I fed Jonah potato broth, tiny pieces of salt pork, and one of my precious eggs.
He protested until I told him dead men were expensive houseguests.
By the third morning the wind weakened.
Blackpine emerged slowly from beneath the snow.
Chimneys appeared first.
Then roofs.
Then men with shovels cutting narrow paths through drifts taller than fences.
Cutter returned before noon.
This time he did not come alone.
Half a dozen townspeople followed at a distance, drawn by his claim that the murderer Jonah Reddick had threatened me.
That was clever.
He was trying to place the old story around Jonah again before either of us could speak.
I stepped onto my porch carrying Rose’s letter.
Jonah remained inside.
Cutter raised his voice so everyone could hear.
“Hannah, move away from the house.
We know Reddick is in there.”
“You knew before I told you.”
A few heads turned.
Cutter ignored that.
“He is dangerous.”
“Did you see him attack me?”
“No.”
“Did anyone?”
Silence.
“Did anyone see him kill Rose?”
Cutter’s jaw tightened.
“We’ve been through this.”
“No.
We repeated it.
That isn’t the same thing.”
I unfolded the letter.
Cutter took one step toward the porch.
“Give me that.”
The command came so naturally that everybody heard what he had forgotten to hide.
I held the page higher.
“Why?”
He stopped.
“What is it, Calvin?” someone behind him asked.
Cutter turned on them.
“Nothing.”
I began reading.
Not every word.
Only enough.
Rose’s discovery of the duplicate property records.
The forged transfers.
The secret valuations near the railroad pass.
My name written months before the public survey.
Cutter tried to interrupt twice.
The third time he shouted that Rose Reddick was dead and no dead woman could accuse anyone.
That was when a voice came from the road.
“I never said I was dead.”
Every person on my porch turned.
Rose Reddick stood beside the path through the snow.
She was thinner than the woman I remembered, her face sharpened by years away, but nobody needed to be told who she was.
Calvin Cutter went white.
