“Are you ever going to ask?”
He nearly choked on his coffee.
“Ask what?”
“You know exactly what.”
Caleb stared into the cup.
“I assumed you’d had enough men deciding marriage was the answer to your problems.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
He looked at her.
Abby raised one eyebrow.
Caleb set the cup down.
Then he did something that made her laugh.
He knelt.
“No.”
Caleb froze.
“I haven’t even asked yet.”
“Get up.”
“Abby—”
“I will not have you proposing on your knees as though you’re begging permission to tolerate me.”
His mouth twitched.
He stood.
“Better?”
“Much.”
Caleb looked at her for a long moment.
Then he said, “Abigail Whittaker, you are stubborn, terrifying with a ledger, impossible to argue with, reckless around burning buildings, and you have permanently ruined my ability to tolerate Otis’s biscuits.”
Abby folded her arms.
“This proposal needs improvement.”
Caleb stepped closer.
His voice softened.
“You once told me nobody had ever chosen you.”
Abby became still.
He took her hand.
“I don’t want your land.”
Another step.
“I don’t want your cattle.”
Closer.
“I don’t want somebody smaller, quieter, easier, or different.”
His thumb brushed the scar on her palm.
“I choose exactly the woman standing in front of me.”
Abby blinked back tears.
“So marry me.”
Caleb smiled.
“That sounded suspiciously like you proposing to me.”
“It probably was.”
“Then yes.”
She laughed.
“So is that your answer or mine?”
“Yes to both.”
He kissed her beneath the same enormous Kansas sky she had once crossed believing her life was over.
Their wedding took place in autumn.
Not in the chapel where Elias had humiliated her.
Abby refused that.
They married beneath cottonwood trees on her mother’s land.
Margaret sat in the first row.
When Abby appeared, wearing a simple cream-colored dress she had chosen herself, nobody laughed.
Nobody whispered.
Nobody stared at her waist.
Caleb watched her come toward him with an expression so full of love that Abby almost forgot seventy other people were present.
Almost.
Then she noticed something near the back.
A little girl, perhaps twelve years old.
Round-faced.
Heavyset.
Trying to tug her shawl across her body because two boys nearby were whispering and laughing.
Abby stopped walking.
The guests became confused.
Caleb waited.
Abby crossed toward the girl.
“What’s your name?”
“Emma.”
Abby held out her hand.
“Would you walk with me?”
The girl stared.
“Up there?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Abby looked toward Caleb.
Then toward her mother.
Then across acres that had once been stolen from her by men who survived only because they had convinced her she was worth less than she was.
“Because nobody should learn to make herself smaller just because cruel people are uncomfortable with how much space she takes up.”
Emma took her hand.
Together, they walked toward the altar.
Years later, people still told the story of Abby Whittaker.
