But the locket belonged to a dead sister whose child had disappeared.
Nothing connected, and that was precisely why he feared it.
Lottie brought him a blanket and sat nearby.
“You don’t need to solve all this tonight,” she said.
“If I don’t, Ruth may be hurt.”
“I know.”
“If I do, a child may be hurt.”
“I know that too.”
He watched the lantern flame.
“What if the baby is mine?”
Lottie answered slowly.
“We cannot tell from somebody else’s fear.”
“Eleanor could claim it.”
“She can claim the moon belongs to her.”
“People might still believe her.”
“Some will.”
She folded the blanket around his shoulders.
“But the child isn’t a weapon just because she wants to use one.”
At sunrise Mercy returned with more of her aunt’s story.
Clara Whitmore had lived at Hawthorne before Eleanor’s marriage to Nathaniel.
She was remembered in family records as a young widow who died abroad, but Mercy’s aunt had attended her during a difficult birth in Virginia.
Clara’s infant son had been recorded as stillborn.
Augusta Dobbins insisted she had heard him cry.
After the birth, the family dismissed the attendants and refused Augusta permission to see the child again.
“My aunt has carried that memory for eighteen years,” Mercy said.
“Why say anything now?” Caleb asked.
“Because she saw the same trick beginning again.”
“Do you believe the children were switched?”
“I believe someone wants people to lose track of which child belongs to whom.”
“Why involve Miriam?”
“She could testify that her own daughter was carried into Hawthorne.”
“And if she does?”
“She could be sold or punished before anyone hears her.”
Caleb stood abruptly.
“Then we have to find her.”
Lottie looked toward the door.
“We have to find Ruth as well.”
The two names seemed to pull him in opposite directions.
Mercy opened her notebook to a page filled with small careful letters.
“My aunt says Miriam has been sent to the house of Doctor Avery’s brother near the county line.”
Caleb remembered Doctor Avery from the estate, the red medical bag and the physician’s refusal to examine sick workers unless summoned by a white employer.
“Could your aunt reach her?”
“She tried.”
“What happened?”
Mercy hesitated.
“The house was empty when she arrived.”
Caleb looked at the half-open door and felt the old certainty of danger return.
Someone was moving the witnesses before they could be heard.
And Caleb was still the witness Eleanor wanted most.
