Chapter 24
For two days, Jonas had tried to find a moment alone with Martha, and for two days, she had managed to stay one step ahead of him.
Whenever he came into the inn, she found some reason to leave the room. If he caught her in the hallway, she suddenly remembered something that needed doing in the kitchen. If he offered to help with a chore, she thanked him and told him Eliza could take care of it.
Even when they were both outside, she seemed to find some task at the far end of the property that needed her attention. She wasn’t rude. That would have been easier. Instead, she was unfailingly polite, which made it clear she was avoiding him on purpose.
Jonas had tried not to take it personally. He knew what it looked like when someone needed space. He had spent enough of his life needing it himself.
But he could not forget the way she had looked after the fire.
He had watched her stand in front of the ruined stable with ash settling over her hair and soot darkening her dress, and something inside him had ached at the sight. Martha had worked for everything she had. He had seen that much with his own eyes.
He had watched her rise before dawn, fix what she could, feed people who could not pay, and keep the inn standing long after most sensible people would have given up. Now one more piece of it had been taken from her.
Jonas drove another nail into the frame of the stable and held the board steady while Reuben worked beside him.
“We ought to replace this whole section,” Reuben said, stepping back to examine the wall. “Half the boards are warped.”
“They'll do for now,” Jonas replied.
“For now is how Martha ended up with half a stable.”
Fergus gave a quiet laugh from the other side of the frame.
He had been working with them most of the afternoon, hauling boards and clearing away what remained of the burned section.
Tobias was farther down the wall, measuring a piece of lumber against the opening before marking it with a bit of charcoal.
Jonas glanced toward the inn. The building looked more battered than ever without the stable beside it. The fire had left a blackened gap where there had once been shelter for the horses, and beyond it, the west side of the inn still showed the damage from the collapse.
“How much can we salvage?” Jonas asked.
“Enough to keep from starting over,” Tobias answered.
Jonas nodded. That was something.
They worked for another stretch in silence, the sound of hammering carrying across the property. The afternoon had grown colder, and the wet ground sucked at their boots whenever they crossed the yard.
Jonas's injured leg ached with every few steps, but it was no longer enough to make him stop. He had learned that pain could be endured when there was work that needed doing.
What worried him was whether any of this would be enough for Martha.
“She'll need more than the stable,” Jonas said finally.
Reuben looked over. “Obviously.”
“The inn.”
Tobias set down the board he was holding. “What about it?”
Jonas wiped sawdust from his palm. “The west wing needs rebuilding. The roof needs work. Some floors need replacing. She keeps talking about the inn as though it's already finished, but half the time she's patching something just to make it through another season.”
“You've been listening,” Reuben said, a teasing note creeping into his voice.
Jonas ignored him. “If we all helped, we could get some of it done.”
Fergus nodded slowly. “I'd help with the roof.”
“I can get lumber,” Tobias said. “At least some of it.”
Reuben leaned his shoulder against the frame. “And I suppose you're planning to do all the rest?”
Jonas looked at him. “No. I'm planning to ask what she wants.”
That quieted his brother.
Jonas looked again toward the inn. He had spent enough time there to understand that Martha's dream was not simply to keep a roof over paying guests. She wanted the place to be welcoming.
She wanted people to have somewhere safe to sleep and a warm meal when the road had been unkind to them. She wanted it to be something more than a business she had inherited from a dead husband and struggled to maintain.
He wanted to see that place for her.
“We could make the repairs in stages,” Jonas continued. “Whatever she thinks matters most, we start there. If the west wing is what she wants, we work on that. If she wants the common room fixed first, we do that. We don't have to decide it for her.”
Reuben gave him a knowing look. “You mean you're going to find her and ask.”
“Yes.”
“And when she says she doesn't need help?”
Jonas paused.
“She'll say that,” he admitted.
Reuben grinned. “Then what?”
“I'll ask again.”
Tobias laughed under his breath.
Jonas smiled despite himself. “She has spent too long believing she has to carry everything alone. I'm not going to make her carry this alone too.”
The words settled heavily inside him after he said them. He knew what it was to believe there was no one coming to help. He knew what it was to have brothers who depended on him while he had no one else to depend upon. Martha had spent years doing the same thing in her own way.
Maybe that was why he could not walk away from her now.
By the time the light began to fade, the repaired section of the stable was taking shape. It was not finished, but it was standing. Jonas washed his hands at the pump and watched his brothers and Fergus begin gathering the tools.
“I'll see you tomorrow,” Reuben said.
Jonas nodded, but his mind was already elsewhere.
He needed to find Martha.
He crossed the yard toward the inn, expecting to find her in the kitchen or common room. Instead, the lower rooms were quiet. A lamp burned near the front desk, but there was no one in sight. Jonas checked the hallway and then moved toward Martha's office.
The door stood partly open.
He pushed it wider.
“Martha?”
There was movement inside.
Jonas stepped across the threshold and stopped.
