Caleb checked again.
“Every word.”
Benjamin placed a pen before him.
Caleb looked at it without reaching.
He had been threatened for speaking, and the thought of signing a public account made his hands tremble.
Amos noticed.
“A signature can be used against you,” the older man said.
“You don’t have to make one today.”
“If I wait, somebody else will sign my name,” Caleb answered.
“They already tried.”
He took the pen.
He wrote Caleb Mercer carefully, leaving enough space between the letters that nobody could pretend he had made a hurried mark without understanding the page.
Benjamin signed as the person who transcribed the statement, and Samuel wrote that he had watched Caleb approve its contents voluntarily.
Then Benjamin made a second copy in his own hand and gave the first to Sarah Mott for safekeeping.
“This will not make the law fair,” he said.
“But it may keep someone from saying you never spoke.”
Caleb held the pen a moment longer.
He did not feel safe.
He felt that something had changed shape inside him.
For the first time, his own version of the story existed outside Eleanor’s room.
Chapter Twenty-Three: The Last Message from Hawthorne
Eleanor’s next letter reached Lottie Reed wrapped around a small lock of dark hair.
The courier was a boy of fourteen who claimed he had been promised six dollars if he delivered it without opening the packet.
Lottie paid him for his trouble and watched him walk away before breaking the seal.
The message instructed Caleb to return to Hawthorne before the winter trustees’ meeting.
It promised that Ruth would be “placed beyond further inconvenience” and that Amos’s debts would be settled.
It also warned that the colonel could order the infant removed unless Caleb confirmed Eleanor’s account.
The lock of hair was attached to a card marked “My son.”
Caleb read the words in Sarah’s kitchen and felt anger rise through his fear.
“She thinks a piece of hair will make me obey,” he said.
“She thinks the child can speak for her.”
Sarah took the packet gently.
“We should preserve this.”
“For whom?”
“For anyone who must later decide whether you were threatened.”
Amos examined the letter’s handwriting.
“She has not promised you freedom.”
“No,” Caleb said.
“Only another place and another set of orders.”
Benjamin looked troubled.
“There is one risk we should discuss openly.”
Caleb turned toward him.
“What?”
“If Nathaniel asserts that you fathered the child, he may try to make your life the price of protecting the Whitmore name.”
