Chapter 4 - The Letters Silas Never Read
Silas told Evelyn everything that afternoon.
Not willingly.
She simply refused to leave the kitchen until he did.
Ruth’s illness had lasted eight months.
Doctors.
Travel.
Medicine.
Then funeral expenses.
Silas had borrowed against the ranch.
A brutal winter followed.
Cattle died.
Debt accumulated.
Caleb Voss purchased the note from the bank.
“How much?” Evelyn asked.
“More than I can pay.”
“That isn’t a number.”
Silas gave it.
Evelyn’s stomach tightened.
The amount was substantial but not impossible.
“When is it due?”
“March.”
“And if you cannot pay?”
“Voss gets the northern acreage.”
Hazel had been listening from the hallway.
Silas saw her.
“How long have you been there?”
“Long enough.”
“You were told to stay upstairs.”
“You were going to send her away without telling her.”
“This has nothing to do with Miss Mercer.”
“It has everything to do with her!”
Hazel’s voice cracked.
“You think we don’t know what happens if you lose that pasture?”
Silas went still.
Hazel continued.
“The herd gets smaller. Then Thomas quits school to work. Then Clara starts cooking everything. Then maybe you send Bennett and Eli to Aunt Margaret because there isn’t enough room or money—”
“I would never split this family.”
“You already are!”
Silas recoiled.
Hazel began crying.
“Every day you leave before sunrise. You come home after we’re asleep. You barely talk. You don’t sit with us. You don’t read to Eli. You don’t know Clara hates the dark now. You didn’t know Thomas tore his coat three weeks ago because he sewed it himself.”
Thomas stared at the floor.
Hazel wiped her face.
“You didn’t lose us because Mama died, Papa.”
Silas looked devastated.
“You stopped coming home.”
Nobody spoke.
Evelyn understood then why Hazel had written those letters.
The girl had not been searching for a replacement mother.
She had been searching for someone who could force her father to see them.
Silas walked outside.
Evelyn found him near the barn.
“I don’t need sympathy.”
“I wasn’t offering it.”
He looked at her sharply.
“You need to speak to your daughter.”
“I know.”
“No. You need to listen to her.”
Silas stared toward the mountains.
“After Ruth died, I thought if I kept the ranch running, everything else would hold.”
“It didn’t.”
“No.”
“Then stop pretending labor can repair grief.”
He looked at her.
“That sounds practiced.”
Evelyn hesitated.
“My father did the same after my mother died.”
Silas waited.
“He worked constantly. Provided everything except himself.”
“What happened?”
“I left.”
That answer landed heavily.
Evelyn turned toward the house.
“I’m staying until tomorrow.”
Silas frowned.
“You said through Christmas.”
“I changed my mind.”
“Why?”
“Because Hazel wrote me for four months.”
“That isn’t your responsibility.”
“No.”
“Then why?”
Evelyn looked back at him.
“Because somebody finally needs to answer her honestly.”
That evening, Silas entered Hazel’s room.
Evelyn did not hear most of the conversation.
Only fragments.
“I’m sorry.”
“I was scared.”
“I know.”
“No, Papa, you didn’t.”
Then silence.
Much later Hazel entered the kitchen.
Her eyes were red.
“He says you’re leaving tomorrow.”
“I might.”
“Please don’t.”
Evelyn’s heart tightened.
“I cannot stay because you ask me to.”
“Why not?”
“Because that would make me another person pretending everything is fine when it isn’t.”
Hazel sat opposite her.
“What if Papa asks?”
Evelyn looked toward the hall.
“That would be different.”
The next morning Silas drove her toward town.
Neither spoke for three miles.
Finally he said, “I read your letters twice.”
Evelyn looked at him.
“Why?”
“I wanted to know whether Hazel invented you too.”
“And?”
“She didn’t.”
Something vulnerable passed between them.
At the depot, Silas unloaded her bag.
The train would arrive in forty minutes.
Evelyn stood beside the platform.
Silas seemed about to say something.
Instead he handed her money.
“For the ticket.”
She did not take it.
“You didn’t deceive me.”
“My family did.”
“That debt belongs to them?”
His jaw tightened.
“No.”
“Then neither does this.”
The whistle sounded in the distance.
Silas looked toward the tracks.
Then back at Evelyn.
And for one extraordinary moment she thought he might ask her to stay.
He opened his mouth.
But five voices shouted behind them.
They turned.
Hazel, Thomas, Clara, Bennett and Eli were running toward the depot.
And Hazel held something in her hand.
A stack of letters.
Not Evelyn’s.
Letters addressed to Silas.
Written by his children.
May you like
Dozens of them.
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