Our furniture had disappeared piece by piece.
My older brother Merrick drank whatever money remained.
Then Harlan Vane, the wealthiest businessman in Coldwater, came demanding payment.
Three days later, my father announced my marriage.
“Fifty dollars,” he said, dropping the money onto our kitchen table.
“Rook paid it himself.”
I stared at the bills.
“You sold me?”
“I found you a husband.”
Merrick laughed from beside the stove.
“Be grateful, Rosie.
Nobody else wants the half-mad deaf rancher.”
Gideon Rook was thirty-eight, broad-shouldered, and almost completely deaf following a childhood mining accident.
He owned a vast ranch beyond the northern ridge but rarely visited town.
People whispered that he suffered mysterious fits.
Some claimed he heard voices despite his deafness.
Others swore something terrible had happened in the abandoned Saint Agnes mine when he was nine.
I expected a monster.
Instead, I married a man who barely touched my cheek at the altar.
At his isolated cabin, Gideon showed me a clean bedroom, fresh blankets, and bread he had baked that morning.
Then he handed me a notebook.
The bedroom is yours.
