Prologue

Lexington, Kentucky

1860

Is he coming home?

Grace Hawthorne could not recall when the question stopped being ‘When is he coming home?’ and became ‘Is he coming home?’ Against all reason, a small part of her hoped he would not return. Or else, that he might return a changed man, more like the one she had married rather than one who smelled as though he had bathed in a tub of whiskey.

She watched the flickering candlelight dance along the darkened walls of the cabin. Except for the dull creak of her rocking chair and the distant thunder of a coming storm, all was quiet. Grace closed her eyes, her hand drifting to her stomach. Over the last several weeks, her body had changed; her dresses still fit, but differently than she was accustomed to.

Grace rubbed her tired eyes and tipped her head back to gaze listlessly at the ceiling. Despite the exhaustion clinging like a phantom to her limbs, she could not force herself to sleep. Not with her husband gone. Even if she lay in bed and tried to rest, her mind worked ceaselessly, plaguing her with fears of what might happen to him. What if he drank too much and brawled with someone? What if he gambled away the little money they had?

She clenched her teeth at the thought.

I should leave him. I could go to my father. He would help me.

That was a new thought, too.

She had loved this man once. Charles had been strong and dependable, a little quick-tempered, but not unusually so. He had been kind to her and painted beautiful pictures of their lives together, his words winding about Grace like a spell.

Could Grace really bring herself to leave him? She had loved—and sometimes still did—the man she had married. Returning to her father’s house, and with a child no less, would be admitting defeat. It would be accepting that her beloved husband had become someone new and cruel, and he would never again be the man she loved. It would be admitting a failure, but Grace could not determine if it was his or hers.

The door creaked, and Grace stiffened. Her husband’s footfalls were heavy and uneven. Grace turned her head and gazed over her shoulder at Charles. His massive form was dark and looming, made more ominous by how heavily he staggered across the floor. A lump rose in Grace’s throat as she smelled the cloud of tobacco and gin that followed him.

“Grace,” he said, slurring her name.

“You have been gone for a long time,” Grace said, standing slowly.

Charles had left for the bar after supper and it was now well past midnight. Perhaps even later.

“Been playing cards.” He staggered again and reached for the wall to steady himself. “You can’t just leave in the middle of that.”

Grace’s face grew hot. So, he had been gambling—as if the drinking and smoking were not sufficient vices! As if they had an endless amount of money that could be spent recklessly!

“This cannot happen again,” she said, forcing every ounce of authority into her voice. “We have a child on the way. You cannot continue to be this reckless.”

“You dare to criticize me?” he scoffed. “With everything I do to support this family…”

Charles had also been a good worker when Grace had married him, a hired hand for a nearby farm. His wages hadn’t been extravagant, but he had made an honest living. That, until he began spending all of his pay on alcohol, tobacco, and gambling, though. And it was before he had begun staggering home around midday, claiming that he was feeling sick when they both knew he was still intoxicated.

Charles had remained in a near-perpetual state of drunkenness since.

Grace straightened her spine. Her fingers curled into fists, her nails digging into her palms. She was seldom truly angry, but hot fury curled inside her as she thought of the child growing inside her belly.

“Everything you do is not enough,” Grace said. “We are going to have a child soon, and you cannot stagger home at all hours of the night! A child needs stability. I know that you are a good man, and—”

Charles scoffed, and Grace’s face grew hot. Her anger hummed through her entire body, pumping through her was fiercely as her own blood. How dare he behave like she was just an inconvenience to him?

“—you can be better than this,” she continued. “Don’t just dismiss my concerns like you always do! I know that you can be the man I married once again. You must be, for the sake of our baby.”

“And what about you?” Charles snapped. “What have you done to support this family?”

Grace’s hand drifted instinctively to her round stomach, and Charles laughed harshly.

“Is that your contribution?” he sneered, gesturing to her with such force that he nearly toppled over. “Your contribution is giving birth to that child, who will be a burden just like you? That’s why I drink so much, you know—because you’re useless.”

“You don’t mean that,” Grace said, her voice trembling.