Silas stood behind Martha's desk with one of the drawers pulled open. His hand was inside it, moving among papers and small personal things that did not belong to him.
For one brief moment, neither man spoke.
Then Silas looked up and smiled.
“Well,” he said easily, “if it isn't the hero of Willow Crossing.”
Jonas's jaw tightened. “What are you doing?”
Silas closed the drawer with one hand. He did not look embarrassed. If anything, he seemed amused.
“Looking for something.”
“In Martha's office?”
Silas leaned casually against the desk. “She asked me to keep an eye on things while she's been busy.”
Jonas did not believe him.
He had watched Silas charm people from the first day he arrived. He could laugh with the men town, exchange jokes with travelers, and speak to townspeople as though he had known them all his life.
Yet every time Jonas looked at him, something felt wrong. Martha's fear around him had been too sharp. The threats had been too deliberate. The fire, the horses, the damage to the inn—it was difficult to believe they were all accidents.
Jonas stepped farther into the room. “You were in the office alone.”
Silas's smile widened. “You seem awfully suspicious of me.”
“I have reason to be.”
“Do you?” Silas asked. “Or are you just looking for someone to blame because your sweetheart's life is falling apart?”
Jonas's hands curled at his sides.
“Don't talk about her that way.”
Silas laughed softly. “There it is.”
“What?”
“That look.” Silas straightened. “You really have no idea, do you?”
Jonas stared at him.
“Have no idea about what?”
Silas studied him for a moment, then gave a small shake of his head. “Hasn't she told you?”
“Told me what?”
“How this is all Martha's fault.”
The words struck Jonas harder than he expected.
He kept his expression still. “I don't know what you're talking about.”
Silas's amusement faded just enough to reveal something colder beneath it. “You will.”
Jonas stepped closer. “Whatever your problem is with Martha, tormenting her isn't going to solve it.”
“You're defending her without even knowing the truth.”
“Yes.”
Silas smiled again, but there was no warmth in it. “That's a dangerous habit.”
Jonas held his gaze. “And going through a woman's drawers is despicable.”
For a moment, Silas said nothing.
Then he pushed away from the desk. “You should ask Martha what she's hiding.”
He walked past Jonas without another word.
Jonas turned to watch him leave, every instinct telling him that Silas was at the center of what was happening. He did not know how. He did not know why. But he knew enough to be certain that the man was not innocent.
And yet Silas's words stayed with him.
What she's hiding.
Jonas hated that they had found a place in his mind.
Martha had been hiding something from him for weeks. He had known it. She had admitted as much herself. There was a past she was ashamed of; something she had promised to explain someday. He had told her he could wait.
Now he was beginning to wonder whether he understood what the whole picture was here.
The only person who could settle that question was Martha.
He found her in the kitchen.
She stood at the worktable with her sleeves pushed up, flour dusting her hands as she worked a piece of dough beneath her palms. Her hair had come loose around her face, and a few strands clung to her cheek. The familiar sight stopped him in the doorway.
For a moment, he simply watched.
This was the woman he had come to know in pieces.
The woman who had saved his life when she could have left him to die.
The woman who cared for strangers, who worried over Percy, who had sat beside him at the river and listened to him speak about his brothers.
The woman who could make a room feel warm simply by being in it.
He was falling for her.
He could no longer pretend otherwise.
But if he was going to let himself fall any farther, he needed the truth.
“Martha.”
She looked over her shoulder.
Something in her expression changed when she saw him. Her hands went still against the dough.
“I thought you were still repairing the stable.”
“We finished for the day.”
She nodded and turned back to the table.
Jonas stepped inside. “I need to ask you something.”
Her shoulders tightened.
He moved closer but stopped several feet away.
“What have you been hiding from me?”
She did not answer.
“Martha.”
Her fingers pressed into the dough.
“What is so important that you've had to lie to me about it?”
She closed her eyes.
Jonas felt his chest tighten. He had expected fear. He had expected another attempt to avoid the question. He had not expected the silence that followed.
When she finally looked at him, her face had gone pale.
“I was part of the Voss Gang.”
For a moment, Jonas simply stared at her.
The words did not make sense.
“What?”
Her eyes filled with tears, but she did not look away.
“I was part of the Voss Gang.”
Jonas shook his head once, certain he had heard her wrong.
“Say that again.”
Her voice broke when she repeated it.
“I was part of the Voss Gang.”
Everything inside him stilled.
The kitchen was exactly as it had been a moment before. The dough sat beneath Martha's hands. Flour covered the worktable. The oven gave off its steady heat. Somewhere outside, a horse shifted in the stable, and the sound carried faintly through the walls.
But Jonas no longer felt any of it.
The Voss Gang.
His father's killers.
The men who had taken his father from him when Jonas was seventeen and left him to raise two younger brothers without him.
He looked at Martha and tried to reconcile the woman standing before him with the words she had just spoken.
He couldn't.
His entire world fell apart beneath his feet.