“What?”
“That love must leave room for choice.”
Eli watched the water move over the stones.
“She was wiser than I was.”
“She was wise enough to know you would learn.”
He smiled faintly.
“She always did have an irritating amount of confidence in me.”
Margaret laughed.
Then she grew quiet.
“I wish she could have been here.”
“So do I.”
“Do you think she would have liked the wedding?”
“I think she would have complained about the flowers, corrected the minister, and told Thomas to stop drinking before the meal.”
Margaret laughed through tears.
“That sounds like her.”
Eli took her hand.
“She would have liked you in that dress.”
Margaret looked at him.
“You think so?”
“I know so.”
They stood together, listening to the creek.
After a while, Eli said, “I want to put her letter somewhere safe. Not locked away, but somewhere Clara can read it when she’s old enough.”
Margaret nodded.
“That would be right.”
“And I want to keep the blue quilt in the sitting room.”
“Of course.”
“But I don’t want it to be the only thing we remember her by.”
Margaret leaned her head against his shoulder.
“It won’t be.”
The years that followed were not without hardship.
The ranch suffered a dry summer, then a harsh winter. A mare died foaling, and a section of the barn roof collapsed under heavy snow. Eli and Margaret argued over money, over the best way to discipline Clara, and over whether Eli ought to accept a risky contract to supply cattle to a distant mining camp.
Their marriage was not a story in which love made every difficulty disappear.
There were mornings when Margaret woke with doubts, wondering whether she had chosen a life too far from everything familiar. There were evenings when Eli retreated into silence, grieving Anne in ways he had never fully learned to explain. Sometimes Margaret felt the old pressure to be useful, to make herself indispensable so that no one could regret having brought her into their home.
But Eli learned to recognize those moments.
When Margaret worked too long, he reminded her that the house would not collapse if she sat down. When he became withdrawn, she asked him to speak rather than leaving him alone with his sorrow. They learned to apologize without turning every disagreement into a verdict on their love.
Clara grew.
She learned to read from Margaret, to ride from Eli, and to ask difficult questions from both. She continued to speak of her mother, and neither parent discouraged her. Anne’s picture remained on the mantel, beside a new photograph of Eli and Margaret taken in town after their wedding.
The two women were never confused in Clara’s mind.
Anne was her mother, the woman who had carried her, loved her, and left her with a letter full of hope.