She looked like a person who had spent years waiting for a locked door to open and was terrified to discover what stood behind it.
“Put the gun down,” she whispered.
Richard did not move.
“Tell me first.”
Eleanor stared at the carpet.
“Thomas came home with documents.”
“What documents?”
“Papers that would have ruined your father.”
Richard laughed once without humor.
“My father was the most respected man in the county.”
“He was respected by men who benefited from his decisions.”
Isaiah watched Richard’s face change.
Eleanor had never spoken about the late Colonel Whitmore in that tone.
Richard lowered the pistol enough that its barrel pointed toward the floor.
“Go on.”
Eleanor drew a painful breath.
“Thomas found records proving your father had forged the transfer of land belonging to the Bell family.”
Richard frowned.
“The Bells sold that land before I was born.”
“They did not sell it.”
Isaiah remembered the old boundary stones near the eastern creek.
He remembered his father warning him never to move them, even when the overseer ordered a new fence.
Thomas had asked Isaiah to help him examine the foundations of the abandoned Bell farmhouse.
Behind a loose hearthstone they had found a tin box filled with letters and a survey bearing the county clerk’s original seal.
The documents showed that the Bell widow had refused to sign away her property.
Her name had appeared on a deed three months after her recorded death.
Thomas had carried copies to the mill because he feared someone was searching his room.
Isaiah had been repairing a broken wheel when the young man arrived.
Thomas told him to finish the work and leave before dark.
Isaiah stayed because Thomas had once intervened when an overseer threatened Isaiah’s younger sister.
That act had not made Thomas a hero, and Isaiah understood the limits of the young man’s courage.
But it had made him someone Isaiah believed might keep a promise.
Richard listened as Isaiah described the tin box.
“Where is it now?” he asked.
“I don’t know where Thomas put it.”
Eleanor looked up suddenly.
“He gave it to me.”
Richard stared at her.
“You had it?”
“For one night.”
“Where is it?”
“I gave it back when your father threatened to have Isaiah’s mother sold south.”
Isaiah felt the old anger rise through his chest.
His mother had been taken away anyway.
She had disappeared before sunrise, and nobody at Willow Creek would tell him which trader had purchased her.
