“I understand, but what is it that you think happened?”
“What do you mean? She was held against her will in that cabin. Tied like an animal. Bound to abed. What doyouthink happened?”
“Not what you’re thinking. Did she say something to you that she did not say to anyone else? Do you know she was raped?” He observed Fiona flinch, but he did not call the word back, did not try to soften it. “Do you have reason to suspect? Remington did not.”
She threw up her hands. “How would he know? If he asked her if they violated her, she would deny it, but I knowthese things. Iknowthem, Thaddeus, and I know Phoebe. She could drink hemlock and would only admit to a mild case of dyspepsia.”
Thaddeus stood and went to her. She did not pull away when he gently took her by the wrists and lowered them. He held her hands loosely. She cast her eyes downward and watched the sweep of his thumbs across the pale blue veins. Her breathing slowed.
“Will you say it now?” he asked, his voice calm, barely a whisper.
She shook her head, unable to look at him.
“There should be at least this much trust between us,” he said. It was the wrong thing to say, but Thaddeus didn’t know that until it was said. She wrested her hands from him and stepped away, and now that she was looking at him again, he wished she weren’t. The icy rage was gone. Her eyes burned hot. Angry tears hovered but did not spill, and he was helpless in the face of them, not because a woman’s tears had ever undone him, but because he did not understand what he had done to provoke them.
“You should never speak of what you don’t understand.”
Thaddeus did not try to call Fiona back as she walked away, and he harbored no hope that she would return. He was not even sure she would hear him. He stood just as he was, hands at his sides, lips pressed into a grim line, until he heard Ellie bang a pot in the kitchen. The sound jerked him out of his stillness. Turning on his heel, he went to seek her out. After more than a score of years living in each other’s pockets, he could depend on her to have something to say. He might even listen.
• • •
Remington opened the saddlebag that Ellie had filled for him and began to unpack it. “Come away from there,” he told Phoebe. She was standing at the door poking her head through the small opening she’d made. “It’s finally decently warm in here and you are letting in both the cold and the damp.”
She was reluctant to step away and it showed in how long it took her to close the door. “I think the rain is slowing.”
Remington cocked an ear toward the roof. “I can hear.”
“I needed to see it with my eyes.” Phoebe crossed her ankles, folded her legs, and gracefully lowered herself to the mattress so she was sitting opposite Remington. “The stream’s still rising, though.”
“And it will continue to rise for a while after the rain’s stopped.”
“You don’t seem to be concerned. Water is lapping at the smokehouse.”
“We’re going to be fine, Phoebe.” He held out a chunk of bread to her and a slice of ham. “I couldn’t find any plates. Old Man McCauley took everything his pack mules could carry when he left.”
Phoebe took Remington’s offering, tore off a smaller portion of the bread, and put it in her mouth. “Did you know him?” she asked around that bite of food.
“No, not so I could call him a friend. He was hardly an acquaintance. We crossed paths in town, but out here I gave him a wide berth. Everyone did.”
“So this place is known. If people avoided it, it’s because they knew it was here.”
“Yes.” He rolled his slice of ham and bit off the end as if it were a cigar.
“It follows, doesn’t it, that Mr. Shoulders is likely from the area, not from Frost Falls specifically, but from somewhere close by.”
“It’s possible. Northeast Rail’s detective is working from that assumption.”
She nodded. “I don’t think you are, though.”
“How’s that?”
When Phoebe shrugged, her unbound hair fell over her shoulder and she swung her head to toss it back. “I’m not sure. I think you have other ideas that you don’t want to share.” She watched him take a second large bite from his ham cigar and knew he had no intention of responding. “That’s what I thought.”
Remington slid one of the canteens toward her. “There’s cheese in the bag, if you’d like that.”
“Not just now, thank you. In the event we could be here for days, I think rationing is in order.”
Laughing, he shook his head. “If you don’t eat it, I’m sure the mice will. We’re leaving tomorrow morning. First light. I promise.” He used his chin to point to the window. “I don’t anticipate the rain letting up completely until dark, maybe not then. Better if we wait.”
