She remembered carrying soup upstairs.
She remembered the stranger standing by the window one morning and asking Clara a strange question.
Do you think a person can belong to a life they no longer remember?
Clara had forgotten the woman entirely.
Until now.
“What happened to her?” Caleb asked.
Clara was pale.
“I don’t know.”
Mrs. Talbot examined another column.
“There may be more.”
She pointed to a notation in faded ink.
Samuel Whitmore had signed a forwarding address.
Not Clara’s homestead.
Not Red Creek.
A town in Colorado.
Caleb copied the address.
As he did, Clara noticed something written beside Samuel’s signature.
Three words.
Family connection confirmed.
Clara stared at the phrase.
“What family connection?”
The nurse shook her head.
“I’m afraid the ledger doesn’t say.”
Outside the clinic, Caleb and Clara stood beneath a gray Cheyenne sky.
“My father knew Eleanor,” Clara said.
“Maybe.”
“He took her from the clinic.”
“Yes.”
“And he never told me.”
Caleb looked at the address in his hand.
“There’s one way to find out where she went.”
Clara was quiet.
Then she said, “Caleb.”
He turned.
“What if my father didn’t meet solayEleanor by accident?”
Before Caleb could answer, a man stepped from the clinic doorway behind them.
He was elderly, stooped, solay and leaning heavily on a cane.
He had apparently overheard them.
“Did you say Eleanor Mercer?”
Caleb turned sharply.
“Yes.”
The old man studied him for a long moment.
Then his attention moved to Clara.
His face lost color.
“You’re Samuel Whitmore’s daughter.”
Clara stared.
“Did you know my father?”
The man gripped his cane.
“Know him?”
His voice became almost a whisper.
“Your father was the reason Eleanor Mercer never went home.”
