Chapter 2 - The Secret Beneath Her Heart
Gideon crossed the kitchen without making a sound.
Mabel remained beside the table.
The note trembled in her fingers.
Three more knocks.
Gideon raised the rifle.
“Who is it?”
“Amos.”
Reverend Whitaker.
Gideon opened the door.
The old preacher entered carrying a leather medical satchel that did not belong to him.
His face was pale.
“You two need to hear something.”
Gideon lowered the rifle.
Mabel stared at the satchel.
“Where did you get that?”
“Doctor Hale's office.”
Mabel stopped breathing.
Dr. Nathaniel Hale had treated nearly everyone in Pine Hollow for twenty years.
Including Gideon.
Including Clara.
Including Mabel's mother.
The preacher placed the satchel on the table.
“Someone broke into Nathaniel's office tonight.”
Gideon frowned.
“Why bring this here?”
“Because Nathaniel disappeared.”
Mabel gripped the chair.
“When?”
“An hour ago.”
Amos opened the satchel.
Inside were medical ledgers.
One had Gideon's name written across a folded page.
Gideon stared at it.
“What is that?”
“I don't know.”
But Mabel did.
Or she suspected.
Silas had been terrified of Dr. Hale for weeks.
She had overheard them arguing behind the Higgins barn.
“You promised those records were gone,” Silas had hissed.
Mabel hadn't understood.
Now she did.
Perhaps.
Gideon opened the ledger.
A medical entry from six years earlier described injuries he had suffered after a logging accident.
There was a note concerning fever.
Another concerning infection.
Then a later entry.
Gideon read it twice.
His face changed.
“What?”
Mabel approached.
He handed her the page.
The physician had written that Gideon's recovery was complete.
No permanent reproductive injury observed.
Mabel looked up.
“But everyone said—”
“I know what everyone said.”
“Who told you?”
Gideon stared at the ledger.
“Dr. Hale.”
The room went silent.
Gideon had been told directly that the fever had left him incapable of fathering children.
Yet Hale's own medical notes said the opposite.
“Why would he lie?” Mabel whispered.
Gideon closed the ledger.
“That is what I'm going to find out.”
Mabel grabbed his sleeve.
“No.”
He looked at her.
“If someone took him, whoever did it may be waiting for you.”
“Then they shouldn't wait long.”
“Gideon.”
He studied her frightened expression.
“This has something to do with your secret.”
She said nothing.
“That note proves it.”
Mabel released him.
Reverend Whitaker quietly asked, “Are you pregnant?”
Mabel closed her eyes.
“Yes.”
The preacher sat.
Gideon remained standing.
“How far?”
“Nearly four months.”
Gideon looked toward the window.
Four months.
Long before their marriage arrangement.
“I was never with a man,” Mabel said.
Gideon turned.
She saw disbelief.
Then confusion.
“I know how that sounds.”
“You're telling me you're carrying a child but you've never—”
“Yes.”
“That isn't possible.”
“I know.”
Reverend Whitaker looked sharply toward the medical satchel.
“Unless someone made it possible.”
Mabel's face crumpled.
Gideon understood before she spoke.
“Doctor Hale?”
She nodded.
Three months earlier, Mabel had become ill.
Silas insisted she see Hale.
The doctor had given her medicine that made her extremely sleepy.
She remembered waking later in the examination room.
Silas was there.
Hale looked frightened.
Neither explained anything.
Weeks later, Mabel began becoming sick every morning.
Hale examined her again.
Then told her she was pregnant.
Mabel had accused him of lying.
He had simply whispered, “I'm sorry.”
Gideon’s hand tightened around the chair until his knuckles whitened.
“Did he hurt you?”
“I don't remember anyone touching me.”
Mabel's voice cracked.
“But something happened.”
Gideon walked away from the table.
For several seconds he said nothing.
Then he punched the wall.
Once.
The wood shook.
Mabel jumped.
Gideon immediately turned.
“I'm sorry.”
She stared at him.
He lowered his voice.
“I wasn't angry at you.”
“I know.”
“Did Silas know?”
“Yes.”
That answer changed everything.
“He arranged our marriage after you discovered the pregnancy?”
Mabel nodded.
“Two days later.”
Gideon went very still.
The $4,800.
