“So are you.”
“I thought they were going to send you farther south.”
“They tried to send me back.”
Ruth stepped away and examined his face.
“Did they hurt you?”
Caleb nodded.
“Not on the road.”
“Before?”
He looked toward the blacksmith’s door.
“At Hawthorne.”
Ruth touched his hand without asking for details.
Hester stood nearby with a look of relief that made her seem suddenly older.
“The mistress suspects us,” she said.
“She questioned Ruth before we left.”
Caleb felt his shoulders tighten.
“Are you safe here?”
“For the night,” Hester answered.
“The blacksmith is helping us reach the northern route.”
Caleb turned to Amos.
“Ruth should go ahead.”
“And you?” Ruth asked.
“I still need to find out what happened to the babies.”
Ruth shook her head.
“You have spent your whole life trying to keep me safe.”
“I won’t let you go back for Eleanor’s sake.”
“I’m not going back for Eleanor.”
“Then for whom?”
Caleb thought of Miriam holding Ada and of the unseen boy in the bassinet.
“For the people she can still hurt.”
Ruth sat on a low bench.
“If you choose to help them, I won’t tell you not to.”
“But I won’t pretend I can live easily while you’re in danger.”
Caleb looked at his sister and recognized the strength their mother had always tried to protect.
“I won’t leave without telling you where I’m going,” he promised.
“And I won’t keep secrets just because I think you can’t bear them.”
Ruth nodded.
“That’s a promise I can trust.”
They sat together until the blacksmith returned to light the forge, talking about their mother and the small garden she had tended behind the laundry house.
Caleb remembered her growing beans in a chipped blue pot, insisting that even a narrow patch of borrowed earth deserved seeds.
Ruth remembered the stories their father told about a carpenter who built his own door and kept the key.
For a little while the urgency around them softened.
But on the road behind the shop, a rider passed without stopping, carrying Hawthorne’s seal on his satchel.
Caleb watched him go and knew the hardest decision still waited ahead.
Chapter Nineteen: The False Statement
Doctor Avery arrived at Hawthorne carrying a document already prepared for Caleb’s signature.
Eleanor read it beside the fireplace while Colonel Nathaniel Whitmore stood at the window.
The statement declared that Caleb Mercer had witnessed the birth of Eleanor’s son, observed no other infant in the room, and knew of no reason to question the child’s parentage.
