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“What is her name?”

Emily’s gaze dropped to the careful script on the front. “Eden Whitcomb.”

Aunt Cleo’s head came up slowly, her eyes sharpening. “Eden.”

Maddy leaned into Georgia’s shoulder, her whisper carrying in the quiet room. “That’s a pretty name.”

Bass took a step forward, his boots heavy on the floorboards. “You invited a woman here while Jesse’s lying half-dead in the next room?”

“No.” Emily’s chin came up. The steel in her voice was new. “I gave a woman the choice none of us got at the beginning. Told her the truth. Left it between her and God.”

Bass stared at her, his anger losing its footing. Nate’s eyes drifted to the sickroom door.

Behind it, Jesse slept fitfully, bruised and bandaged, flinching from shadows only he could see and carrying pieces of a secret that might threaten them all.

Somewhere east of Flat River, a woman named Eden Whitcomb would Emily’s words by lamplight. She might fold the letter away in a drawer. She might kneel beside her bed and pray over what mercy would cost.

Or maybe she was already on the road, her wheels already carrying her west and wouldn’t read the second letter at all because it hadn’t arrived.

Nate didn’t know which possibility tightened his chest more. He felt Carolina’s fingers squeeze his, and he looked down at his wife.

“God has carried stranger things to Flat River than a woman with a letter,” she said.

From her chair, Aunt Cleo gave a slow, deliberate nod, the lamplight catching the silver threads in her hair. “That He has.”

A lone horse trotted past in the street outside. A sudden gust rattled the clinic door in its frame, and the lamps shuddered.

No one turned toward the sound. Jesse’s shallow but steady breaths whispered from the next room, and Izzy’s own breathing had finally evened out where she still kneeled, her head resting against Aunt Cleo’s skirt. Nate drew Carolina to his side. She leaned into him, tired and steady, and he held on.

Emily’s fingers trembled only once as she lifted the envelope and set it back on the mantel, propping it carefully against the clock’s wooden base.

The envelope waited like the next turn in the road.

Chapter One

October 1880, Willow Bend, Missouri

Eden Whitcomb found her brother’s wedding shoes beneath the kitchen table, even though he’d sworn he had packed them.

She planted one hand on her hip and held up the shoes.

“Josiah.”

From the front room came a thump, a muttered word he had promised Mama he no longer used, and her brother’s reply. “I packed them.”

“You packed something.”

“I distinctly remember the shoes.”

“You distinctly remembered your shaving razor, too. That turned up in the flour bin.”

“That was strategic.”

She found him kneeling beside his valise, one arm braced against a chair and his bad leg stretched stiffly to the side. Three years ago, she would have rushed to help him.

She stayed in the doorway.

Josiah grinned up at her. “I was hiding the razor from Mama. She said if I cut myself shaving before the wedding, Laurel might reconsider.”