiped her face.
“Why did my father give your father the letter?”
Lucien sat across from her.
“My father trusted him.”
“No.”
“Why did my father trust yours?”
Lucien looked toward the fire.
“They survived a winter together.”
“That’s not enough.”
“It was for them.”
He explained.
Twenty-three years earlier, Samuel Miller had worked timber camps before marrying Sadie’s mother.
He met Harlan Holt hauling supplies through Bitterroot country.
During a winter storm, Harlan broke his leg.
Samuel stayed.
They survived seventeen days in an abandoned trapper shelter while snow closed the pass.
Afterward they bought land together.
A valley.
Spring.
Timber.
Hunting ground.
Not because they expected fortune.
Because they wanted one place neither man could be driven from.
When Samuel married Anna, he moved to Oak Haven.
Harlan stayed in mountains.
The land remained divided.