PART 4 — THE NAME WRITTEN IN THE ᴅᴇᴀᴅ MAN’S HAND

Tabitha didn’t answer immediately.

She couldn’t.

The question had reached somewhere inside her that even grief had not touched.

A second family?

Edmund had been careful with money, careful with his work, careful with every promise he made. He had never been a man who disappeared for days or offered explanations that didn’t add up.

He had loved her.

She knew that.

But the sheriff was looking at her as if he had just revealed a truth that had been waiting years to be uncovered.

“You’re mistaken,” she said.

Sheriff Monroe unfolded the paper.

“Your husband wrote this letter three weeks before his death. It was addressed to a woman named Eleanor Vale.”

Tabitha felt the ground shift beneath her.

“Who is Eleanor Vale?”

The sheriff glanced at the crowd.

“That is what we’re trying to determine.”

Holt stepped forward.

“Then why are you questioning his widow in the street?”

Monroe’s jaw тιԍнтened.

“Because the letter mentions a child.”

A murmur pᴀssed through the crowd.

Tabitha’s fingers curled against her coat.

“What child?”

The sheriff read aloud.

“Eleanor, if Ford discovers what I have done, he will use the child against us. I have secured the original records. They will prove that the land was never his to take. I am sending them with the only person I trust.”

The sheriff paused.

At the bottom of the letter was a name.

Tabitha.

For several seconds, she couldn’t breathe.

Then she noticed something.

The handwriting was Edmund’s.

But the signature wasn’t.

“That’s not his signature,” she said.

Monroe looked at her.

“What?”

“The final line. Edmund never signed his name that way.”

Holt took a step closer.

“You’re certain?”

“Absolutely.”

She had watched Edmund sign hundreds of documents. She knew the precise slant of his letters, the way his pen curved beneath the G.

This signature was different.

Not enough for an ordinary person to notice.

Enough for her.

“Someone forged it.”

The sheriff’s expression hardened.

“Are you accusing me of forgery?”

“I’m telling you what I know.”

Before he could respond, a voice came from the crowd.

“She’s right.”

Everyone turned.

An elderly man stood near the general store, leaning heavily on a cane.

“That letter is a forgery,” he said.

Sheriff Monroe’s face went pale.

“Mr. Bellamy, you should go home.”

“I’ve spent forty years keeping the records of this settlement. I know Edmund Gorse’s handwriting.”

The old man stepped forward.

“And I know what he was investigating.”

Tabitha moved toward him.

“Please. Tell me.”

Bellamy looked at her with something close to pity.

“Your husband discovered that Crispin Ford had been stealing land.”

A silence fell.

“Not by force,” Bellamy continued. “By paperwork. Forged surveys, altered boundaries, licenses that never existed. He was taking land from families who couldn’t afford to challenge him.”

Tabitha remembered Edmund’s words.

Recorded facts are the only honest currency.

Bellamy nodded toward the sheriff’s office.

“The ledger contains the original measurements. Every boundary Ford changed. Every license he falsified. Every name of the man who helped him.”

“Who?” Tabitha asked.

The old man looked directly at Sheriff Monroe.

“The man who helped him was—”

A gunsH๏τ cracked through the night.

Bellamy staggered.

Holt moved instantly, catching the old man before he fell.

The crowd erupted.

People screamed and scattered into the street.

Tabitha dropped to her knees beside Bellamy.

His eyes were open, but his breath was shallow.

“Who?” she whispered.

His fingers closed around her wrist.

“The name…”

He struggled to speak.

“Look beneath the church.”

Then his hand fell still.

Tabitha looked up.

Holt was staring toward the darkened end of the street.

A rider was disappearing into the alley behind the sheriff’s office.

“Ford’s men,” Holt said.

Sheriff Monroe shouted for his deputies.

But no one moved.

Because every person in Dunmore Crossing had just witnessed something they would never forget.

A respected old man had been sH๏τ in the middle of town.

And the sheriff had done nothing to stop it.

Holt rose slowly.

“Mrs. Gorse,” he said, “we need to leave.”

Tabitha shook her head.

“Not yet.”

She looked at the sheriff.

“Where is the ledger?”

Monroe’s face had gone gray.

“I don’t have it.”

“Then who does?”

He looked away.

And in that moment, Tabitha understood.

The sheriff was not the man who had forged Edmund’s letter.

He was the man who had been ordered to hide it.

But someone else in town had already found the ledger.

Someone who knew exactly what it contained.

Someone who had just killed to keep the truth buried.

Holt took her arm.

“Now we leave.”

This time, she didn’t argue.

They returned to Mrs. Vickers’s boarding house through the back entrance.

Holt checked the windows, secured the door, and placed a chair beneath the handle.

Tabitha sat at the kitchen table, one hand resting over her belly.

She could still hear Bellamy’s final words.

Look beneath the church.

“There’s something under that church,” she said.

Holt nodded.

“Probably.”

“Something Edmund wanted me to find.”

“Maybe.”

She looked at him.

“You’re not surprised.”

He was quiet for a moment.

Then he reached into his coat and removed a small envelope.

It was old, creased, and sealed with dark wax.

Tabitha recognized the handwriting immediately.

Edmund’s.

Holt placed it on the table.

“I found this six months ago,” he said.

“Where?”

“At a supply depot outside Ashcroft. It was hidden inside a crate addressed to me.”

Tabitha stared at him.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I didn’t know you existed.”

He pushed the envelope toward her.

“And because the letter inside told me to wait until a woman named Tabitha Gorse came looking for the truth.”

Her hands trembled as she broke the seal.

Inside was a single sentence.

Holt Brennan knows what happened to my first wife.

Tabitha looked up.

“Your first wife?”

Holt’s face had become unreadable.

He turned toward the dark window.

“Tabitha,” he said quietly, “there’s something I should have told you before we ever met.”

He paused.

“Edmund Gorse wasn’t the first man to ask me to protect his family from Crispin Ford.”

And before she could ask what that meant, someone knocked on the back door.

Three slow knocks.

Then a woman’s voice.

“Mrs. Gorse?”

Tabitha rose.

The voice spoke again.

“My name is Eleanor Vale.”