“Step number five is an upward turn,” Kate said. “You’ll see the light at the end of the tunnel and start to realize that you can have a normal life.”

“Do I have to get over the anger before I can go to that one?” Amanda asked.

Kate picked up her coffee and sipped it. “Yes, you do, and also the depression.”

Amanda sighed.

“Do you really hate Conrad?” Kate looked across the table at Jamie.

“Right now I do, and that’s not healthy. So when I leave here at the end of summer, I want to be indifferent and ready to move on. How could he do this to Gracie? He could have divorced me. There was no prenup between us,” Jamie answered.

“Even if he did divorce you, there would still be the Kate marriage. And he probably didn’t want to get lawyers too close to any of the marriages,” Amanda said. “Who knows what happened before Iris. There might be an even earlier wife out there who will hunt me for this cabin and whatever else he had in his bank account.”

“When was his birthday?” Kate asked in an attempt to divert their attention from the ownership of the cabin.

“November 28, 1972, was on his driver’s license,” Amanda said. “That made him forty-four last fall.”

“That’s when we celebrated it, too,” Jamie said.

“The birthday and the wedding dates are the same for us all.” Kate pushed back her chair and headed to her room.

“Where are you going?” Amanda asked.

“I’m writing this down, like I told you. I may hire my own private investigator. If they find a living wife before me, then she will be in line for this property. If it’s not mine, then I’ll go home and let her worry with the legalities of the thing,” Kate said. “I want to know the truth, and once I know that, I can truly have closure.”

“Know the truth and the truth shall set you free,” Amanda whispered. “But I will fight anyone to the death for this cabin.”

“Quoting Scripture? Are you religious?” Jamie asked.

“Oh, yes, I am,” Amanda said. “Conrad and I went to church every Sunday when he was home . . . Dammit!”

Both Jamie and Kate giggled.

Amanda frowned. “It’s not funny. He was sitting in church with me, pretending to be all righteous when he was . . .” Tears filled her eyes and spilled down over her cheeks. “I can’t believe that he even conned God.”

Kate smiled. “A touch of depression is setting in, right?”

Amanda nodded. “He doesn’t deserve to make me sad. I’m more depressed with myself than anything, because I was so gullible.”

“That’s what con men prey on,” Jamie said. “Do you think I wasn’t gullible? Or Kate? And honey, you can fight, but I’ve got a legal claim on this place that you can’t unseat. Gracie is his oldest child, and she will inherit this place.”

“We’ll see when it all comes out that there are divorce papers hiding somewhere and that I’m his wife. And gullible? You might have been, but not Kate!” Amanda shot a glance toward Kate.

With a sigh, Kate turned around and returned to the table. “Of course I was. I’d spent my entire life working on my career. I was thirty when we married, which isn’t old, but I was established in the business, had three degrees, and was working on my doctorate at that time. I have a level head on my shoulders until it comes to men, then all my common sense flies right out the window,” Kate admitted. “And on that note, I have to go write down details before I forget them. Thanks for the breakfast, Jamie.”

“You are welcome,” Jamie said.

Kate changed from pajama pants and a tank top into shorts and a T-shirt. She wrote down every single thing that they’d discussed, and then she folded her shirt and pajama pants. When she tried to open the dresser drawer to put them away, it hung about halfway. She tugged on it, but it wouldn’t budge. She tried to push it back in, but that didn’t work, either.

Finally, she dropped to her knees, and with her face on the floor, she peeked under it to find the corner of a thick piece of paper jamming up the works. She needed something long and thin to slip under there. But if she removed the two top drawers, then she could reach under the back side of the bottom one and pull the paper out.

All it took was one little yank and the envelope was free. She tossed it onto the bed and shoved the drawer back, but just before it closed all the way, something else fluttered underneath. It didn’t give her a problem to pull the drawer all the way out and set it on the bed with the other two.

“Good grief,” she muttered at the sight before her. At least a dozen envelopes had been hidden under there. She gathered them all up and laid them on the bed with the others and then put the drawers back. Curiosity made her pull out the bottom drawer on the other side of the dresser, and she found a dozen more.

When she was sure she had everything, she sat down on the bed with letters in unsealed legal-size envelopes stacked up in front of her. Dates had been written where a stamp should have gone, starting with June 1 and ending with July 3. Nothing to indicate a year, but from the yellowed look of the paper, they’d been written a long time ago.

She held the one dated June 1 in her hand. They could have a bearing on who killed Conrad. Besides, she wanted to know more. She pulled the paper out, gently unfolded it, and gasped when she saw the first line:

My dearest Darcy,

I know you will find the new will and the letters I’m leaving you because this was your favorite hiding spot for treasures when you were a little girl. I must be a very strong woman in the coming days, because Conrad has threatened that if I don’t do what he wants, he will divorce me, take his half of everything your father and I worked for all our lives, and then he will seduce you into marrying him. He can be very charming and I cannot bear the thought of you being taken in by that man.

Though he is very sweet when we’re out, when we are alone he is mentally abusive. After the first two weeks of marriage, I moved into your old room, and he seems fine with the situation.

I love you, Darcy, and I’m very sorry for this terrible mistake I have made. There is a will in a sealed envelope. From what I found out, it had to be signed in front of two witnesses and the seal unbroken to be valid. Take it to our lawyer. He knows my handwriting and my signature. And the key taped to the bottom of this letter is to my deposit box at the bank. Conrad does not know about the box. What’s in it belongs to you as well as this cabin where you grew up and whatever money that Conrad has not blown through.

Love you,

Mama

Kate laid the envelope with WILL written on the outside on the dresser and opened the next one in the stack. When she’d read through half of them, she lay back on the bed. Her heart weighed heavy for Iris, but why hadn’t the woman mailed the letters and the will? Why had she left them hidden to be found after her death?

The next one answered her question. If Darcy knew what was going on, she’d do something about it, and Conrad had promised retribution. Evidently he’d convinced Iris that he would hurt her daughter, or worse yet, seduce her, if she breathed a word of what was happening, so she wrote letters with the hopes that Darcy would find them as soon as she was dead. She would be warned about what kind of man he was and she’d fight him for the property.

Kate laid the letters aside when she’d read them all. Iris damn sure had some grit. What should she do now? Darcy was dead, and if she had a will, how would it affect the cabin? If she didn’t have one, what then? Should she share them with Amanda and Jamie? Should she give them to Waylon?

“I’ll call the lawyers at the company first,” she said. “But first I’ve got to think.”

According to a report from a private investigator Iris had hired after she and Conrad had married, he’d been married twice under a different name, Swanson. One of those women died in a suspicious car wreck, and Kate would bet dollars to doughnuts that he got insurance money on the death as well as a settlement with the divorce. A copy of the full report was there. Conrad’s birth certificate name was Cain Smith and he was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. Mother was listed as Linda Smith. Father was unknown. He was raised in foster homes because his mother had been an alcoholic—or maybe still was, if she was still living, but the detective could not find her.