Page 121 of My Heart Will Find You

As she got up, she told herself she was doing the right thing. On the desk was the portrait of her and Max. The faces were hidden inside the cover and she thought about having one last look, or maybe of taking the portrait with her. But she didn’t do either. She was going to make a clean break. With her shoulders straight, she left the room.

She got all the way to the foot of the stairs before she halted. She’d cleaned the house thoroughly, from the attic on down. Had she missed the place under the stairs? No. It had been full of storage boxes. She’d pulled everything out and dusted them.

Now she remembered that Henry had made a rare excursion out of his library to tell her to put it all back. He’d been frowning. “It’s just research materials. I’ll get to them someday.”

She’d thought he was worried that she’d mess up his old files. It was the same with her father. She’d given a quick swipe at the dust, then shoved everything back inside and closed the door.

So what was he hiding in there? Maybe Henry wanted her to know that it actually was him in her dream.

But Etta instinctively knew what was hidden there.

She didn’t want to do it, but she went to the door, braced herself, then opened it. She pulled out the boxes, then looked around inside. At the tall end was a curtain. It was the same fabric that was in Ben’s room, with plains animals. She flung it open to expose a door with a cylinder lock with three dials.

She swirled them to spell MAX and the lock fell away. She opened the door.

The shallow shelves inside contained things that she was sure had been taken from around the house. Framed pictures filled the bottom half of the space. She pulled out one. It was a photo of two little boys laughing, seeming to be swatting at each other. One of them was a young Max. The Max from her dreams. Even as a child, she knew it was her Max. Henry’s adopted son.

There were several more pictures. She looked hard at one of Martha with Max. In her dream, she hadn’t noticed the likeness between them. They had the same square jaw. But then, they were mother and son.

There were photos of Henry with both boys as they grew up, showing the things they did together. They were at Mount Rushmore, Dodge City, by tents in a forest. Martha didn’t seem to be with them very often. When she was in the picture, it was in their house. She was often in hospital scrubs and smiling fondly at all of them.

On an upper shelf, there was a stack of letters written by Max while he was in college. Veterinarian school. Yes, her Max had loved animals. He wouldn’t allow his horses to be subjected to a second arduous journey to get home. As she held the letters, she knew that Henry would want written accounts of his son’s life.

On the top shelf were wire-bound sketchbooks that were stacked by age. She pulled out the bottom one. The cover said, MAXWELL LOGAN, EIGHT YEARS OLD. The first page was a drawing of a dog with a ball in its mouth. It was signed with ML. Just like Henry’s H.F.

The sketchbooks got better with Max’s age. There were portraits of people and animals. The people were mainly family members, with sweet ones of Martha. By the time Max was twenty-six, the drawings were professional quality. There were a lot of Henry, and Ben was a favorite subject. It was sad that Martha was missing from the more recent books.

Etta leaned back against the wall, her lap full of pictures and books and packets of letters. She was holding the photo she’d found the first night. Now she knew the tall young man in the picture was Max. When she woke on the first morning, she hadn’t noticed that the photo was gone from the bedside table. Had Henry hauled himself up the stairs to take it away? Had he been afraid she’d ask who was in the picture?

These thoughts led to the main question:Why?Why had Henry done this? And when? On the first day she’d entered the house, she’d noticed the many framed pictures that were in the rooms. Henry was a stranger, and she’d wanted to establish him as a family man. Not some loner who lured women into his house.

She was absolutely sure there had been no photos of Max. No group portraits included him. He had been wiped out of the family. It was as though he’d done something horrible and had been disowned, removed forever.

But from what Zack said, that wasn’t the case. He seemed to know Max.

As Etta sat there, she wondered what it all meant. Her dreams had been of such vividness that they were real to her. She put her head back against the wall and closed her eyes. Had it all actuallyhappened? And how much did Henry really know?

She looked at the shelves beside her. Obviously, he knew much more than he’d confided in her. She thought of all his interrogations, his questions about every detail of what she’d dreamed—or maybe experienced—yet he’d been keeping secrets.

Heknewthe Max in her dreams was his son. Martha’s son! Yet in all of Henry’s stories about his life, he’d never mentioned his other son. Why?

Etta started to put the things back onto the shelves. She’d lock them away, out of sight.

But then something struck her, and it took her seconds to realize that it was anger. Fury was probably the only emotion that could override grief.

Anger seemed to start in her heart and flow outward until it reached her fingers and toes. She grabbed a box and turned it upside down to empty out Henry’s file folders. Papers came out, mixing them up, and she was glad of it. It would take him a long time to reorganize them.

She put all the things about Max into the box, then left the low room under the stairs and stepped into the hall. She took her time placing pictures of Max around the house. She made sure they were prominent. She put his sketchbooks on the side tables and on the mantels of the fireplaces.

There was a pretty wooden box in Henry’s library that was full of his precious pens. She dumped the pens onto the floor, then put Max’s letters into the box. She set the box on the big desk, the front of which was now open, so Etta leaned the old carving up against the hole. She wanted everything in plain sight.

When she finished, she felt better. When Henry returned, he’d see what she’d done and he’d understand how angry she was at him.

She went upstairs to the bedroom she was using. Her small suitcase was in a corner and she rolled it out and put it on the bed, ready to pack.

But her phone rang.If that’s Henry or Zack, she thought,I’m not going to answer it.

It was Alicia. Her dear sister. A member of herrealfamily.

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