Chapter 25
For several seconds after Martha spoke, Jonas did not move.
He could hear the fire snapping inside the kitchen stove and the faint creak of the building settling around them.
Somewhere beyond the closed door, footsteps crossed the common room, followed by a burst of laughter that faded almost as quickly as it had come.
Ordinary sounds. The same sounds he had heard every day since he had been brought into this inn half-frozen and bleeding.
Nothing around him had changed.
Everything had changed.
“Jonas.” Martha came around the worktable, but he stepped back before she could reach him.
“Don't.”
The word came out harsher than he intended.
Martha stopped immediately. Flour streaked the front of her dress, and there was still a pale dusting of it along one cheek.
A few minutes ago, the sight of her standing there had filled him with such tenderness that he had almost forgotten why he had come looking for her.
Now he could barely look at her.
“Please listen to me,” she said.
“I don't want to.”
“I know, but I need to explain.”
Jonas turned away from her. He dragged a hand over his face, trying to make sense of what she had told him, but every thought seemed to collide with another before he could hold on to it.
The Voss Gang.
He had said those words to her before.
He had sat with her and told her about his father.
He had told her what it had been like to lose him at seventeen, to understand in the same terrible moment that there was no one left to raise Reuben and Tobias except him.
He had given her something he rarely gave anyone.
He had trusted her with one of the worst pieces of his life.
And she had known.
Jonas turned back to her. “You let me tell you about my father.”
Martha's face crumpled. “I know.”
“You sat there while I told you the Voss Gang murdered him.”
“I know.”
“You knew what that name meant to you, and you said nothing.”
“I wanted to tell you.”
“When?”
His voice rose, and Martha flinched. Jonas hated that he saw it. He hated even more that some part of him wanted to go to her despite everything she had just said.
“When were you planning to tell me, Martha? After another week? Another month? After I had told you everything there was to know about me?”
“I don't know.”
“That's not good enough.”
“I know it isn't.”
He gave a short, disbelieving shake of his head. “I told you about him. I told you what happened to my family. You knew what losing my father did to us.”
“I didn't know when you first told me.”
“But you knew who the gang was.”
“Yes.” Martha's shoulders drew inward, and she dropped her gaze to the floor.
Her fingers twisted together at her waist, knuckles whitening as she gripped one hand with the other.
Jonas watched her struggle to meet his eyes, and the sight made the betrayal cut deeper.
He could see it clearly, she wasn't confused about what he meant.
She remembered that conversation as clearly as he did. She had known exactly what he was telling her, exactly what the Voss Gang had taken from him, and she had chosen to stay silent.
“And you let me keep talking.”
Martha pressed a hand against her mouth for a moment. When she lowered it, her fingers were trembling. “Because I didn't know how to tell you.”
“You should have found a way.”
“I was afraid.”
“So you lied.”
“Yes.”
The answer stopped him.
There was no excuse attached to it. No attempt to soften what she had done. She simply stood there, pale and shaking, and admitted it.
Jonas looked away again.
“I should have told you,” Martha said. “Especially after you told me about your father. I knew that. I knew it every time I looked at you after that day.”
“Then why didn't you?”
“Because by then I cared about you.”
A bitter laugh escaped him before he could stop it. “That's supposed to make this better?”
“No.” Her voice cracked. “It makes it worse.”
Jonas stared at her.
Martha wiped quickly beneath one eye. “You said I should have told you before you started to care about me, and you're right. I should have. I was selfish. Every day I waited made it harder to tell you, and every day it became a worse betrayal. I knew that, and I still couldn't make myself do it.”
“You could have saved us both this conversation.”
“I know.”
“You could have told me the day I told you about my father. I could have walked away then.”
Her eyes closed briefly.
“That was what you were afraid of,” Jonas said.
“Yes.”
The quiet answer struck him almost as hard as the confession itself.
She had known exactly what the truth might cost her. She had simply let him keep moving closer without giving him the chance to decide for himself.
Jonas felt suddenly restless inside the small kitchen. He crossed toward the window, then stopped before reaching it. “Tell me.”
Martha did not answer.
He looked at her. “You wanted me to listen. I'm listening now. Tell me what happened.”
Fear passed over her face, but she nodded.
For a moment, she seemed unable to find a place to begin. Jonas forced himself to wait. He had demanded the truth. However much he dreaded hearing it, he would not stop her now.
