“Isn’t there anyone else you can talk to and find out what’s going on?” Han asked. “What about your father?”

“Well, he and my mother don’t always get on,” she said. “And he’s away a lot on business.

“Brothers and sisters?”

“I have a sister,” Rebecca said. “But I think she might be part of the problem.” She paused. “I’m afraid I’ll lose everything if I don’t go back now.”

Han frowned, confused. Then it came to him. Families like Rebecca’s—they had legacies. “You mean they might cut you off? Disinherit you?”

She nodded. “Maybe. It’s a possibility.”

Han’s instincts said she wasn’t telling him everything. It was like peering through a keyhole into a room you wanted to break into. You could see some of what was going on, but there might be a nasty surprise waiting in the part of the room you couldn’t see.

“I don’t know that I can give you advice,” he said. “And I don’t know what you stand to lose.” He reached out and fingered a tendril of her hair. “If you don’t know what your mother wants, you should think about what you want, and the best way to go after it, whether it’s staying here or going back and getting things straight with your mother.”

Rebecca’s face went all cloudy again. “It’s not about what I want,” she said. “I have a lot of other people depending on me.”

“Why can’t it be about what you want—sometimes, anyway?” Han said, closing his hand over hers. “You just got to…you just have to claim it. I’ve learned that nobody’s going to hand you anything. You don’t get what you don’t go after.”

She looked down at their joined hands. “I don’t know whom to trust,” she whispered.

“Trust me,” he said, leaning across the table and kissing her.

The fact was, he wanted Rebecca to stay in Oden’s Ford, and it wasn’t just that he was learning things from her he wouldn’t learn anywhere else.

She was prickly and proud, used to ordering people around and getting her own way. She was smart and opinionated—she could talk the tail off a dog. But she was fiercely kindhearted—she’d cross the street to give a coin to a beggar, and always backed the underdog in any fight. She’d shed tears over Mam and Mari—though she’d never even met them.

She demanded a lot—but demanded even more from herself.

He still held her hand within his, rubbing his thumb over her palm. Her hands were remarkably small, but calloused. Hands that weren’t afraid of hard work. She wore a heavy gold ring on her forefinger, engraved with circling wolves.