The locomotive whistle screamed behind her.
A porter shouted.
“Last call!”
The train began to move.
Clara turned instinctively.
Her last easy path east rolled past the platform in a cloud of steam.
One passenger waved through a window.
Clara almost raised her hand.
Then the car passed.
Another followed.
Then another.
Within a minute, the train had cleared the station.
Only tracks remained.
Two silver lines vanishing toward everything she had known.
Clara looked back at Nathan.
At five children.
At the unopened letter.
At her one suitcase.
Nathan lowered his arm.
“You can still leave.”
Clara almost laughed.
“With what train?”
“One comes east in four days.”
“And until then?”
“There’s a boarding room above the mercantile.”
“You’d pay?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because you came here because of my family.”
His answer was so simple that it disrupted several assumptions she had already formed.
Clara looked at the letter again.
“What happens if I come to the ranch?”
Nathan hesitated.
“You have your own room.”
“And marriage?”
“Nothing happens unless you decide.”
Ethan stared at his father.
Apparently this had not been explained to the children.
Clara noticed.
“So the agency believes I am arriving to marry you.”
“Yes.”
“My parents believe the same.”
“Yes.”
“But you expect me to spend four days deciding whether to get back on the train?”
“If you need longer, longer.”
“Why?”
Nathan looked genuinely confused.
“Because it’s your life.”
The words should not have mattered.
They did.
Clara had spent nineteen years hearing the opposite without anyone saying it so directly.
Your family needs food.
Your younger brothers need boots.
Your father’s harvest failed.
The house is too small.
A husband with land is security.
A woman cannot afford pride.
A roof is enough.
Choice had been treated like a luxury item displayed in a shop window for wealthier girls.
Now a stranger in Wyoming offered it as though it were ordinary.
Clara did not trust ordinary gifts.
She reached for the letter.
Nathan released it immediately.
The envelope was warm from inside his coat.
On the front, written in faded ink, were six words.
For the woman who comes after me.
Clara’s throat tightened.
She looked at Nathan.
“Her name?”
“Mara.”
The youngest boy whispered:
“Mama.”
Clara looked toward him.
His face disappeared behind Nathan’s coat again.
She lowered her eyes to the envelope.
“I’m not reading this on a train platform.”