“Let’s go home,” Merry said, watching the crowd wander away. “I’m exhausted, and now we’ve got to make something for a picnic, tomorrow? Doesn’t the parson know no one has anything to make?”
“We can think about it on the way home,” I said, privately agreeing with her.
“Oh,” Ezra murmured, waylaying us as we slipped out of the graveyard. “Ellerie, you wanted to speak with Betsy Mullins, didn’t you?”
“Who?” Sadie asked, cocking her head curiously at him.
Ezra’s expression faltered for a quick second, and as our eyes met, recognition flickered over his face.
He knew I knew.
But what was it that I knew?
Ezra had lied about so many things. Things he should have known.
Things he should have known if he was…
If he was Ezra.
“It’s fine,” I said with a forced smile. “I’m sure I’ll see her at the social.”
The man who was not my uncle nodded and stepped through the gate, heading back toward our farmhouse.
He said something to Merry to make her laugh, and as I watched them go, a dark bloom of dread unfurled within my chest.
If he was not the man we’d assumed he was, if he was not Ezra, not my uncle, not a Downing, then who the devil was he?
“Lunch?” Sadie asked hopefully the moment we returned home.
I started toward the kitchen, then stopped. I ought to change out of my black dress first.
I turned for the loft but stopped again.
I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t want to be around anyone. I needed a moment to myself, but the house felt fuller than ever.
Ezra wasn’t who he claimed to be.
Which meant Thomas wasn’t either.
“Is there anything we can do to help, Ellerie?” my not-uncle asked, standing in the middle of the doorway, appraising me.
Neither of them were who they said they were, and I—an absolute fool—had welcomed them into our home with open arms.
I shook my head and changed my mind again, going into the kitchen. I backed into Thomas and nearly jumped out of my skin.
They were everywhere, impossible to escape.
“How about scrambled eggs?” Merry offered, giving me a strange look.
She was worried.
Good.
“With the mushrooms I found yesterday,” Sadie suggested.
Merry shook her head. “I threw them out this morning. They were already black with rot.”
Her face fell.
“I know,” I began, my voice sounding octaves too high. “I think I saw a couple of jars of Mama’s bean soup in the barn. Where Papa was storing the extra stock. I’ll grab one.”
Merry had to have known I was lying. We’d scoured every inch of the farm looking for supplies when we’d drawn up our first inventory. The barn had been empty of food.
I hated to speak falsely, but I couldn’t stand to be trapped in the house any longer. I needed to think. Needed to plan.
How would I get these men out of our home?
“Why don’t you come with me?” I asked, trying to steady my tone. I was certain Ezra knew something was wrong. “It would be good to have you hold the ladder, Merry.” I froze, realizing this left Sadie with the strangers, all on her own. “And, Sadie…the hens need their lunch. Will you check for eggs while you’re out there too?”
With a heavy sigh, she swanned out of the room, snatching her basket as she left.
“We’ll be right back,” I promised, giving Ezra my best smile.
* * *
“There’s no soup out here,” Merry said as I swung the barn door shut behind us. “What are you doing?”
“There’s a trunk in here someplace.” I raced over to where Ezra and Thomas had stacked their supplies.
The curious little crate Ezra had swiped away from me was gone.
“Ellerie, we can’t look through their things!” Merry hissed.
“Keep an eye out, will you?” I tore open one of the rucksacks. Then another. Perhaps they’d stored it there, out of sight. “Do you remember seeing that small crate Ezra was so possessive of when they first arrived? The one with all the things carved into its top?”
“I—I don’t.” She looked away from the window. “Ellerie, stop—just tell me what’s going on.”
“We need to find it,” I said, upending the last bag. Clothing and boots fell out, but no box.
“Why?”
I let out a strangled howl. It wasn’t here.
“Ellerie, please!” She left her post and grabbed my elbow, forcing me to look at her.
“That’s not Uncle Ezra,” I said, deflating as every ounce of fight fled. “Or Cousin Thomas. I don’t…I don’t think we have a cousin. Or an uncle, for that matter.”
Her eyebrows furrowed together. “Of course we do. Papa has talked about Ezra for—”
“But that’s not Ezra. He lied, Merry. He’s lying now.”
“But…if he’s not our uncle…then who is he?”
“I don’t know. I was so certain the trunk would tell us. The way he grabbed it from me….There must be something important inside.”
Her eyes slid from mine, and she drifted from me. My chest burned with a spike of fear. She was about to run back to the house and tell of my treacherous ideas. What would they do to us when their secret was exposed?
“You mean…that crate?”
She pointed up to the loft, where a bit of the box’s corner peeked out from a pile of straw.
There it was, irrefutable proof. Ezra had left all his other things out in the open but had taken pains to hide that. That crate had to hold something damning.
We went up the ladder and rustled through the hay until I felt the trunk. I tugged it free, bringing it out into a ray of sunlight beaming through a hole in the roof I’d clearly need to patch before the spring rains set in.
If the spring rains ever set in.
“E-E-F,” I said, reading the initials carved on the trunk’s lid. “He might be an Ezra, but he’s certainly not a Downing.”
Merry stared uneasily at the box. “That could belong to someone else….Perhaps he bought it secondhand—or is borrowing it from a relative.”