Mrs.
Fenwick led her to a narrow cabinet behind the downstairs pantry.
There she had kept copies of lists Richard ordered destroyed, hiding them beneath flour sacks because nobody inspected a place associated with kitchen work.
Catherine recognized signatures from the estate office and several receipts for payments to Sutter.
The amounts corresponded to entries in Lydia’s ledger.
“Why did you preserve these?” she asked.
Mrs.
Fenwick looked toward the yard.
“Because I knew someone might need to prove what happened after we were gone.” Catherine touched the papers carefully.
The housekeeper had accomplished through patient courage what Catherine had been unable to do with wealth and status.
That evening Richard announced he intended to sell several families to cover losses caused by the “theft” of his records.
Mrs.
Fenwick kept her face still while Catherine asked for an accounting.
Richard told her it was none of her concern.
She reminded him that her father’s settlement had helped purchase the land and that she had a right to know whether property was being pledged against her inheritance.
Richard laughed.
“You think your father’s money makes you a partner?” Catherine answered, “I think you used my signature on papers I never saw.” His expression changed.
For the first time he appeared to consider that Catherine might possess copies he could not retrieve.
Mrs.
Fenwick used the argument as a distraction to send a message through a delivery boy.
It named the families Richard intended to move and warned that a private sale might take place within the week.
She did not know whether the message would reach Alden, but she placed it in the hands of a boy whose sister worked for Miriam.
Afterward she returned to the kitchen and prepared the colonel’s supper.
She seasoned it as she always had, not because she respected him, but because the ordinary rhythm of the house was the cover beneath which people were making choices he could no longer fully control.
Chapter 27: The Hidden Map
Alden opened Lydia’s ledger beneath a bright window and carefully separated the stitched inner cover from its binding.
Inside lay a thin sheet of paper folded into rectangles the width of matchsticks.
Lydia had drawn routes connecting Riverbend, Mason’s Crossing, the river hotel, and two farmhouses near a county boundary.
Beside each route appeared small symbols indicating the nature of the holding place: a square for a locked room, a circle for a transfer point, and a triangle for a person known to oppose the trade.