How could he be so cruel to her? This man had once called her the love of his life. He’d told her that she was the most beautiful woman in the world, the only person he ever wanted to be with. Grace had thought that she had already accepted her loving husband was gone, but hearing him call her such awful things still stung. She wanted to scream or cry, but if she did, he would only dismiss her worries all the more. He would say that she was being hysterical, that she was making something out of nothing.

“I do,” he insisted. “You’re a waste of money. Do you know how much better my life would be without you constantly…constantly trying… Always insisting that I spend it this way and that!”

“You mean to support the child we made?” Grace asked.

He jabbed an accusing finger at her. “You wanted a baby!” Charles sneered, slurring the words together so badly that Grace barely understood him.

“So did you!” Grace swept her arms out, gesturing to the sitting room. “You wanted all of this—a house of your own, a wife, and a child! Or so you told me when we were courting! Now you have all of that, but you’re still not happy. What is it that you need to be satisfied?”

“I need you to stop being such—being such a—a harpy!” he snapped, hiccupping. “I—I ain’t going to take this lip from you.”

Grace’s chest was tight, and she struggled to fill her lungs with air. “You will,” she said. “I am your wife, and in this I know I am right! If you ever cared about me—”

A sharp crack sliced through the air. Time seemed to slow as Grace’s head snapped to the side. Stinging pain spread over her cheek and jaw, and she raised a hand in disbelief to hold her warm cheek. It was not the worst pain she had ever felt, but she found herself struggling to make sense of it.

Sluggishly, she realized that Charles had struck her. He had never once done so before. Grace searched his face, cast into sharp relief by the candlelight. She silently prayed for even the smallest hint of remorse or regret, for some kernel that might indicate her husband was willing to be better.

She found none. Despite her desire to be strong, her lower lip quivered.

“I suppose you’re going to cry now?” he asked. “To make me feel guilty?”

“No.” That voice did not sound like her own.

Charles snorted and ambled into the bedroom.

Grace remained by the rocking chair, a numbness settling over her body.

He had struck her.

She pressed her fingers to her cheek, as if to confirm that the pain was real. This was not some terrible nightmare. Her husband had truly struck her.

Grace closed her eyes and listened for the creaking of the mattress. Her husband had settled into bed already. A sigh shuddered in her chest. She sank into the rocking chair and stared into the candlelight again.

Why had she argued?

No.

How had she become a woman who lived like this?

Her eyes burned with tears, but Grace forced them back. She needed to think.

It was clear that Charles was not going to be the husband he once had been ever again. She did not understand exactly why he’d changed, but he had. Grace was going to have a child, and she could not expose that child to the man Charles had become. No, it would be better for her baby to have no father at all than to have such a cruel one.

She could not remain in this house any longer. Grace had no choice but to swallow her pride and return to her father. Even if she didn’t want to go back, at least she and the child wouldn’t be alone.

And she knew her father would not blame her.

She rose quietly, trying to muffle the creak of the rocking chair. Most of her personal effects were in the bedroom. Grace knew from experience that her husband would likely fall asleep soon, but she did not dare risk waking him by wandering into their shared room. Her possessions were a small price to pay for ensuring she and her child would be safe.

Grace grabbed an old carpetbag and carefully gathered what she could: the tiny clothes she had sewn for the baby, the bottle she had purchased on a rare day when Charles had not spent all the money, and the linens that her great-grandmother had embroidered with tiny, purple flowers. Everything else would be sacrificed.

Her eyes darted back to the bedroom, imagining the worst. If Charles stumbled out of that room, still drunk and angry, what would he do? She was sure that he wouldn’t take kindly to finding her packing and clearly on the verge of escaping into the night. Grace bit her lip, her heart racing.

You have to keep going, she thought. You can’t stop now.

Once the bag was packed, she waited and listened for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, she heard Charles’ soft snores floating through the air. It was safe to go now.

Grace swallowed roughly as she put on her boots and threw her coat over her dress. After giving the bedroom a final glance, she opened the front door and stepped into the night. The summer air was hot even now, heavy with the storm still brewing on the horizon. Heat lightning streaked across the sky, the flashes stark white against the dark and looming clouds.

How fitting, Grace thought.

She firmly grasped the carpetbag as she walked down the red clay road that led to her father’s house. Charles had wanted to live on the outskirts of town, where it was quiet. Peaceful, he had said.

