“Who?” Rose squinted at him, head tilted. “Judah? He’s right here, though you don’t wanna talk to him. He gets cranky when he stays up past his bedtime. Not me, though. Aunt Abigail says if she let me, I’d be up until the rooster crowed. I tried it once, but—”
“Rose, stop.” Judah put a hand to the top of her head and pushed her out of Slade’s line of sight. “Sorry about her, mister. Are you all right? Do you need a drink or something? Do you have a name?”
“Don’t be dumb, Judah. Everyone has a name. Is it in here?” Rose must have jumped onto the bed beside him—the mattress bounced, and the pain doubled with his vision. His breath hissed out. She fluttered the pages of something.
“Rose, be careful! And what did Aunt Abigail say about nosing through his things?”
“It’s just a book. Golly, it looks old. Are you Ob…Oba…Obadiah Reeves?”
The name swam in his head with the rest of them, but it settled into place when the room stopped spinning. She had the prayer book, that was all. She was looking at the last page, where the family names had been written, the ink getting rustier as one followed the list upward. He had found them only a month ago but had read them so many times since that he knew each flourish of the various hands.
Obadiah Reeves. Hezekiah Reeves. Winter Reeves. Thaddeus Lane.
“Slade.” He moistened his lips. “I’m Slade.”
Her face scrunched up. “You’re not in here.”
No. He hadn’t ever meant to leave his mark on that family.
She held up the book and peered through…a hole? “What’s this for?”
“Rose.” Judah’s voice again, longsuffering. “The bullet got it. Didn’t you hear Doc say that? You never pay any attention.”
What? “No!” Slade lifted a hand before he thought better of it, wincing at the new surge of agony as well as the damage to the tome.
Judah put a restraining hand on the foolish arm. “I wouldn’t get too upset about the book if I were you, mister. Doc said it coulda been what kept you from dying then and there. Coulda slowed the bullet down just enough, he said, before it went into you.” The boy shrugged. “Didn’t seem to do much good to me. You about gave up the ghost on our kitchen table, but maybe I was wrong.”
“Besides, it’s just the corner. You can still see all the words. Mostly.”
Floorboards creaked, and footsteps sounded somewhere nearby. Judah and Rose both snapped to attention and called out “Ruby!”
“How is he?” An older voice, but still young. Slade eased his face toward the door and frowned. Something about the blue dress, the black hair were familiar, though he wasn’t sure why. Her eyes went just as wide as Judah’s had. “You’re awake!”
Another of the Kent siblings, it would seem. Older, more woman than girl. She charged in and pushed her brother aside, gripped his hand, and leaned over him. “Can you speak? You scared a decade off of my life when I saw you falling from the train. Was it really Devereaux Hughes who shot you?”
He had to blink to keep his head from swimming again. These kids sure didn’t know the value of quiet.
“I am sorry, sir.” Another woman’s voice, older, drifted into the room. “Her train must have made it through before the tree came down. I have seen no young woman with red hair today.”
“It would have been an unscheduled train.” That voice—masculine, familiar, and asking after a young woman with red hair. But it couldn’t be Lane. Lane was in Washington, saving Lincoln. He couldn’t be here.
He dug his fingers into the mattress under him. Of course he was here, doing the same thing Slade had been doing—trying to save their Marietta from that monster.
Footsteps halted outside his room. “Interesting. An unscheduled train came through just before the lightning strike. I cannot speak to your granddaughter, but a man was shot and fell from one of the cars into the river. We brought him here, though the doctor thinks he cannot hold on much longer. Perhaps you would know him too?”
Ruby leaped from his side. “Aunt Abigail, he’s awake!”
A clamor of footsteps followed, and a moment later a trio rushed through the door. A woman whose face seemed as familiar as Ruby’s—Abigail, apparently—and two tall men partially visible behind her. Lane, it had to be. No one else was that tall. Sweet relief sang through him at knowing someone was here to help where he couldn’t.
“Lane.” He tried to sit up and ended up back on the pillow, moaning.
“Oz.” The old man was at his side in one step. He shook his head as he took the chair beside the bed. “I knew, even as I prayed, something had gone wrong. What happened, son?”
Isaac came up behind him, looking conflicted.
Slade focused on the grandfather. “I don’t know where she is. We were together in the freight car, but Hughes…” His eyes slid closed. Such a blur. He could remember her face, the love and the fear in it, her hand shaking and straining against Hughes’s as they raised the gun. “I tried to give her a chance. I tried. I…” He couldn’t breathe. It hurt too much, within and without.