Caleb refused to hold her at first.
"What if I hurt her?"
Eleanor stared.
"You handle newborn lambs."
"She isn't a lamb."
"Correct."
"So hold your daughter."
Caleb took the baby.
His enormous hands made her look impossibly small.
The infant opened her eyes.
Caleb wept.
Eleanor watched.
A man once told he should never let a woman close now held a child created inside a marriage built on consent rather than fear.
The irony was almost too precise.
Their daughter grew.
Then a son came four years later.
He was born with a pale mark along one shoulder.
Caleb nearly collapsed.
The doctor examined him.
Nothing underneath.
Just a birthmark.
Caleb cried anyway.
Eleanor held him.
"It's not your scar."
"I know."
"Then why?"
"Because for one second I thought I had done to him what was done to me."
Eleanor took his face between her hands.
"You did not do anything to him."
Caleb nodded.
Slowly.
Healing did not prevent old terror from returning.
It only made returning from terror easier.
Their children learned about the scar early.
Not as secret.
As anatomy.
Their daughter at five asked:
"Does it have a name?"
Caleb said:
"Scar."
"No."
"The bump."
He hesitated.
Eleanor said:
"Your father's leftover twin tissue."
The child considered.
Then named it George.
Caleb stared.
"Why George?"
She shrugged.
"Looks like George."
Eleanor nearly fell from the chair laughing.
For two years, the family referred to Caleb's second pulse as George.
This would have horrified his father.
That fact made Caleb laugh every time.
When their daughter was eight, she accidentally mentioned George to another child.
By evening, two families knew.
Caleb panicked.
Eleanor found him packing.
Literally packing.
"What are you doing?"
"We need to go."
"Where?"
"North."
"Why?"
"They know."
Eleanor stared.
"Who?"
"The Millers."
"About your scar."
"Yes."
She closed the trunk.
Caleb reopened it.
She sat on it.
He stared.
"Eleanor."
"No."
"They'll tell people."
"Probably."
His face drained.
"They'll come."
"Who?"
"Doctors."
"Showmen."
"Men with wagons."
Eleanor's heart hurt.
The thirteen-year-old boy still lived inside him.
She stood.
Took his hands.
"Caleb."
He looked at her.
"This is Colorado."
"Not Missouri."
"It is twenty-five years later."
"You are a grown man."
"This is your house."
"Your land."
"Your wife."
"Your children."
"If someone comes to exploit you, we tell them no."
"If they don't listen, we call the sheriff."
"If the sheriff fails, I will hit them with a frying pan."
Despite panic, Caleb laughed.
Eleanor continued:
"But we are not uprooting our children because somebody knows your body is unusual."
Caleb's breathing slowed.
She whispered:
"We are done building prisons for fear."