Nora folded the letter at sunrise.
Then she went outside.
Harlan was chopping wood.
He had likely been there for hours.
She stood watching him until he noticed.
He lowered the axe.
“I’m sorry.”
“For which part?”
“All of it.”
“You didn’t know she was Eleanor when you married her?”
“No.”
“When did she tell you?”
“Six years ago.”
“And you never wrote to me?”
“She begged me not to.”
Nora’s anger returned.
“You obeyed?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because whenever your uncle’s name came up, she shook so badly she couldn’t hold a cup.”
That silenced Nora.
Harlan planted the axe head in the stump.
“I wanted to go east and find you.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“She made me promise.”
He looked toward the house.
“I loved her enough to keep promises I hated.”
Nora studied him.
He did not resemble the husband she had imagined during the journey west.
She had pictured something simpler.
A desperate rancher.
A practical arrangement.
Separate bedrooms perhaps.
Courtesy.
Work.
Instead she had walked into the remains of her sister’s life.
And married her sister’s husband.
The thought twisted inside her.
“I cannot be your wife.”
Harlan’s eyes lowered.
“I know.”
“Thomas had no right.”
“No.”
“And you should have told me immediately.”
“Yes.”
She frowned.
“You agree rather easily.”
“I have six sons. I learned years ago that arguing with an angry Callaway woman is pointless.”
Nora stared.
Then, despite herself, a sound escaped her.
Half laugh.
Half sob.
Harlan looked startled.
So was she.
From the porch came Rue’s voice.
“Does that mean she’s staying?”
They turned.
All six boys were crowded together near the door.
Nora wiped her eyes.
Cade looked embarrassed.
Thomas looked terrified.
Rue simply waited.
Nora looked at the house.
The crooked roof.
The patched chimney.
The porch railing repaired with rope.
Then at the boys.
“You need breakfast,” she said.
Rue’s entire face changed.
“That means yes?”
“It means breakfast.”
Cade whispered to Eli, “That means yes.”
Nora pointed at him.
“I heard that.”
For the first time, Cade smiled.
Nora intended to stay one week.
One week became two.
She moved into Eleanor’s old room only after Harlan carried every personal belonging into storage and Nora chose what she wished to keep.
The marriage remained strange and careful.
Harlan slept in the bunkhouse.
Nora ran the kitchen.
Nobody discussed anything beyond that.
Life did what life always did.
It demanded attention.
There were socks to mend.
Chickens escaping.
A fence destroyed by cattle.
Rue developed the habit of following Nora everywhere.
Porter discovered she could multiply large numbers faster than he could.
Eli pretended not to like her biscuits and then ate seven.
Reeve, who was nine and almost painfully quiet, left a small bunch of prairie flowers beside her plate one morning and fled before she could thank him.
