Chapter 10: Hello, Brother

Lena's POV

Boone read the letter standing up, with his back against the stairwell wall.

I read it over his arm, because he did not stop me.

His father had written it in the weeks before he died, in blocky capitals that pressed through the paper.

Boone's mother had been twenty-three when she took up with the founder of the Bitterroot Wardens.

She had been engaged to Boone's father at the time.

When she got pregnant, he had known the baby was not his.

He had married her anyway, and when she died of an aneurysm two years later, he had raised the baby as his own.

The baby was Boone.

The founder was Amos Dawes.

Boone turned the page, and I saw a line that made my knees weaken.

AMOS HAS A DAUGHTER BY HIS WIFE. HER NAME IS JOELLE. SHE IS YOUR HALF SISTER. SHE HAS KNOWN SINCE SHE WAS SEVENTEEN.

I put my hand on the wall.

Boone said nothing at all.

The last page was a short paragraph, and he read it aloud in a voice I did not know.

"The land is yours for your whole life, son."

He swallowed and went on.

"If you die with no child, it goes to my blood kin, and I have none. So I wrote that it goes to the founder's blood."

His breath caught.