“I’ve learned that being gone doesn’t always mean gone forever.”

Nora stared at him.

“Are you asking again?”

“No.”

Her face fell.

Tom continued.

“Not tonight.”

She blinked.

“I don’t want you marrying me because Lily is mine. And I don’t want to ask while I’m still trying to understand everything.”

Nora nodded.

“That’s fair.”

“But don’t mistake me.”

He touched her cheek.

“I still love you.”

Her breath caught.

“And when I ask again, Nora Bennett, I expect an answer.”

For the first time that night, she smiled.

“Then you’d better ask properly.”

Winter moved on.

Trust returned more slowly.

But it returned.

Tom registered Lily officially as his daughter in town.

He also signed papers naming Nora her legal guardian should anything happen to him.

When he placed the documents before Nora, she stared at them.

“You didn’t have to do this.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Why?”

“Because fear made you hide the truth.”

Tom met her eyes.

“I don’t want you ever being afraid of losing her again.”

Nora pressed the papers against her chest.

That night, she made apple cake.

Tom found three slices beside his saddle.

He ate all of them.

By February, Lily had decided to call him Papa.

She did it accidentally the first time.

“Papa, look!”

Tom turned so quickly he dropped a hammer.

Lily pointed at a calf.

“It stood up!”

Tom looked from the calf to Lily.

She realized what she had said.

Neither mentioned it.

But that evening Tom sat in the barn alone for twenty minutes because he could not trust himself to speak.

On Lily’s sixth birthday, Tom took her to the hill above the river.

Nora went too.

They stood before a simple grave beneath an old cedar.

Six years earlier Nora had buried Evelyn there because she did not know where home was.

Now Tom placed fresh yellow flowers on the earth.

The same kind Evelyn had planted beneath their window.

Lily held his hand.

“What was she like?”

Tom smiled.

“Stubborn.”

Nora laughed softly.

Tom continued.

“She sang badly.”

“Like Nora?”

“I heard that,” Nora said.

Lily giggled.

Tom looked at the grave.

“She was brave.”

His voice softened.

“And she loved you before she ever saw you.”

Lily squeezed his hand.

They stayed until sunset.

Then they went home.

Home.

The word no longer hurt.

Spring reached Red Willow in April.

Snow shrank from the hills.

Calves filled the pastures.

Yellow flowers appeared beneath the south window because Nora had found Evelyn’s old seed tin in the pantry and planted every last seed.

One evening Tom asked Nora to walk with him.

They crossed the pasture to a hill overlooking the ranch.

Lily remained at the house with Amos’s wife.

Nora suspected something immediately.

Tom became unusually quiet whenever he was nervous.

He stopped beneath the cottonwood.

“Nora.”

“Yes?”

“You once told me to ask properly.”

Her heart began racing.

Tom removed his hat.

“I loved a woman once, and losing her convinced me that love was something a man survived only once.”

Nora said nothing.

“I was wrong.”

He stepped toward her.

“I loved Evelyn.”