Higgins took another bite.
“I may have misjudged His intentions.”
The entire table broke.
Men laughed.
Avalene’s cheeks turned pink.
Halfpint raised his bowl.
“Can I have more?”
“You already had two servings,” Higgins said.
“I’m still growing.”
“You've been growing sideways since Christmas.”
Avalene laughed.
It was small.
But Wyatt heard it.
He looked at her.
She looked away.
Something had shifted.
Not much.
Barely anything.
But it was the first time since the courthouse that Wyatt felt as though the woman he married might actually be inside the room with him rather than simply occupying space beside his life.
Three days earlier, neither of them had known what to say after the judge pronounced them husband and wife.
The courthouse ceremony took less than seven minutes.
The judge looked bored.
Avalene looked terrified.
Wyatt looked at the floor.
He had not wanted a wife.
Not exactly.
He had wanted his mother back.
Those two truths had become tangled in a way he resented.
His mother, Margaret Calder, had spent her final winter worrying about the ranch.
Not the cattle.
Not the mortgage.
Not even the men.
Wyatt.
“You are becoming your father,” she told him one evening.
Wyatt had been repairing a broken harness beside her bed.
“That a complaint?”
“Yes.”
His hands stopped.
His father had been a good rancher.
Hardworking.
Reliable.
And after Wyatt’s younger brother died of fever, his father became increasingly silent.
He stopped going to church.
Stopped attending town dances.
Stopped sitting beside the fire after supper.
He worked.
Then worked more.
Five years later, his horse came home without him.
They found his father beside the creek.
Heart.
That was what the doctor said.
Margaret never believed it completely.
“Grief wore him down first.”
Wyatt hated when she said things like that.
Then she became ill.
The doctor initially called it a winter cough.
By spring, everyone knew better.
Wyatt watched the strongest woman he had ever known become thin enough that his hands could almost circle her wrist.
Still, she worried about him.
Especially when she realized she would leave him alone.
She wrote an advertisement without telling him.
Montana rancher, thirty-seven, financially secure, seeks practical woman for marriage and household partnership. No requirement of dowry. Character valued above appearance.
Wyatt discovered it only after letters began arriving.
He was furious.
His mother was delighted.
“Read them.”
“No.”
“One.”
“No.”
“You need a wife.”
“I need you to stop planning my life from your deathbed.”
The sentence had been cruel.
He regretted it before he finished speaking.
His mother did not become angry.
She simply looked at him.
“I am planning because I won't be here to stop you from disappearing.”
Wyatt left the room.
That night, he read the letters.
Most were terrible.
Some were desperate.
Some were romantic.
One woman described herself for nearly two pages and never mentioned ranch life once.
Another asked whether Wyatt planned to provide an allowance.
Another requested photographs of the house.
Then he found Avalene Marsh’s letter.
It was short.
Mr. Calder,
I understand that your circumstances are practical rather than romantic, so I will answer in the same spirit. I am twenty-nine years old, healthy, capable of keeping a household, cooking, sewing, preserving food, basic bookkeeping, caring for poultry, and tending a kitchen garden. I have helped manage my father’s dry goods accounts and am accustomed to work.
I do not require romance. I am asking for a roof, a purpose, and a household where honest effort will be treated as worth something.
If that is insufficient, I wish you well.
Respectfully,
Avalene Marsh
Wyatt read it twice.
Then once more.
His mother asked the next morning:
“Which one?”
He said nothing.
She smiled.
“This one?”
Avalene’s letter sat on the bedside table.
Wyatt looked at her.
“How did you know?”
“You didn't burn it.”
Margaret turned the paper over.
Her hand shook badly as she wrote on the back.
This one, Wyatt. Write to this one.
She died nine days later.
For almost a month, Wyatt did nothing.
Then he wrote to Avalene.
Not beautifully.
Not warmly.
He simply explained that the offer remained if she wanted it.
She replied.