Chapter 27 #2
Martha looked toward the stove, where heat shimmered faintly above the iron surface. “I don't know.”
Eliza gave a small shake of her head and pushed her chair back several inches.
“You've told me about the orphanage. You've told me about losing your parents.
I've sat in this kitchen with you when you couldn't make the accounts work and when the roof leaked and when Amos died. I helped you pack away his clothes.”
“I know.”
“But you never told me this.”
“I was ashamed.”
“You could have told me you were ashamed.”
“I didn't know how.” Martha's voice thinned despite her effort to steady it. “Every time I thought about telling someone, I imagined what happened afterward. The way they would look at me. Whether Crane would come through that door. Whether I would lose the inn or Percy or—”
“Me?”
Martha stopped.
Eliza's eyes glistened, though her chin remained lifted. “You thought I would leave.”
“Yes.”
“And so you never gave me the choice.”
The words settled between them.
Martha had expected Eliza to be horrified by the robberies. She had expected questions about Amos, the gang, perhaps even the stolen money. She had not understood until this moment that Eliza's deepest wound might have nothing to do with the Voss Gang.
“I thought I was protecting you,” Martha said.
“From what? Knowing you?”
“From being connected to this. To me, if it ever came out.”
Eliza's mouth tightened. “No, Martha. You were protecting yourself.”
Martha's first instinct was to protest. She felt it rise in her chest, accompanied by every explanation she had repeated to herself for years.
Then she remembered Jonas standing in this same inn, his face hardening as he realized how long she had allowed him to speak about his father without telling him what she knew.
Her shoulders sagged.
“Yes,” she said. “I suppose I was.”
Eliza looked away, blinking rapidly. Martha let her. She had spent too many years controlling what other people were allowed to know. She would not try to control how Eliza received it now.
“I spent so long trying to become someone else,” Martha said after a while.
“When Amos and I came here, no one knew us.
For the first time since I married him, I could walk into a room without knowing that everyone in it had seen what we'd done or what we'd become.
People here saw an innkeeper. They saw Amos's wife and then his widow. After a while, I started believing that if I worked hard enough, if I was useful enough, perhaps that could simply be who I was.”
Eliza turned back toward her.
“And then I met you,” Martha continued. “You were kind to me. You didn't ask for explanations. I kept thinking I would tell you someday, but the more time passed the harder it became. There was more to lose.”
“So you let me believe I knew you.”
Martha's eyes burned. “Yes.”
Eliza folded her arms tightly across herself. “Do you know how many times I've defended you?”
Martha frowned.
“When people in town said you were secretive. When they wondered where you and Amos came from or why you never talked about anything before Willow Crossing. I told them it was none of their concern. I told them you were a good woman and that should be enough.”
Martha lowered her gaze. “You were never obligated to do that.”
“I wanted to do it. That's the point.” Eliza leaned forward, hurt sharpening her expression as her brows drew together and her cheeks turned pink. “I did it because you're my friend. I thought you trusted me.”
“I do trust you.”
“Not enough to let me know who I was defending.”
Martha flinched.
Eliza saw it and immediately looked stricken, but Martha shook her head before she could apologize. “Don't. You're right.”
The kitchen had grown too warm. Martha could feel perspiration gathering beneath the collar of her dress despite the chill against the windowpanes.
She stood and crossed to the stove, more for the need to move than because anything required attention.
She shifted the coffeepot away from the hottest part of the iron plate, then rested one hand against the edge of the worktable.
“I told Jonas all of this as well. But he’s the only one,” she said.
Eliza's expression changed. “He knows all of this?”
“As of yesterday.”
“And his father?”
Martha closed her eyes briefly. “I wasn't part of the gang when his father was killed. I hadn't met Amos yet. I didn't know any of them.”
Eliza's shoulders loosened a fraction.
“But I knew what the Voss Gang was when Jonas told me about his father,” Martha continued. “I knew what I had become later. He sat beside me and told me how they killed his father and what it did to his family, and I let him keep talking.”
“Oh, Martha.”
“I know.”
She pressed her fingertips against the table until the wood hurt.
“I told myself I would explain everything before...” Martha stopped.
“Before what?”
Before he fell in love.
The thought was too painful to say.
“Before it mattered this much,” she finished.
Eliza's face softened, but she did not rescue Martha from the truth of it. “It already mattered.”
“It did.”
“What did he say?”
“That I should have told him before he cared about me.”
