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Two years later
The afternoon sun spilled over the tall prairie grass, catching in golden waves as it danced in the late summer breeze. From the porch of the ranch house, Lydia stood with one hand resting gently on her swollen belly and the other shading her eyes, watching her daughter tumble through the grass like a giggling whirlwind.
Joy.
That name had never felt more fitting. Two years old now, full of stubbornness and mischief, and already showing signs of her mother’s fire and her father’s quiet courage. She toddled after the ranch dogs, trailing a small wooden spoon she’d stolen from the kitchen, giggling every time one of them barked in surprise.
“Joy Gower,” Lydia called, raising her voice just enough to carry. “Do not you dare hit that dog with my spoon.”
Joy stopped, turned, and offered her mother a big-eyed, guilty grin that was pure innocence and trouble all at once. The spoon tapped the dog’s flank anyway. The old hound huffed, shook his ears, and trotted off, far more patient than any living creature had a right to be.
“She learned that look from you,” Lydia murmured, half to herself.
Her smile came soft and full, the kind that reached all the way to her chest and settled there, warm and steady. Her other hand curled over the curve of her belly. Seven months now. Another baby on the way. Another chapter. The little one inside her had been kicking steady all morning, as if reminding her that life did not pause just because she felt sentimental.
Behind her, the door creaked, and Caleb’s footsteps fell against the porch planks with familiar rhythm. He came up behind her, the heat of him a comfort at her back, pressed a kiss to her temple, and followed her gaze out to the field.
“Looks like she’s chasin’ trouble again,” he said, voice touched with that wry affection he reserved only for Joy. “Dog’s gonna start demandin’ wages.”
“She learned from the best,” Lydia replied, nudging his hip with hers. “You do realize she follows you with that same spoon when you fix the fence?”
“I don’t hit near as hard,” he said, lips curving.
“Mm. Debatable.”
He chuckled, the sound low and sure, and slid an arm around her waist, his hand resting just above where hers protected her belly. They stood together a moment, breathing in the scent of late grass and woodsmoke, the sound of laughter and wind, and the kind of quiet that only ever came when a heart had everything it needed.
The ranch had grown in those two years. Fences repaired and straight, posts sunk deep and true. New boards on the barn. A fresh coat of whitewash on the house, courtesy of Sam and Harlan’s “help”—which had mostly been laughter, paint in hair, and Mabel calling from the yard that they’d missed a spot.
The livestock thrived. Cattle grazed in the far pasture, tails flicking lazily. Chickens scratched under the cottonwoods. The goats—Lydia’s stubborn favorites—picked their way along a rocky rise like mountain kings. The soil, once worn thin by worry and neglect, had taken to seed again, rich with second chances.
But what meant more than land or stock or even the long-buried treasure they’d unearthed—bonds traded quiet and careful, debts paid, the rest tucked away for a future with less fear—was this: the life they’d built side by side, stubbornly and tenderly, one shared decision at a time.
Joy shrieked with laughter as one of the younger dogs darted away, tail high, clearly enjoying the game. She plopped down in the dust, completely unfazed, and began drawing patterns with her spoon.
“Reckon she’s drawin’ a map to that cache,” Caleb said, chin dipping toward their daughter. “Better keep an eye on her. Girl like that could buy the whole town before she turns five.”
“Let her,” Lydia murmured. “Then she can hire someone to chase after her while I sleep.”
“You sayin’ you’re tired?”
“That, Mr. Gower, is the understatement of the year.” She sighed, but there was no real complaint in it. “Still, I rather like this view.”
He squeezed her gently. “Me too.”
Behind them, the clatter of hooves and a shout of laughter signaled Mabel and Harlan Tate’s arrival. The wagon rattled into the yard, pulled by a pair of sturdy bays. Harlan held the reins with all the seriousness of a man guiding a stagecoach through bandit country. Mabel sat beside him, hair tucked up under her hat, eyes bright, one hand braced at her own rounding middle.
They rode in close together, and Lydia couldn’t miss the way Harlan’s arm hovered near Mabel’s back, ready to catch, steady, fuss.
“Now don’t you dare jump down on your own,” he was saying as the wagon rolled to a stop. “Doc said—”
“Doc also said you were drivin’ me crazy,” Mabel cut in. “I heard him loud and clear.”
