After they hung up, he sat in the gathering darkness of his hotel room, staring at his reflection in the black window. Somewhere in Montana, Kathleen was probably touching the locket he’d given her, wondering if the man she’d grown to care about would choose the corporate world over the life they’d begun building together.
The terrible truth was, he wasn’t sure himself.
His phone buzzed with a text from Noah: Board meeting moved up to 8 AM. We need your answer tonight.
Patrick stared at the message, then at Kathleen’s phone number. Whatever he decided would determine not only the fate of Wilson Enterprises, but the future of the most meaningful relationship he’d had since his wife died.
Closing his eyes, he tried to imagine explaining his choice to Kathleen—whatever it turned out to be.
Chapter 19
Kathleen checked the time as she wiped down the last table in her café. The familiar closing routine brought her comfort, especially on days when her thoughts kept drifting to Patrick and Florence Buckley, and the secrets hidden beneath her Victorian house.
It had been three weeks since Chloe’s initial analysis confirmed the authenticity of the documents, and Kathleen thought about Florence almost constantly. Who had she been before arriving in Sapphire Bay? What had driven her to dedicate her life to helping desperate women? The questions multiplied faster than Percy could research answers.
The soft chime of her phone interrupted her cleaning routine. Chloe’s name appeared on the screen, and Kathleen smiled as she answered. “I thought you’d still be with Oscar at his friend’s birthday party.”
“I am,” Chloe said excitedly. “But this is too important to leave until we get home. I hope you’re sitting down.”
Kathleen’s heart raced. Chloe’s friends at the Smithsonian had been drip-feeding them information as they researched Florence’s life. For Chloe to be this excited, they must have discovered something important. “What’s happened?”
“My friend at the Smithsonian just called. Remember Dr. Sarah Mitchell? She’s been helping with the authentication process?”
“Of course.” Kathleen settled onto one of the café stools. “What did she find?”
“Sarah has a colleague who specializes in nineteenth-century Western historical documents. When she mentioned Florence Buckley’s name during a conference call, he nearly fell off his chair. Kathleen, they found Florence’s personal journal.”
The words seemed to echo in the suddenly silent café. Kathleen gripped the phone tighter, not trusting herself to speak.
“It was discovered fifteen years ago in an estate sale in Whitefish,” Chloe continued, her words tumbling over each other in her excitement. “The family who bought it donated the journal to the Smithsonian along with several other historical items. No one realized how important the journal was. It was simply catalogued as ‘Personal diary of Florence Buckley, midwife, circa 1880-1900.’”
Kathleen’s breath caught. “And now they know it relates to the items we found in my basement.”
“That’s right,” Chloe said with a smile in her voice. “Tomorrow morning, Sarah’s colleague will scan some of the pages and email them to me. I’ll forward them to you and Percy. But Kathleen...” Chloe’s voice dropped to an awed whisper. “What Sarah’s already told me changes everything we thought we knew about Florence.”
“What do you mean?”
“Florence didn’t come to Sapphire Bay to practice midwifery. She came here to escape. She was running from an abusive husband in Whitefish, and she moved to Sapphire Bay to live with an aunt—a woman named Miriam Buckley. She owned your house.”
Kathleen felt the world shift around her, as if everything she’d discovered was realigning with the new information. “An aunt?”
“Florence writes about arriving at her aunt’s house in 1882, terrified and barely able to function after years of abuse. Her husband had controlled every aspect of her life, including her midwifery practice. When she finally found the courage to leave, she took nothing but her medical bag and the clothes on her back.”
The image formed so clearly in Kathleen’s mind that she could almost see a young woman standing at the front door of her Victorian house, clutching a leather bag and looking over her shoulder in fear.
“According to the journal entries Sarah read to her colleague, Aunt Miriam had been helping women in crisis for years, but she was getting too old to continue the work alone. When Florence arrived with her medical training and her own experience of desperation, it was as if fate had brought them together.”
Kathleen closed her eyes, overwhelmed by the implications. “So the network didn’t start with Florence. It started with her aunt.”
“Exactly. And here’s what’s truly remarkable. Florence writes extensively about the women they helped, but she also documents their successes. Over nearly twenty years, they helped more than two hundred women escape impossible situations and build new lives across the frontier.”
Two hundred women. The number staggered Kathleen. She’d known Florence’s work was significant, but this was extraordinary. For two decades, she’d worked with her aunt in a stressful and dangerous environment, putting the lives of others before themselves.
“There’s more,” Chloe said gently. “Florence’s final entries describe an incident in 1899. Authorities had somehow learned about their work, possibly from someone who bore a grudge against one of the women they’d helped. They came to arrest Florence and seize the records.”
Kathleen’s stomach clenched. “What happened?”
“Florence burned some of the documents before they could reach her, but she refused to reveal the locations of the women she’d helped or their new identities. According to her journal, she told the authorities that she’d rather die than betray the trust of her ‘girls,’ as she called them.”
