She smiled—softly, quietly—through a trembling breath. He hadn’t forgotten. He had seen her all along. Claire didn’t rush to tell her brothers. She didn’t storm into the house waving gold bars or waving the letter like a trophy.
She just quietly locked the cellar, cleaned the barn until sunset, and left with dust on her hands and something lighter in her chest. That night, she sat at the kitchen table of the empty farmhouse, her father’s letter beside a mug of tea gone cold.