She swung down from the saddle board with surprising grace for a woman nearly six months pregnant. Harlan still rushed to take her elbow, muttering under his breath.
“Another wild one on the way,” Mabel declared as she reached the porch, fanning herself with her hat. “Hope yours takes after Caleb. Heaven help me if mine’s got your attitude, Lydia.”
Lydia laughed, full and unguarded. “You’d love her even if she came out buckin’ and brawling.”
“Who says it’s a her?” Harlan demanded, dropping an armful of parcels with a grunt. “I been talkin’ to this baby every night, tellin’ ’em to be nice and calm.”
Mabel shot him a look. “And you think that worked real well on you growin’ up, did it?”
Caleb snorted. “Didn’t take at all.”
Joy spotted them and scrambled to her feet, the spoon waving like a banner. “Mabey!” she yelled, mangling the name. “Unca Haa!”
“That girl,” Mabel said, beaming, “is the only person alive who can call me ‘Mabey’ and get away with it.” She crouched with a small groan, arms wide. “Come on then, you little bandit.”
Joy barreled into her, wrapping chubby arms around Mabel’s neck. Mabel kissed her cheek noisily. “You been keepin’ your mama on her toes?”
Joy nodded so hard her curls bounced. “Mama say no,” she announced solemnly. “I say… maybe.”
Lydia covered a laugh with her hand. “I absolutely did not teach her that.”
Mabel arched a brow. “No, but you thought it often enough.”
Harlan scooped Joy up from Mabel with ease. “You, little miss,” he said, swinging her onto his hip, “are comin’ with me to see if any of those goats learned to fly yet.”
“Goats no fly,” Joy said, scandalized.
“They don’t?” he gasped. “Well, we best check to be sure.”
He headed toward the pens with Joy chattering away, the dogs trotting behind, forming a ragged little parade.
Caleb watched them go, lips twitching. “Think he’s ready?”
“For fatherhood?” Mabel shrugged one shoulder. “Ready as any man. Which is to say, not at all, but we’ll make do.” She laid a hand on Lydia’s arm. “How you feelin’, truly?”
“Like I swallowed a pumpkin and then someone set it on fire,” Lydia said dryly. “But… all right. The baby’s strong. Dr. Evans says everything looks good.”
Mabel’s gaze softened. “You look good,” she said. “Tired. But good. Happier than when you first rode into my shop lookin’ like you hadn’t slept in a year and weren’t about to start.”
“Life was a bit… complicated then,” Lydia said. Her voice gentled. “You helped untangle it.”
“Eh.” Mabel waved a hand. “You did most of it yourself. I just poked you in the right direction and threatened to shoot anyone who got in the way.” She cut a sidelong look at Caleb. “Present company included.”
“I recall,” Caleb said. “You still pointin’ that gun at anyone who looks sideways at Lydia?”
“Only if they deserve it.”
They all sat together later, gathered around the long wooden table Caleb had built himself from fallen pine. He’d planed it smooth and left the knots where they were, saying it gave the wood character. Lydia loved it for that—for the way his big hands had shaped something solid out of what another man might have burned.
Martha and Ezekiel Gower had arrived with Sam not long after Mabel and Harlan, bringing a pot of beans, fresh bread, and Martha’s famous apple cobbler.
Talk at the table flowed easy.
Martha fussed over Joy’s tangled curls. “This child needs a ribbon,” she said.
“She needs a fence,” Harlan muttered as Joy wriggled out of reach and darted under the table, spoon in hand.
Sam leaned back in his chair, watching the chaos with obvious amusement. “Never thought I’d see the day Caleb Gower sat at the head of a crowded table,” he said. “Man used to slink out the back of any room that got too full.”
“Still might,” Caleb said around a mouthful of bread. “If you keep talkin’ about me like I’m not sittin’ right here.”
Lydia met his gaze across the table, heart catching a little at how natural it all felt. His hand rested near her plate, fingers idly tracing patterns in a crumb of crust. Two years ago, that same hand had trembled around a rifle, caught between stayin’ and leavin’. Now it belonged here like it had always been meant to.
Joy danced between uncles and aunts, her dress smeared with jam and dust, her joy infectious. She climbed into Ezekiel’s lap to steal bites from his plate, pressed floury kisses to Martha’s cheek, and tried to sneak extra spoonfuls of cobbler when she thought no one was looking.
