Nola looked toward him.
“I’m with child.”
For one moment, Garrick’s entire face transformed with joy.
Then fear entered.
Nola noticed.
“You too?”
“Yes.”
She laughed shakily.
“Good.”
“Good?”
“I was beginning to think I was a coward.”
Garrick sat beside her.
Nola looked toward the fields.
“What if something goes wrong?”
“It could.”
She turned.
“That is not comforting.”
“I’m done lying about certainty.”
Fair.
He took her hand.
“We know too much.”
“Mae.”
“Weston.”
“Wren.”
“All of it.”
“But this child is not any of those things.”
Nola’s eyes filled.
He continued:
“We respond to what actually happens.”
“Not every tragedy we remember.”
She smiled.
“When did you become wise?”
“Marriage.”
“Clearly my influence.”
“Obviously.”
Their daughter arrived healthy in early winter.
They named her Hope.
Nola objected to the sentimentality right up until she was too exhausted to argue.
Years later Hope complained.
“You named me Hope?”
Nola pointed toward Garrick.
“His fault.”
Garrick pointed back.
“She agreed.”
Hope rolled her eyes.
Family history rarely survived children without mockery.
That was healthy.
Hollow Creek prospered slowly.
There was no buried gold.
No miraculous inheritance.
No mysterious fortune.
Just work.
Mae’s water-leasing plan grew into a cooperative agreement among smaller ranches.
Drought years became survivable because water was allocated before desperation turned neighbors into enemies.
Eli expanded hay storage.
Nola insisted on reserve funds.
Garrick complained that money sitting unused offended him.
Nola called reserve money “money doing its job quietly.”
He still complained.
They repaired the barn.
Then porch.
Then the ramp to the root cellar after Nola nearly fell carrying jars and threatened to burn the steps herself.
Good years came.
Bad years too.
One winter killed thirty-one cattle.
A flood removed half a fence line.
A grass fire burned two hundred acres but stopped short of the house.
They rebuilt.
Success became less romantic with age.
It meant surviving enough seasons that catastrophe stopped feeling personal.
Crow’s land was eventually divided.
Not immediately.
Legal proceedings took years.
Some parcels sold to neighboring ranchers.
One became public grazing reserve.
The north corridor he had tried to monopolize never existed under one owner again.
Nola liked that most.
No replacement empire.
When someone suggested Garrick buy a large parcel cheap, he considered it.
Nola said:
“You hated one man controlling half the valley.”
Garrick answered:
“I would be nicer.”
“That is what every future tyrant says.”
He declined the purchase.
Years later he admitted she was right.
Nola demanded he repeat it.
He refused.
Marriage had limits.
Dr. Wren lived long enough to become a warning.