She set a brisk pace, the humidity and heat quickly sinking through her coat and calico dress. The damp fabric stuck like molasses to her arms, but she kept going. Her eyes darted to the sky, wondering if she might be able to outrun the storm. It seemed to take an eternity of walking in the dark, jumping at every little sound, until she came to her father’s familiar white house. Grace inhaled deeply and, at long last, crossed the yard. She raised a shaking hand and knocked on the front door.

Her pride no longer mattered. Grace just needed to survive.

She waited, her heart hammering against her ribs. It was late, and she knew that no one would be near the door. They might not even hear it.

If not, would she invite herself in? It wasn’t as if her father would reject her, but still, she felt strangely awkward about letting herself into what once had been her home.

The seconds seemed to stretch on endlessly, but at last the door opened. Candlelight spilled out onto the steps, and Grace’s father stood there, his eyes wide with shock.

“Grace! What’s happened?”

His voice, so concerned and gentle, was like a knife directly to her heart. Her eyes burned and the tears finally came. She flung herself into his arms, burying her face into his shoulder. In that moment, she was a young girl again, desperate for her father to protect her from all the horrors of the world.

“I need your help.”

Chapter One

Clay County, Missouri

1860

Ethan did not cry the day his mother died. He told himself it was because he had expected her death for some time. Ma’s health had been declining for years, despite the frequent visits from physicians and every kind of medicine under the sun. Logically, there was no reason to cry when he had known that the end was near. Yet his lack of tears still felt like an insult to the woman who had given him so much.

But maybe it was for the best. Ethan had become accustomed to being the strong one. He could not afford to crumble now, not when his sister depended on him so much.

“Are you all right?” Hannah stood beside him, appearing slight and pale in her heavy black dress.

Ethan shrugged. “The same as you, I imagine.”

“So, terrible?”

That got a wan smile out of him. “Something like that.”

Hannah nodded. “I feel a little better now that everyone else is gone,” she said. “I—I know they meant well, but every time someone told me how wonderful Ma was, I thought I might cry.”

“It’s hard.”

Hannah looked at him, her hazel eyes bloodshot from her tears. “Just us now,” she said. “I don’t know how I would survive without you, Ethan.”

He fixed his gaze on the mound of earth in front of them. In a cemetery filled with grass and weeds and aged stones, Ma’s grave was fresh and poignant. It drew the eye in a way that others did not, and an ache curled in Ethan’s chest when he imagined his ma’s grave, ancient and overgrown like the others were.

“You would find a way,” he said distantly. “You’re strong, Hannah.”

His sister was forced to be so, much like Ethan. Despite his best efforts to take care of Hannah and Ma, Ethan knew he had failed. He had still been a child himself when their father abandoned them, and while he tried to be everything Hannah needed, a brother’s love couldn’t really replace a father. They had all made sacrifices to survive, and Hannah’s had been her childhood.

“No,” Hannah said. “No, Ethan. I’m not that strong. I need people.”

“Everyone does.”

“More than most.”

Ethan looked at his sister and saw the tears forming anew in her eyes. He softened and squeezed her hand.

“You should be kinder to yourself.”

Hannah shook her head and turned her face away. Ethan knew her well enough to know she was trying to hide her tears. Hannah was twenty years old, so her quickness to tears embarrassed her. She had always been a soft-hearted soul. Ethan had tried to tell her time and time again that everyone, including him, found her gentleness admirable.

Hannah remained unconvinced.

“The town just feels hollow,” she continued. “Without Ma, what is there left for us here?”

Ethan didn’t answer. He couldn’t. Despite having lived in the same county for their entire lives, Ethan and Hannah weren’t close friends with anyone in the town. They seldom spoke of Pa, but the townsfolk had plenty to say about him. None of them had been around when Ethan and Hannah were young and struggling, but everyone seemed to have an opinion about their father leaving them for another family. Why would anyone want to associate with people like that?

Besides, the fewer people Ethan and Hannah let into their lives, the less likely they were to be disappointed.

“We have each other,” Ethan said.

His chest ached. Hannah was all that he had, his only family. She was wonderful, but still, there was a small part of him that ached for Ma, and even Pa. For the family they might have been. Instead, it was the two of them alone against the world.

