Tears filled her eyes.

“And I will love that life forever.”

Then she touched his cheek.

“But I don’t want you replacing Daniel.”

Gideon remained silent.

“I want you to have your own place.”

Maylin reached beneath her collar.

Around her neck hung a small brass key.

The key from Daniel’s cedar box.

She placed it in Gideon’s palm.

“This key opened the truth.”

His fingers closed around it.

“What are you saying?”

Maylin smiled.

“I’m saying yes.”

Shaw screamed.

Faun jumped onto Gideon’s back.

Everyone began laughing.

Then a stranger appeared near the fence.

An elderly rider wearing a black coat.

“Mrs. Harrow?”

Maylin turned.

“Yes?”

“I was instructed to deliver something to you today.”

He produced an envelope.

Maylin’s heart stopped when she recognized the handwriting.

Daniel’s.

On the front were written the words:

For Christmas, one year later.

Maylin opened it.

My dearest Maylin,

If this letter reached you, Gideon kept his promise.

Gideon became pale.

And if I know him, he probably spent the entire year believing that he owed me something.

He does not.

Maylin looked at Gideon.

Then continued.

Years ago, before I knew you, Gideon saved my life outside Cheyenne.

Everything I experienced afterward existed because he did.

Every morning with you.

Every Christmas with Shaw.

Every time Faun wrapped her arms around me.

He unknowingly gave me my family.

Gideon turned away and wiped his face.

Maylin struggled to continue reading.

That is why I chose him.

Not merely because I trusted him.

There was another reason.

Maylin frowned.

Years before I met you, Gideon once showed me a photograph of the only woman he believed he had ever loved.

The porch became completely silent.

The woman was eighteen years old.

The photograph had been taken in St. Louis.

Her name was Maylin Carter.

Maylin stopped breathing.

She slowly looked toward Gideon.

His face had gone white.

“You knew me?”

Gideon whispered:

“No.”

Then he stared at her.

“I knew a girl named Maylin.”

Memories suddenly returned.

St. Louis.

A railway station.

Rain falling against wooden platforms.

A thin seventeen-year-old stable boy carrying Maylin’s mother’s luggage.

Gray eyes.

An embarrassed smile.

A paper flower folded from a train schedule.

Maylin whispered:

“Gid?”

Gideon’s eyes filled with tears.

Nobody had called him that in nearly twenty years.

“You remember me.”

Maylin placed a hand against her mouth.

“You disappeared.”

“My father took me west.”

“You never wrote.”

“I wrote six letters.”

“I never received them.”

He laughed sadly.

“I thought you forgot.”

Maylin looked again at Daniel’s letter.

I recognized you in Gideon’s photograph immediately.

I never told him.

Perhaps that was selfish.