Chapter 7 - A Light Beyond the Ridge
Rebecca forgot the armed stranger.
For one impossible second, she forgot everything.
The woman on the opposite ridge sat perfectly still.
Snow moved between them.
Dark coat.
Chestnut horse.
Wooden button.
Rebecca’s heart pounded so hard she could hear it.
“Mama?”
The word came out too softly to cross the distance.
The stranger behind the rock moved.
Rebecca turned just as he ran downhill.
She raised her rifle but did not fire.
He vanished among pines.
When Rebecca looked back toward the ridge, the woman was gone.
“No.”
Rebecca ran.
She crossed the creek.
Climbed through snow.
Slipped twice.
By the time she reached the ridge, there was only a trail of hoofprints leading east.
“Mama!”
The mountains returned her voice.
Nothing else.
Rebecca followed the tracks nearly two miles.
Darkness came quickly.
Finally she stopped.
A lantern appeared behind her.
Lydia.
“You’re going to freeze.”
“I saw her.”
Lydia’s face changed.
“Who?”
“You know who.”
“Rebecca—”
“She had the button.”
Lydia looked toward the tracks.
“What kind of horse?”
“Chestnut.”
“How old?”
“I don’t know.”
“Coat?”
“Dark.”
Lydia mounted slowly.
“Come back to the shack.”
“No.”
“If that was Hannah, she chose not to come down.”
Rebecca stared.
The truth hurt.
“She saw me.”
“Yes.”
“She heard me.”
“Probably.”
“And left.”
Lydia’s voice softened.
“Then she had a reason.”
Rebecca laughed bitterly.
“Everybody in my family has reasons.”
She followed Lydia home because freezing on the ridge would answer nothing.
Micah arrived the next morning.
Rebecca confronted him before he removed his hat.
“My mother is alive.”
Micah went still.
“That wasn’t a question.”
“No.”
“You knew?”
“I hoped.”
“You knew.”
“I knew someone had been leaving signs.”
“What signs?”
“Money for Silas.”
Rebecca stared.
“Money?”
“Small amounts. Sent anonymously.”
“When?”
“Every winter after Hannah disappeared.”
Rebecca stepped back.
“My father let me wash laundry while my mother sent money?”
“He never spent it.”
“What?”
Micah looked miserable.
“Silas believed spending it might reveal he had contact with her.”
“Where is it?”
“He hid it.”
“Where?”
“In your old house.”
Rebecca closed her eyes.
The house Harlon now controlled.
“How much?”
“I don’t know.”
Rebecca laughed without humor.
“Wonderful.”
Micah reached for her shoulder.
She stepped away.
“No.”
He let his hand fall.
“I know you’re angry.”
“You all decided my life for me.”
“We tried to protect you.”
“That sentence is becoming an insult.”
Micah nodded slowly.
“Fair.”
Lydia sat at the table.
“We need to know who attacked Rebecca.”
Micah’s face hardened.
“What attacker?”
Rebecca showed him the cartridge casing.
Then the tracks.
Then Elias’s second survey.
Micah studied it.
“Tunnel.”
“Do you know it?”
“No.”
Rebecca pointed to the notation.
PUIT BURIED HERE.
Micah frowned.
“Could refer to ore.”
“Or evidence.”
“Or a body.”
The shack became silent.
Rebecca thought of Elias.
“Do you think my grandfather is in that tunnel?”
Nobody answered.
They waited until midday before exploring.
Thomas Reed and Caleb joined them.
Five people entered the northern ravine.
The tunnel mouth had been hidden behind rockfall and brush.
Caleb found old timbers.
Thomas cleared snow.
After an hour they uncovered an entrance.
Cold air flowed from darkness.
Rebecca lit a lantern.
Lydia stopped her.
“You stay outside.”
Rebecca looked at her.
Lydia sighed.
“I knew that wouldn’t work.”
They entered together.
The tunnel descended gradually.
Old pick marks scarred the walls.
Water dripped.
After fifty yards they found abandoned rails.
Then crates.
Rebecca wiped dust from one.
PUIT MERCANTILE.
The stamp was twenty years old.
Thomas whistled.
“Why would Puit store goods in Mercer’s mine?”
Rebecca opened the crate.
Inside were sacks.
Rotten beyond use.
Another crate contained rusted tools.
A third contained paper ledgers sealed inside a metal tin.
Rebecca opened it.
Freight records.
She recognized Delbert Marsh’s family name.
Shipments passed through the tunnel for years.
Silver ore.
Timber.
Supplies.
All removed from Mercer property.
“This is theft,” Caleb said.
“Twenty years of it,” Rebecca replied.
They continued.
Farther inside, the tunnel split.
One branch had collapsed.
The other led to an underground chamber.
Rebecca’s lantern illuminated a wagon.
Beside it lay a coat.
Old.
Brown wool.
Lydia stopped.
“Oh God.”
Rebecca looked at her.
“You recognize it?”
Lydia approached slowly.
“Elias.”
Rebecca’s stomach turned.
The coat had been folded.
Not dropped.
On top lay a pocket watch.
Lydia touched it.
“He carried this.”
Rebecca looked around.
“No body.”
Thomas inspected the ground.
“Someone cleaned this place.”
“What do you mean?”
“No loose gear. No bones. No old camp. Just these.”
Rebecca picked up the watch.
The back had initials.
E.M.
Then Caleb called from deeper in the chamber.
“You need to see this.”
Behind the wagon was a wooden door built into the rock.
Locked.
Recent lock.
Not twenty years old.
Rebecca stared.
“Someone has been using this.”
Thomas touched the metal.
“Last few years.”
Rebecca thought of the stranger.
The woman on the ridge.
Her mother.
Caleb broke the lock.
The door opened.
Inside was a small room.
Blankets.
Food tins.
A lantern.
A narrow cot.
And on the table—
a photograph of Rebecca.
Not as a child.
Recent.
Taken from a distance in Pine Hollow.
Rebecca picked it up.
On the back someone had written:
She has Silas’s stubbornness.
Rebecca’s hands began trembling.
Beside the photograph lay three letters.
All addressed to Hannah.
None mailed.
Rebecca opened the first.
Mama,
I don’t know where you are.
I don’t know whether you are alive.
Sometimes I’m angry at you for leaving. Then I’m angry at myself for being angry.
Rebecca stared.
She recognized the handwriting.
Her own.
She had written that letter when she was thirteen.
Then burned it.
Or thought she had.
She looked at Micah.
His face turned pale.
“You took them.”
“Silas saved them from the stove.”
“And gave them to her.”
“I left them at a place Hannah knew.”
Rebecca’s throat tightened.
Her mother had read them.
All those words Rebecca believed had disappeared into smoke.
She opened the second.
At the bottom, beneath Rebecca’s childhood handwriting, someone had added four words in another hand.
I heard you, sweetheart.
Rebecca dropped into the chair.
She knew that handwriting.
Hannah.
Footsteps sounded in the tunnel.
Everyone turned.
A woman appeared in the doorway.
Snow clung to her dark coat.
Age had changed her face.
Grief had changed it more.
But Rebecca knew her instantly.
Hannah Boon looked at her daughter for the first time in six years.
Neither moved.
May you like
Then Hannah whispered,
“I’m sorry it took me so long to come home.”
