She pulled it free and extended it to James. “Here.”
He stared at the paper in her hand for a long moment, as though it might poison him if he touched it. Then his fingers closed around it—those strong, capable hands that had held her so gently yesterday now gripping the evidence of his mother’s murder with white-knuckled fierceness.
But he didn’t open it. Didn’t unfold the pages.
He just stood there, holding the letter while his gaze drifted past her shoulder into the shadowy depths of the barn. His chest rose and fell with shallow breaths that spoke of barely controlled emotion.
The silence swirled between them, thick and suffocating. She wanted to fill it with explanations, with apologies, with anything that might ease the dreadful stillness radiating from him.
But what words could possibly matter now? She’d just told him that her family—her mother’s poor judgment and desperate choices—had brought a killer into his home. Had stolen his own mother from him.
“I’m so sorry.” The words felt pathetically inadequate. But nothing would bring his mother back.
Each second dragged like hours while she stood there waiting for him to speak. To say something. Anything. Her chest tightened until breathing felt like trying to draw air through wet wool.
Like stone, James stared into the distance. The muscles in his jaw worked like he was trying to form words, but nothing came out. Only that terrible, crushing silence.
She’d expected anger. Had braced for it, actually—for him to turn on her with accusations, to demand to know why she’d kept this secret so long, to order her off the ranch and out of his life forever.
That would have been easier somehow. Cleaner. Like ripping off a bandage instead of peeling it back slowly, tearing away layer after layer of skin with it.
But this was worse than any rage could have been.
She had to get out of here. Had she given him enough time to ask questions? To rail at her if he wanted to?
She took a step back. “I…I’m sorry.” The poison of her words bled into the air around them, choking and dark.
James still didn’t speak or look at her, so she backed again. Her lungs screamed for air, for relief from the oppression of this barn.
She spun and ran for the door.
CHAPTER 22
James couldn’t think of the pain in his leg. Not now.
The weight in his chest felt far heavier, pressing down with every breath, until it was worse than the throbbing in the broken bone.
He stood in the barn. Incapable of moving. No noises drifted in except for the sounds of dust settling and the faint trace of Rose’s footsteps already fading. The letter in his fist was crumpled and damp from his sweat.
He couldn’t let go, as if the words themselves might vanish if his fingers loosened their grip.
Vincent Dunhill had murdered his mother.
The thought circled, again and again, refusing to tuck itself away or make sense. For years, he’d believed what everyone said—consumption, the wasting disease. The blood on her handkerchiefs. The way she faded to near nothing in those last weeks.
He’d only been nine then. Old enough to watch her slip away. Young enough to trust the doctor’s quiet explanation and not wonder what lay beneath it.
But poison. Vincent had poisoned her.
The barn door creaked open, and his muscles tensed. Rose, coming back to?—
“James?” Enoch’s deep voice cut through his spiraling thoughts. “What’s wrong?”
He turned to his brother standing in the doorway, his broad shoulders blocking the morning light. He studied James with the same steady gaze he used on a limping colt, patient but thorough, taking in every sign of hurt.
“I…” The words stuck in his throat like broken glass. How did he even begin to explain this?
Enoch stepped closer. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