Eliza looked down.
“He's right,” Martha said.
She had spent the night testing that conclusion from every direction, trying to find some edge of unfairness she could cling to. There wasn't one. Fear explained her silence. It did not excuse taking Jonas's choice away from him.
“I wanted him to know me,” Martha said, her voice unsteady. “I just wanted to decide which parts mattered.”
The admission silenced them both.
Martha looked around the kitchen again and felt something shift in the way she saw it.
Since arriving in Willow Crossing, she had thought secrecy was the price of keeping her new life.
Now she understood what the price had actually been.
Eliza had loved a version of her with whole years missing.
Jonas had begun to love her without knowing the one truth she knew might matter most to him.
Her silence had not only protected her from judgment. It had prevented the people she loved from knowing her well enough to judge for themselves.
“I did that to you too,” she said.
Eliza's arms slowly unfolded.
“I'm sorry.” Martha stepped back toward the table but did not sit. “Not only because of what I did in the past and how much I regret all of it. I'm sorry I called you my friend while keeping you far enough away that I could control the image you had of me.”
Eliza wiped beneath one eye with the heel of her hand. “That's a terrible apology.”
Martha's stomach dropped.
“Because now I'm going to cry,” Eliza added thickly.
A startled laugh escaped Martha, half sob and half relief. She covered her mouth.
“Don't laugh at me.” Eliza sniffed and reached for the corner of her apron.
“I'm not.”
“You are.”
“A little.”
Eliza gave her an irritated look that lasted only a second before her expression crumpled again.
Martha's own eyes filled. “If you want to leave, I will understand.”
Eliza lowered her apron. “Stop doing that.”
Martha blinked. “Doing what?”
“Deciding what everyone is going to do before we have the chance to do it.” Eliza pushed herself upright, squaring her shoulders.
“You decided I would leave if I knew. You decided Jonas would leave.
You decided everyone in Willow Crossing would turn against you.
Maybe some people will. Maybe Jonas won't forgive you.
I can't promise what anyone else will do.
But you don't get to make their choices for them because you're afraid of the answer.”
Martha stared at her.
There was no defense left to offer.
“I don't know how to stop being afraid of living that way, of people knowing the terrible mistakes I’ve made,” she admitted.
“You tell the truth anyway.”
Martha looked toward the window. Somewhere beyond the glass lay the road into town and Sheriff Crane's office.
“That is what I'm going to do.”
Eliza followed her gaze. “What do you mean?”
“I'm going to the sheriff this evening. I'm telling him everything.”
Eliza's eyes widened. “About the gang?”
“About me. About Silas. Everything I know.”
“Martha, have you thought about what could happen?”
“Yes.”
It was not entirely true. She had thought about it, but there were consequences she could not predict. Crane might arrest her. He might contact a marshal. She might lose the inn. Percy might lose the only stable home he had known in years.
The fear remained so strong that it made her stomach ache.
She would go anyway.
“I told Silas last night,” Martha said. “He tried to frighten me out of it.”
Eliza's face sharpened immediately. “You told Silas?”
“He already knows enough to ruin me. I wanted him to know he couldn't use that anymore.”
“Martha, that man has been threatening you for weeks.”
“I know.”
“And you told him exactly when you planned to go to the sheriff?”
Martha winced. “When you say it that way, it sounds unwise.”
“It was spectacularly unwise.”
Despite everything, Martha almost smiled.
Eliza did not. “Go now.”
“I have guests. Supper needs—”
“I can manage supper.”
“Eliza—”
“Go now,” she repeated, planting both hands on the table. “If you're going to do this, don't spend the rest of the day giving Silas time to decide what he wants to do about it.”
Martha opened her mouth, but a knock against the kitchen door interrupted her.
An older guest stood in the doorway. Mr. Talbot had arrived that morning after a miserable journey over muddy roads and had spent much of breakfast describing every rut his wagon had encountered. Now his hat was crushed nervously between his hands.
“Mrs. Bellamy? Sorry to bother you.”
Martha straightened automatically. “What is it?”
“There's something on the floor upstairs. In my room.” His brows pulled together. “Looks like blood.”
The warmth seemed to leave Martha's body all at once.
Eliza turned toward her.
“Blood?” she repeated.
Mr. Talbot nodded. “Not much, but I don't recall seeing it earlier. Thought you'd want to know.”
Martha and Eliza exchanged a look.
Silas?