Chapter 49
The office door stood open.
Silas.
He had come back.
Or never gone far.
Henrietta reached the porch and saw inside.
The desk was burning.
Shelves along the wall had caught.
Papers curled black in the heat.
And on the floor beside the desk, half hidden by smoke, lay the familiar leather shape of Calvin’s account ledger.
Silas had brought it back.
Not to steal it.
To make certain it burned with everything else.
“Henrietta!”
Calvin’s voice came from the cabin.
She turned.
He had dragged himself out of bed.
One hand gripped the doorframe.
His splinted leg hung useless beneath him.
“No!”
He tried to step into the yard.
His face twisted with agony.
Henrietta looked back at the flames.
The ledger was already burning along one edge.
The evidence.
The auction.
Tomorrow.
Everything converged in that room.
Calvin lurched forward on his shattered leg.
“Henrietta, don’t you dare!”
She gathered her skirt in one hand, covered her mouth with the other, and ran straight toward the flames.
Part 5 - Not Without My Wife
Smoke struck Henrietta before the heat did. It rolled from the office doorway in a thick, bitter sheet that tasted of lamp oil, scorched paper, and old pine, turning the familiar room beyond into a wavering tunnel of orange and black. She bent low as she crossed the threshold, one hand gripping the side of her skirt and the other pressed over her mouth, while behind her Calvin shouted her name with a fury sharpened by fear. The desk had become a furnace, its drawers spitting sparks, and the leather account ledger on the floor curled at the corners as fire ate through the pages.
For half a heartbeat, her eyes fixed on it.
Then she looked beneath the desk.
The iron cashbox was still there.
“Leave it!” Calvin’s voice came through the doorway, ragged and nearer than it had been. “Henrietta, get out!”
She coughed hard enough to double over, tears springing instantly to her eyes. The ledger lay closer, almost within reach, but the spine had already split and the pages inside were glowing red at their edges. She knew better than to waste precious seconds pretending it could be saved. Two days earlier, after Silas Vane had smiled too smoothly over Calvin’s loan figures, she had copied every page that troubled her and locked the copies beneath the desk.
The cashbox was heavier than she remembered.