The brick oven still radiated heat. Honey rolls cooled on wooden racks. Coffee simmered on the stove, and cinnamon lingered sweetly in the air.

Maribel reached for Grace.

Nolan hesitated only a moment before surrendering his daughter into her arms.

The instant Grace felt Maribel’s warmth, the baby turned instinctively toward her body.

Maribel nearly broke.

This wasn’t merely a restless infant.

This child wasn’t simply cold.

Grace was starving.

Across the bakery, Nolan stood beside the table with his enormous hands hanging uselessly at his sides.

“I tried everything,” he whispered. “I boiled cloths. Warmed milk. Rode to three homes. Mrs. Palmer refused. Mrs. Doyle refused. Even the doctor said she was too weak…”

His jaw tightened.

“He said God would decide.”

Maribel’s eyes hardened.

“Men are awfully quick to hand God the work they’re unwilling to do.”

Nolan stared at her.

She didn’t apologize.

Instead, Maribel pulled Grace closer.

The baby’s tiny mouth searched desperately against her dress.

And suddenly Maribel understood exactly what Nolan had been too ashamed, too frightened, or too broken to ask.

Her heart began pounding.

Six weeks of her grief collided with three weeks of his.

A mother without her baby.

A baby without her mother.

And a father standing helplessly between them.

Outside, snow battered the windows.

Inside, Grace’s weakening fingers curled into the fabric of Maribel’s dress.

Maribel looked down at the starving child.

Then she slowly raised her eyes to Nolan.

What she was considering would scandalize Widow Creek.

People would whisper.

They would judge.

They might never allow either of them to forget it.

But Grace’s little hand tightened once more.

And in that moment, Maribel made her decision.

“Turn around.”

Nolan blinked.

“What?”

“You heard me.”

Understanding crossed his face.

Color rose beneath the cold in his cheeks.

He turned toward the window so quickly that Maribel almost smiled.

Almost.

Instead, she carried Grace into the little storeroom behind the counter, loosened her dress with shaking fingers, and sat in the old rocking chair where she had once imagined nursing Matthew while bread baked before dawn.

When Grace found nourishment, the child made the faintest sound.

Not quite a cry.

More like a sigh.

Maribel closed her eyes.

Pain tore through her so violently she nearly pulled away.

Her body remembered.

Her heart remembered.

For one terrible moment, she wasn’t holding Grace.

She was holding Matthew.

She could see his tiny dark eyelashes. His wrinkled fingers wrapped around hers. The small blue cap she had sewn before his birth.

Then Grace swallowed.

Once.

Twice.

Again.

Life returned by fractions.

Maribel bowed her head over the baby and wept without sound.

On the other side of the thin wall, Nolan heard her.

He didn’t move.

He didn’t speak.

He simply stood facing the snow-covered window while tears slid silently through his beard.

By dawn, Grace had eaten three times.

Color had returned faintly to her cheeks.

Nolan sat at the bakery table with a cup of coffee between both hands, looking as though he had aged ten years in three weeks.

Maribel placed Grace into his arms.

The giant rancher held the baby as delicately as a man carrying flame through dry grass.

“She’ll need to feed often,” Maribel said.

Nolan nodded.

“You know someone else who can…”

She couldn’t finish.

A wet nurse.

There were women in Widow Creek capable of helping.