I packed my suitcase.
This time, Nathaniel did not stop me.
He stood beside the wagon in silence.
Margaret had already decided she would not remain at Silver Creek permanently.
Too much had happened.
Too many years.
She and Nathaniel still cared for each other, perhaps always would.
But neither pretended the past could simply become the present again.
“I loved the man he was,” Margaret told me the night before I left.
“And he loved the woman I was.”
She smiled sadly.
“We survived. But sometimes survival carries people in different directions.”
“What about Josie?”
“We’ll raise her between us.”
Then Margaret studied my face.
“He loves you.”
I looked away.
“He barely knows me.”
“Sometimes being seen has very little to do with time.”
At the station, Nathaniel lifted my suitcase onto the platform.
“You’re going back to Missouri?”
“No.”
“Where then?”
“I don’t know.”
He nodded slowly.
The train whistle sounded in the distance.
For three weeks I had wanted Nathaniel Walker to choose me.
Now I understood that was the wrong dream.
My mother had died trying to give me something greater.
The right to choose myself.
Nathaniel reached into his coat.
He held out Victoria’s photograph.
The one he had carried at our first meeting.
“I don’t need this anymore.”
I almost laughed.
“What am I supposed to do with it?”
“Give it back to your sister.”
Then he pulled out another photograph.
Mine.
I stared.
“When did you take that?”
“The photographer in Red Valley.”
“You had him photograph me?”
“You were threatening him because he wanted you to sit still.”
“I was not threatening him.”
“You told him his tripod would mysteriously fall into the river.”
“He was irritating.”
Nathaniel smiled.
A real smile.
Then it disappeared.
“I’m not asking you to stay.”
My chest tightened.
“Good.”
“I’m not asking you to marry me.”
“That would be extremely inappropriate.”
“Yes.”
The train appeared in the distance.
Nathaniel stepped closer.
“But I am asking something.”
“What?”
“When you have traveled wherever you need to travel…”
His voice softened.
“When you have decided who Clara Whitmore is without your father, without Victoria, without me…”
He swallowed.
“Would you consider coming back and introducing her to me?”
Tears filled my eyes.
I smiled.
“That sounds dangerously close to another three-week arrangement.”
“I was hoping for longer.”
The train slowed.
I boarded.
Nathaniel did not chase it.
He did not make some grand demand.
He simply stood on the platform while I left.
And that was how I knew his feelings were real.
He finally loved me enough not to ask me to abandon myself for him.
I returned fourteen months later.
Not because I failed.
Because I succeeded.
I traveled to Missouri and testified against my father.
I reclaimed part of my mother’s estate.
I sold most of the land Charles had stolen.
With the money, I established a small legal fund in Kansas City for widows fighting fraudulent property claims.
Victoria joined me.
Our relationship was never magically repaired.
Trust does not return because someone cries.
But she testified against Father even knowing it would ruin her socially.
She apologized without asking forgiveness.
Eventually, slowly, we became sisters instead of rivals.
Margaret moved to San Antonio, where Josie spent winters with her and summers at Silver Creek.
And Nathaniel?
Nathaniel wrote.
Once every week.
Never demanding.
Never asking when I would return.
His letters contained cattle prices, weather complaints, stories about Josie, Samuel’s disastrous attempt at making biscuits, and ordinary details that somehow became precious.
One September morning, I arrived at Red Valley Station without warning him.
Nathaniel was not there.
That pleased me.
For once, no one had arranged my arrival.
No father.