The false diagnosis.
The pregnancy.
The forced marriage.
They were pieces of the same puzzle.
But none yet formed a picture.
At dawn, Gideon rode into town.
Mabel insisted on accompanying him.
They found Hale's office wrecked.
Cabinets had been emptied.
Papers burned in the stove.
A smear of blood marked the floor.
But no body.
Sheriff Dunning arrived ten minutes later.
He listened without expression.
Then he looked at Mabel.
“You say you're pregnant?”
She hated the way he asked.
“Yes.”
“And you don't know the father?”
Gideon stepped between them.
“Careful.”
The sheriff raised his hands.
“I'm investigating.”
“Then investigate Hale's disappearance.”
Dunning looked at the blood.
“Could've left voluntarily.”
“Leaving his blood behind?”
“People bleed.”
Gideon stared at him.
Dunning avoided his eyes.
That told Gideon enough.
The sheriff knew something.
By noon, word of Mabel's pregnancy had somehow spread through Pine Hollow.
The laughter from the wedding became something uglier.
People whispered that Mabel had tricked Gideon.
Others said the town's barren mountain man had married an unfaithful woman.
Gideon heard every word.
At the mercantile, a ranch hand named Everett Cole made the mistake of saying one directly beside him.
“Guess the boulder rolled through somebody else's bed first.”
Gideon turned.
Mabel caught his arm.
“Don't.”
Everett grinned.
Gideon looked at him for a long moment.
Then said, “Apologize to my wife.”
Everett laughed.
“Or what?”
Gideon took off his gloves.
Everett stopped laughing.
The apology came quickly.
Outside, Mabel said, “You didn't have to do that.”
“Yes, I did.”
“Why?”
Gideon looked at her.
“Because nobody gets to humiliate you while I'm standing there.”
Mabel felt something inside her shift.
Not love.
Not yet.
But the possibility frightened her almost as much.
They returned home before sunset.
For the next week, Gideon treated her with unexpected gentleness.
He repaired the loose step outside her bedroom.
Moved heavier kitchen supplies to lower shelves.
Left sliced apples beside her when nausea made breakfast impossible.
He never asked to touch her belly.
Never asked whether the baby was another man's.
Never repeated the town's accusations.
Then one evening Mabel found him carving something beside the fire.
“What is that?”
He tried hiding it.
She smiled.
“Gideon.”
He reluctantly showed her.
A tiny wooden horse.
“For the baby?”
He shrugged.
“Maybe.”
Mabel's eyes filled.
Nobody had made anything for her child.
Nobody had spoken of the baby as though it deserved to live.
She sat beside him.
“I'm afraid.”
Gideon set down the carving.
“Of what?”
“That you'll learn the truth and hate me.”
“Did you choose whatever happened?”
“No.”
“Then I won't hate you.”
“You can't promise that.”
“Yes, I can.”
She looked at him.
For the first time since the wedding, Gideon touched her face.
Only his fingertips against her cheek.
Mabel leaned into his hand.
Then horses approached outside.
Several.
Gideon stood.
Sheriff Dunning entered with two deputies.
Silas stood behind them.
“What is this?” Gideon asked.
Dunning unfolded a document.
“A complaint has been made regarding stolen property.”
“What property?”
Silas pointed at Mabel.
“My daughter has documents belonging to me.”
“Stepdaughter,” Mabel said.
Silas ignored her.
Dunning looked uncomfortable.
“We need to search the house.”
Gideon blocked the doorway.
“Get a warrant.”
Dunning produced one.
The search lasted twenty minutes.
Mabel had nothing belonging to Silas.
At least, she thought she didn't.
Then a deputy opened her trunk.
Beneath her mother's wedding shawl was an envelope Mabel had never seen.
Silas smiled.
The deputy opened it.
Inside was a property deed.
And beneath it, a sealed letter.
Mabel recognized her mother's handwriting.
Across the front were four words.
FOR MABEL. WHEN SILAS LIES.
Mabel reached for it.
Silas lunged first.
Gideon caught his wrist.
The envelope fell between them.
Its seal broke.
And something metallic slid onto the floor.
A key.
May you like
Silas looked at it.
For the first time in Mabel's life, she saw genuine terror on her stepfather's face.
