Chapter 10 - The Blue House
They reached Denver after midnight.
Jacob guided them through narrow streets to a faded blue house near the rail yards.
Smoke was already rising from the rear windows.
Thomas broke down the door.
Clara found an elderly woman unconscious in the kitchen.
Jacob carried her outside despite his injured shoulder.
Her name was Ruth Mercer.
She had raised him from infancy.
When she woke, she struck Thomas across the face.
“You were supposed to stay away,” she said.
Thomas accepted the blow.
“I did not know he lived.”
Ruth looked at Clara.
“He has Annie’s eyes when he is hurt.”
Jacob demanded the key to the locked room.
Ruth refused.
“The room contains what kept you alive.”
“It also kept me ignorant.”
At last she gave him the key.
Inside were twenty-two birthday letters written by Annie before James was born.
She had prepared them as a private joke, one for every imagined year of her child’s life.
Most contained ordinary hopes.
Learn to swim.
Be kind to horses.
Do not marry anyone who dislikes books.
The final letter contained a confession.
Annie believed Silas Vale was not only stealing land.
He was diverting South Creek water toward a private mining operation that poisoned wells downstream.
She had hidden samples and maps in a place described as where the first wildflowers bloom beneath snow.
Ruth admitted Edwin had visited two weeks earlier.
He offered money for the letters.
When she refused, he threatened Jacob.
Jacob turned on her.
“You knew who I was.”
“I knew the name they gave you at birth.”
“And you never told me.”
“I was told Thomas Hail was dead.”
Thomas looked at Gideon’s family seal on one of the documents.
Every person had been kept obedient by a different lie.
A police whistle sounded outside.
Edwin entered with Denver officers and accused Thomas of arson and attempted murder.
He produced witnesses who claimed they saw Thomas enter before the fire began.
Jacob stepped forward.
“He saved us.”
Edwin smiled.
“You are concussed and confused, cousin.”
The officers arrested Thomas.
As they took him away, Ruth whispered to Clara.
“The first wildflowers beneath snow are not flowers.”
She pressed a small silver brooch into Clara’s hand.
May you like
“They are carved into Annie’s cradle.”
