“So this is her,” Ruth said, looking Clara over without cruelty. “About time. The house has been too quiet too long.”
Clara’s mouth went dry. She didn’t know whether to laugh or apologize.
Ruth didn’t wait. “Sit down, honey. Eat. Whatever you’re running from can’t follow you into a bowl of stew.”
Clara’s throat tightened at that. Because she wasn’t just running from poverty or grief. She was running from a man who had tried her bedroom door at night. A man who wore money like a mask of virtue. A man whose name still tasted like rust: Edgar Sutton.
She had stolen a small amount of money from her mother’s household accounts to buy her ticket west. It was theft, yes. But it was also survival. The kind of survival polite society never wrote sermons about.
While Ruth set food in front of her, the Stone brothers gathered in the room in a way that made the space feel smaller. Not crowded, exactly. More like… claimed.
Clara spooned stew into her mouth and realized her hands were trembling.
Wyatt noticed. He didn’t comment, only poured her water and slid it closer, a quiet kindness that made her chest ache.
Blake leaned against the mantle, watching as if he could see through her travel dress and her practiced composure and straight into the place inside her that had started burning the day she read his letter.
Garrett sat across from her. Not too close. Not far. Exactly where a man sat when he intended to be heard.
