No Woman Lasted a Day With the Mountain Man’s Five Boys — Until a Little Girl Arrived…
Chapter 2
My hands won’t stop shaking.
Everyone in Cedar Creek knows the Boon story. Everyone knows what happened to Martha. But I don’t think anyone outside the records office knows about Caroline Carter.
Caroline arrived in Cedar Creek six years ago. She was sick — so sick she could barely stand. She walked into my office with a little girl clinging to her skirt, asking for directions to the Boon cabin. She said she was Martha’s sister. Said she hadn’t seen Martha in fifteen years but she needed her now, needed family, needed someone to take her daughter if the worst happened.
I gave her directions. She never made it up the mountain.
She collapsed on Main Street three days later. Consumption. The doctor said it was a miracle she’d walked as far as she did. She died holding a letter in her hand. I found it after — still sealed, addressed to Martha Boon, Boon Cabin, Montana Territory.
I kept it. For years, I kept it in a drawer, waiting for the right moment. But the right moment never came. How do you tell a grieving man that his wife’s sister died trying to reach him? How do you hand a dead woman’s last words to a family that’s already drowning in loss?
I remember one line from that letter like it was carved into my own skin:
*”I’m not asking for myself, Martha. I’m asking for Lucy. If something happens to me, promise me she won’t be alone. Promise me she’ll have family.”*
Martha never received that letter. She was already buried by the time Caroline reached Cedar Creek. Two sisters, reaching for each other across a mountain. Both of them dying. Both of them missing by days.
Caroline died thinking her sister had abandoned her. Lucy went to the orphanage. And five motherless boys grew up wild on a mountain, not knowing their aunt had tried to come home.
Not knowing their cousin was just a few miles away.
I need someone to tell Jed Boon. I’ve carried this secret too long. That little girl — Lucy — she walked up that mountain because something in her blood knew the way. She’s not a runaway. She’s not a stranger. She’s his niece.
Someone tell him before the county takes her back.