stared at the name.
Ashford.
Her name.
Her father’s name.
She looked up slowly.
Gideon seemed confused by her reaction.
Rosalie’s fingers began trembling.
“My father?”
Gideon watched her lips.
Then something terrible seemed to occur to him.
He crossed the room, opened the old cedar chest beneath the window, and removed a small leather packet tied with faded string.
Inside were papers yellowed with age.
He handed one to Rosalie.
It was a medical receipt dated twenty-nine years earlier.
At the bottom was a signature she recognized immediately.
Dr. Silas Ashford.
Her father.
And beneath it, written in a different hand:
Payment received for surgical removal of projectile from Gideon Rook, age nine.
Rosalie looked from the document to the metallic object still visible inside Gideon’s ear.
If the projectile had been removed twenty-nine years ago…
what was still buried inside him?
Rosalie read the receipt three times.
Each