Once, there had been someone else, a brother of sorts, but Ethan forced away all thoughts of Logan before the grief could overwhelm him.

“True.”

Hannah wrapped her arms around herself and lowered her head. She sniffed and made a strangled sound. Tears fell and left tracks down her cheeks, disappearing beneath the high collar of her dress.

“I—I miss her,” Hannah choked out. “I miss her so much that it hurts to breathe. First, Pa. And now—now, Ma! It isn’t fair!”

“I know.”

“She should have lived so much longer. She deserved to have a happy life,” Hannah continued. “She should have lived to see her grandchildren! To find love again. To—to do everything she always wanted!”

Ethan swallowed hard. Everything inside him felt like it was breaking, but he had to remain strong for Hannah. That was the way it had always been between them. He stayed solid and steady so Hannah could be gentle and kind. Still, he turned away so she wouldn’t see him blink away the threatening tears.

“I know,” Ethan said, forcing his voice to be steady. “She deserved all of that.”

He tried to bury the voice inside him, insisting that this was their pa’s fault. Ma had been sick ever since he left.

He sensed that Hannah wasn’t really making conversation. She just needed to get her thoughts out into the world. Ma had been like that, too, back when they had been a happy family, a time that now existed only at the edges of his memory.

He remembered Ma seated on the porch, her legs dangling over the edge as she pointed out the constellations to him, whispering stories about the patterns. Pa had sat on the steps whittling, while Hannah had been running around chasing fireflies. Ma had liked to talk. She’d fill every moment of a quiet night with the sound of her voice, gentle and sweet.

“This place reminds me of everything that’s gone wrong,” Hannah added. Ethan first thought she meant the cemetery, and moved to escort her away from Ma’s grave, but she continued. “The whole town does. It’s as if we’re haunted. Pa leaving us, everything that followed, and—and Derek.”

Ethan hissed between his teeth, forcing back the instinctive flare of frustration that rose any time Derek Walker’s name was mentioned. Derek was their half-brother, Pa’s son with the woman who convinced him to abandon his family. Eventually, Pa had gotten a divorce and married the woman proper. As if to add insult to injury, though, Pa had continued to live in the very same town as them with his new wife and the new son he publicly doted on.

Derek himself wasn’t any prize, either. Ethan tried not to think uncharitably about people; it wasn’t nice. But he also figured that he had good reason to dislike the boy, who was now fourteen. Derek was young and reckless, and it seemed that nearly everyone in town liked him. Ethan, however, refused to be taken in so easily. When he was Derek’s age, he had taken care of his mother and sister on his own, and this impulsive boy was just—

Just immature and foolish. Ethan always found his jaw clenched when he thought about Pa and how that was the son he found so worthy of his love, when Ethan hadn’t been good enough.

A small seed of guilt grew in Ethan’s chest. While Ethan was more responsible than Derek ever had been, that didn’t mean he’d never behaved recklessly as a young man. A bitter part of Ethan noted that Derek’s actions had never killed anyone…unlike his own.

“It has been so much to endure,” Hannah said, drawing Ethan from his own woeful thoughts. “I just wish that… I mean— Do you ever think about how our lives might have been if things hadn’t fallen to pieces? If Pa had never left us?”

They never spoke to Pa, and he never spoke to them. If it hadn’t been for Derek, who was overly friendly by nature, Ethan wouldn’t have known anything about what his father was doing. And he found that he didn’t particularly care. The man who had abandoned them did not deserve even a little of Ethan’s consideration, much less his love.

“There’s no point in thinking about what might have happened,” Ethan said. “You’ll only upset yourself, Hannah, imagining what might have been rather than facing what is.”

His sister sighed deeply, her shoulders slumping, as if a great weight had suddenly descended upon them. “I’m not like you, Ethan. It is against my nature not to consider what might have happened.”

“I know.” Ethan paused. “I’m grateful that you’re still so light and loving. Sometimes I wish I could be more sensitive, like you.”

He couldn’t be, and wasn’t even sure if he really did want to be more sensitive, but the words would comfort Hannah.

She sniffed. “It’s just so unfair! We’re good people, and we—we deserve to be happy.”

Ethan sighed. She was right, of course. But what else was there to say?

