Not seductively.
As though preparing for work.
He pulled a chair from beside the wall.
Sat.
Ruth remained standing.
Jonah looked at the trunk.
“I was seventeen when I met your father.”
Ruth said nothing.
“He hired me outside Shasta.”
“For what?”
“Survey work.”
She frowned.
“You were a surveyor?”
“No.”
“A mule driver.”
That she could believe.
Jonah continued.
“He was mapping a route through timberland for a company out of Sacramento.”
“Which company?”
“Harcourt Agricultural and Banking.”
Ruth’s body stiffened.
Harcourt.
The banker.
The father of the man who had courted her.
The family that had destroyed her reputation.
Jonah saw recognition.
“You know the name.”
“Everyone knows it.”
“No.”
His voice hardened.
“You know it differently.”
Ruth lowered herself onto the edge of the bed.
“My father worked for them?”
“For a time.”
Jonah leaned forward, forearms resting against his thighs.
“He discovered problems with several land surveys.”
“What kind of problems?”
“Boundary lines moved after filing.”
Ruth frowned.
“Moved?”
“On paper.”
He looked toward the trunk.
“Families would borrow money against eighty acres.”
“Then when they missed payments, Harcourt foreclosed.”
“The bank records somehow showed ninety acres.”
“One hundred.”
“Sometimes more.”
Ruth stared.
“That’s theft.”
“Yes.”
“Did my father know?”
“He figured it out.”
Jonah rubbed one thumb across his palm.
“Daniel was careful.”
“Too careful for Harcourt.”
“He started copying everything.”
“Maps.”
“Loan schedules.”
“Survey numbers.”
“Signatures.”
Ruth’s mouth had gone dry.
“How do you know?”
“Because I carried some of the copies.”
She stood abruptly.
“You knew all this?”
Jonah did not move.
“Parts.”
“For how long?”
“Years.”
“And you never told me?”
“I didn’t know who you were until last winter.”
“That is not what I asked.”
Jonah stood.
Ruth stepped back.
Not because she feared him.
Because the size difference suddenly felt enormous in the small room.
Jonah stopped immediately.
He saw it.
He hated it.
His voice softened.
“I did not know Daniel had a daughter.”
Ruth stared at him.
“He rarely talked about family.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“He talked about you once.”
Her expression changed.
“What did he say?”
Jonah looked toward the moonlit window.
“That there was one person in the world he would burn every map he ever made to get home to.”
Ruth’s eyes filled before she could stop them.
She looked away.
Jonah waited.
“What happened to him?”
The question came out almost soundless.
Ruth had always been told her father died in a wagon accident.
Her mother said little else.
A bad road.
A broken wheel.
A ravine.
Jonah’s silence told her that version had been incomplete.
“Jonah.”
“He died outside Red Bluff.”
“How?”
“A wagon went over a grade.”