“Miss Joy,” Lydia said in her best St. Louis tone when she caught her, “we do not climb on the table.”
Joy froze, one foot on the chair, one foot on the bench. She peered at her mother, measuring. Then she grinned.
“Mama say ‘no,’” she announced. “I say… maybe.”
Everyone at the table burst into laughter.
“Lord help us,” Mabel groaned. “We’re raisin’ lawyers.”
Lydia shook her head, but her heart felt so full it almost hurt. She watched her daughter, her family, the man she loved, and felt the weight of old grief finally loosen its grip. Tim’s memory lived there too—quieter now, less sharp. She thought of him sometimes when she walked the far fence line, when she passed the spot where the bonds had once been hidden.
She’d written to his parents in St. Louis, spilling truths and half-truths both. Told them of his death, of his better days, of the child he’d never know. She hadn’t written of trains or robberies or the way his choices had nearly ruined her. Some things were between the dead and the living they left behind.
What mattered now was the man beside her and the life they were building. She had grieved what had been. She was ready—finally—to claim what was.
That evening, Lydia and Caleb walked out to the pasture alone. Mabel had taken Joy inside with the promise of a story, and the Gowers had gone home with leftover cobbler and promises to return.
The air had cooled with the evening, taking the edge off the heat. A long stripe of orange and pink cut across the sky, clouds glowing like embers. The cattle were quiet, heads bent to the grass. Crickets had begun their chorus in the ditch.
They stopped near the old cottonwood, the one that had stood through storms and drought alike. Caleb took her hand, callused fingers wrapping around hers, thumb brushing over her knuckles in that slow, steady way that always calmed her.
“This is home,” she whispered. The words slipped out on a breath, honest and simple. “Not just the land. You. Joy. This baby. All of it.”
Caleb nodded, his gaze on the horizon and then back on her. “Always was,” he said. “Just took us a while to find it.”
She looked up at him, heart turning over at the quiet certainty in his voice. “Do you ever regret it?” she asked. “Choosing us. Choosing this. When you could have kept to yourself and spared yourself the trouble?”
He huffed, the sound halfway to a laugh. “Darlin’, I spent most o’ my life livin’ half a life. This is trouble, sure.” His free hand slid to rest over her belly, feeling the shift of the baby within. “But it’s the kind worth showin’ up for.”
Lydia let out a breath that felt like it had been trapped in her chest for years. Somewhere near the house, Joy’s laughter floated across the yard—high and bright and sure.
“Do you ever think about leaving?” she asked softly. “Going farther west like you once talked about? Somewhere with mountains, or… I don’t even know.”
He considered, eyes tracing the line where sky met earth. “Used to dream about that,” he admitted. “Figured if I got far enough from everythin’ I’d feel less in-between. Less… wrong.”
“And now?”
“Now I got dirt under my nails that feels like it knows my name,” he said. “Got a woman who looks at me like I belong, even when the town takes its time catchin’ up. Got a little girl who thinks I can fix anythin’ with a piece o’ wire and some rope.” His mouth curved. “If I went lookin’ for somethin’ better than that, I’d be the fool.”
She leaned into him, resting her head against his shoulder. The baby kicked under both their hands, a firm little nudge that made them chuckle quietly together.
“What shall we call this one?” she asked. “Assuming they don’t introduce themselves first.”
“I was thinkin’ maybe we let Joy decide,” Caleb said.
Lydia groaned. “We’ll end up with a child named Spoon or Goat if we do that.”
“Could be worse,” he said. “Could be ‘Maybe.’”
She laughed, the sound soft against his shirt. “No. I think we’ve had enough ‘maybe’ to last a lifetime.”
He turned his head, pressed a kiss to her hair. “Then we stick with ‘always,’” he said.
She closed her eyes, let the word sink deep. Always. Not a promise of no hard days—she was too honest with herself for that—but a promise they would face them together.
OFFER: A BRAND NEW SERIES AND 2 FREEBIES FOR YOU!
Grab my new series, "Brave Hearts of the Frontier", and get 2 FREE novels as a gift! Have a look here!
My dearest readers, I would love to hear your thoughts on this book and the extended epilogue. Looking forward to your comments! 💗