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loved tremendously in order to risk her husband’s fury by carrying around his likeness all these years. Then, glancing out at the smoking remains of their wagon, Emily tried to accept the inconceivable truth.
    So much made sense now: her father’s hatred—not just toward her, but toward them both; his obsession with her behavior; his fury whenever she so much as talked to a young man.
    She’d thought him overprotective, or obsessed with his hatred over his own mother’s lack of morals. Yet it hadn’t been just his mother who’d given him reason not to trust women. It had been Emily’s own mother’s lack of morals as well. And the scene between Emily and Father Richard had sent him over the edge.
    Though she should have felt sorrow for her father’s pain—sorrow for the man who’d raised her—she couldn’t. For sixteen years, he’d blamed her for something she couldn’t control. She didn’t know if he’d known about her before he’d married her mother, but it was obvious he’d known she wasn’t his child. And for all his preaching about forgiveness, Timothy Ambrose hadn’t been able to forgive Emily’s mother—or accept Emily herself into his life. The irony that it had been his hatred of her that had saved her life wasn’t lost on her.
    Bowing her head, Emily took a moment to mourn all that had gone wrong in her parents’ lives and hers. All the hurt and anger and bitterness. She cried until her throat felt raw and her eyes were hot and dry. Then, standing once more, she pinned the locket to the inside of her shift and rummaged through the debris of the wagon. There she found the shovel, with just a bit of burned handle left.
    After spreading her shawl over her mother’s body, Emily piled dirt over her, then added rocks and pieces of the wagon to the mound to protect Beatrice Ambrose’s body from scavengers.
    She did the same for her father, though she had to force herself; her Christian upbringing wouldn’t allow her to just leave him. Though she hadn’t wanted to feel sorry for him earlier, she did now. Somewhere over the years he’d gone crazy, turning to the Bible to hide his anger. It seemed only fitting to bury that book with him.
    When she was finished, she poked through the smoldering ashes for the family’s rifle and knives, but the savages had taken everything of value. What was left was useless here in the wilderness.
    Emily stood, smoke and ash swirling around her. Above, the dark birds had formed a black cloud. The wind whipped her skirts back, and her long pale hair streamed out behind her as she stood over the scene of the massacre. Shivering, she finally returned to the concealing safety of the grove—and into the woods.
    Fear of the return of those savages kept her on the move, following the river back the way her family had come. Anger and her will to survive gave her the courage to attempt the impossible trip back to the mission. It would take her a long time to return, walking, but she had nothing to help in her bid to survive but her own determination. Yet, if she were lucky, she’d come across Millicente’s husband, Henry, or some other trappers she knew in the area.
    Once she returned to the mission, she planned to go to Kentucky. She’d go to the land of her birth, and there she’d find the man who’d ultimately caused her a lifetime of misery.
    Bitterness from a life filled with hate demanded she find the answers. She would let this other man know just what his actions had caused. One thing was clear if her mother hadn’t married Timothy Ambrose, none of this would have happened. And her birth father needed to know that.

Chapter Two
    Night shadows stretched across the land. Set against a sky of gleaming onyx, thousands of stars twinkled, welcoming the glow of the moon as it rose high to sit upon its throne and bathe the earth below in silvery splendor. Down below, creatures of the night flew across the sky, ambled through the shadows and skittered through the