Hannah drew out a handkerchief and dabbed her eyes. “I just—I cannot stomach the injustice of it all. We deserve better than life has given us, Ethan.”

“Unfortunately, life doesn’t always give us what we deserve,” Ethan replied.

But Hannah already knew that, surely.

“Maybe we should do something to make our own happiness, though,” Ethan said. “It would be a blessing if everyone received good things, but that isn’t the way of the world. Perhaps God is testing us.”

Hannah sighed. “I feel as though we have been tested more than our share.”

Ethan cleared his throat. “Maybe we’re stronger for it,” he said, shrugging helplessly. “Or maybe we’ll just—eventually—run out of bad luck.”

He was floundering. What could he say? Ethan was torn between being reasonable and railing against the world for being so unjust. It wasn’t fair. It was never fair.

Hannah looked at him then. An uneven flush of red spread over her cheeks, still streaked with tears. “I do not want to be stronger.”

Ethan inhaled deeply, and his chest throbbed with a small pang. Hannah had grown into an independent young lady, and he was proud of who she had become. She was proof that he had done one thing well, at least; he had managed to see her mostly grown, and soon old enough to marry.

Sometimes, however, he ached for the little sister who could be consoled with a few words and a gentle smile.

“Maybe we need a new start,” Ethan said. “What do you think? We can go somewhere out west and begin a new life, somewhere the past won’t follow us. There’s plenty of new land out there that holds no ghosts for us.”

He had only just thought of the idea, but he had to admit that he liked it. Wouldn’t it be freeing to be far away from his neglectful father and his vexing half-brother? For the first time in their lives, they could live in a town where nobody knew them or their history, a place where other townsfolk would no longer look at them with pity.

“Where do you think we could go?” Hannah asked.

Ethan shrugged. “I don’t know yet, but we can think about it. Make a smart choice after we look into it a bit.”

Hannah bit her lip, her gaze drifting to their mother’s grave. “We would have to leave her.”

“No,” Ethan said. “We would carry her in our hearts. She’s in heaven now, watching over us. And I really think she’d understand.”

His own chest tightened, though, when he thought of their mother’s grave being left to decay in obscurity. There would be no children or grandchildren to care for it. Within a few generations, everyone in the town would forget all about Ma if Ethan and Hannah weren’t here to keep the story of her alive. Even if they spoke of her elsewhere, it wouldn’t quite be the same.

“But would she want that?” Hannah asked. “She never left this place, even when living here seemed impossible.”

Ethan knew that his sister was referring to the divorce and the mixture of pity and disgust from their neighbors that had followed. In those days, their mother had barely been present. She had drifted through her days as if she was asleep, even when she was awake. For Ethan, that had been more difficult than even Pa’s abandonment. He had taken on the role of the man of the house, tending to his mother when she could not even leave her bed for grief, while also ensuring that Hannah was fed and clothed and seen off to school.

“Ma was ill for most of that,” Ethan said carefully. “Even before this last bout, she was unwell. If not, maybe she would have left herself.”

Hannah bit her lip, and Ethan knew her well enough to see that she was anxious. His sister was always excited by the prospect of something new, but she tended to hesitate when it came to actually doing it.

“It’s something to think about,” Ethan continued. “We can go somewhere new, anywhere in the world, and begin a life of our own. People do it all the time.”

“And where do they go?”

He shrugged. “Wherever they want. I reckon I’d want to go farther west, like I said. I’ve heard there’s a lot of opportunity there.”

“A lot of danger as well, and hardship.”

“That may be,” Ethan said. “But as you just said, we’ve experienced more than our fair share of hardship, and we’ve come out stronger for it. If anyone can flourish out west, it’s us.”

Hannah sighed and tucked her handkerchief into her sleeve once more. “Well,” she said after some length, “I suppose it is something to consider after all. Maybe after…after some time has passed, and we have managed to ward off all the well-wishers. After we have learned to live without…without Ma.”

“Yes.”

Living without Ma seemed impossible, but Ethan knew that, eventually, the wounds from her death would dull. Never fully, but enough to survive.

After all, they had lost Pa and lived. The loss of their kind, gentle mother would be far harder, but Ethan and Hannah would endure, as they always had.