Nothing serious.
Bruised knee.
Torn dress.
But the little girl screamed before Nola reached her.
“Mama!”
Nola stopped.
Clara stopped crying for one stunned second.
Her face filled with guilt.
“I’m sorry.”
Nola knelt.
“For what?”
Clara’s eyes moved toward the house.
“Because Mama Mae…”
Nola understood.
She cupped the girl’s face.
“Listen to me.”
“You have a mother named Mae.”
“Yes.”
“You can also call me Mama if you want.”
“Will it make her sad?”
Nola’s throat tightened.
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“Because love does not run out because you use it twice.”
Clara thought.
Then threw both arms around her.
“Mama.”
Nola closed her eyes.
From the barn, Garrick saw.
He turned away for a moment.
Later, he kissed Nola’s forehead.
“Thank you.”
She looked at him.
“For what?”
He could not answer.
He didn’t need to.
Eli grew into the ranch.
He had Mae’s mind for figures and Garrick’s stubbornness.
At sixteen he proposed expanding the herd.
Nola said no.
He argued for twenty minutes.
Then found Mae’s old note about overgrazing.
Changed his own mind.
Nola loved him for that.
At nineteen he took over most of the ranch books.
At twenty-three he married a schoolteacher who disagreed with him professionally, personally, and recreationally.
Garrick pulled him aside before the wedding.
“You chose well.”
Eli looked toward Nola.
“I learned.”
Nola slapped Garrick’s arm.
Fair.
Clara studied medicine.
The first time she announced it, Garrick went silent.
Nola understood.
Doctors carried complicated ghosts in that house.
Clara said:
“That is why.”
Garrick looked toward her.
She continued:
“Someone should know enough to stop another Wren.”
Dr. Merritt took her on for two years.
Then she studied farther east.
Years later she returned with formal training and opened a clinic.
On the wall hung two photographs.
Mae.
Nola.
A patient once asked:
“Which one is your mother?”
Clara smiled.
“Yes.”
The patient looked confused.
Clara never explained unless asked twice.
Weston grew into a man convinced surviving at four had made him indestructible.
At fourteen he tried riding an unbroken horse.
Broke his arm.
Nola stood over the bed.
“Evidence suggests otherwise.”
Weston groaned.
“You enjoy this.”
“Yes.”
He eventually became the gentlest of the brothers and the best with animals.
He stayed near Hollow Creek.
Garrick pretended this had nothing to do with relief.
Nobody believed him.
Nola and Garrick had one daughter together.
Nola was twenty-nine when she discovered she was pregnant.
She sat alone on the porch with the knowledge for nearly an hour.
Garrick found her.
“What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“That is never true when you say it.”