“I wasn't with them when your father was killed,” she said.
Jonas's jaw tightened.
Martha hurried on. “I need you to know that first. I wasn't part of the gang then. I didn't even know them.”
He said nothing.
“I met Amos later.” Her gaze dropped to the flour scattered across the table. “I was nineteen. I had spent most of my life wanting a family, and when I met him, I thought I'd finally found one. He made me feel wanted. Safe. He didn't tell me what he was involved in before we married.”
Jonas folded his arms across his chest. “When did you find out?”
“After.”
“And you stayed.”
Her eyes lifted to his. “Yes.”
The single word sat between them.
Martha drew an uneven breath. “At first, I told myself I was staying because he was my husband. Then I told myself there was nowhere else for me to go. But that isn't the whole truth, and I don't want to lie to you anymore.”
Jonas waited.
“The gang became a family to me too,” she said. “Or I thought they were. I had spent so much of my life alone that I let myself believe belonging somewhere mattered more than what kind of people I belonged with.”
Jonas felt his stomach turn.
Martha saw something in his face and looked down again, but she kept talking.
“I didn't kill anyone.”
“You've told me that before.”
“And it was true.”
“That's a low bar, Martha.”
Her face tightened as though he had struck her.
Jonas regretted the cruelty of it almost immediately, but he did not take the words back. Not killing someone did not make everything else disappear. His father had been killed by men who needed more than one pair of hands to commit their crimes.
“What did you do?” he asked.
Martha's fingers curled against her skirt. “I helped them.”
“How?”
“I kept watch sometimes. I carried messages. I helped plan things.”
Jonas went very still.
“What things?”
Her eyes filled again. “Robberies.”
The word struck harder than Jonas expected.
His stomach tightened, and for a moment he could only look at her.
Until now, some part of him had still been searching for a lesser explanation, something that would put Martha near the gang without making her truly part of it.
But there was no distance in that answer.
She hadn't simply known what Amos and the others were doing. She had helped them do it.
Jonas dragged a hand over his mouth, trying to reconcile the woman standing in front of him with what she had just admitted. “What did you do?”
Martha swallowed. “There was a train robbery. Amos and the others were going to do it whether I helped or not, but I knew what they were planning. I helped them work out parts of it.”
“You planned a train robbery.”
“Yes.”
The kitchen seemed to shrink around him.
Jonas had tried, in the seconds since her confession, to find some version of this he could understand. Perhaps she had traveled with the gang without participating. Perhaps Amos had forced her to stay. Perhaps she had been trapped among dangerous men and done what she needed to survive.
Instead, she was telling him that she had helped them.
“What happened?” he asked.
Martha hesitated.
“The truth,” Jonas said. “All of it.”
She nodded shakily. “The robbery went wrong.”
“How?”
“Men were pursuing them. Deputies.” She paused, visibly struggling with the words. “I was positioned away from the others. I had a bow. I fired arrows to scatter the men who were coming after Amos and the gang.”
Jonas's chest tightened. “At the deputies.”
“Near them. I wasn't trying to hit anyone.”
“But you were helping the gang escape.”
“Yes.”
“After robbing a train.”
“Yes.”
Jonas turned away.
He could not look at her while he tried to absorb it.
Behind him, Martha said, “Amos was shot in the leg during the robbery. Silas was caught. Orson was killed. Amos escaped.”
“And you?”
“I went with Amos.”
Of course she did.
Jonas stared through the darkened window over the sink. His own reflection stared faintly back at him, distorted by the uneven glass.
“What about the money?”
There was a pause behind him.
“Amos got away with it.”
Jonas turned his head. “The stolen money.”
“Yes.”
“And you went with him.”
“Yes.”
He looked fully at her again. “Here?”
Martha nodded.
The inn.
He stared at the walls around them with a sickening new understanding. This place she had spoken about as a dream, the refuge she had wanted so desperately to create, had come after a robbery.
“Did you buy this place with stolen money?”
Martha's face went white.
“Amos bought it,” she said quietly.
“That isn't what I asked.”
Her eyes dropped.
Jonas had his answer.
He turned away again, unable to stand the sight of her.
“Jonas, I know what I did was wrong.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.” The word came quickly now, desperation pushing through her tears. “I know what it sounds like.”
He spun back toward her. “What it sounds like?”
“What it was,” she corrected immediately. “I know what it was. I'm not trying to excuse it.”