“Complicated.”
“Your father?”
“Still my father.”
She understood.
People often assumed choosing truth erased love.
It did not.
That was part of what made betrayal difficult.
The cowboy could condemn his father's actions and still remember being six years old on his shoulders watching cattle cross a river.
He could testify against him and still know exactly how his father laughed before power hardened him.
The frontier woman reached across the table.
The cowboy took her hand.
“Do you miss him?”
He stared.
“Who he was?”
“Yes.”
“Sometimes.”
“Who you thought he was?”
“More.”
She nodded.
That was enough.
By the eighth month, walking across the cabin became difficult.
The frontier woman had been heavy all her adult life.
She understood her body.
Pregnancy altered its familiar rules.
Her hips hurt.
Her back hurt.
Sleep became negotiation.
The cowboy tried three pillows.
Then five.
Then built a sloped support system that looked like siege equipment.
She stared.
“What is that?”
“A sleeping solution.”
“No.”
“You haven't tried it.”
“I refuse to sleep inside fortifications.”
“It supports your back.”
“It insults my eyes.”
Eventually she tried it.
It helped.
She never admitted this directly.
Instead she said:
“You may leave it.”
He understood victory.
Said nothing.
One morning, swelling in her feet frightened the midwife.
Blood pressure.
Rest.
Monitoring.
The cowboy's face became white.
The frontier woman watched him.
“Don't.”
“What?”
“Turn this into disaster before the doctor does.”
He nodded.
Badly.
The doctor came.
Concerned.
Not panicked.
The frontier woman would move closer to town immediately.
This time she agreed.
Not because the cowboy demanded.
Because she chose.
They rented rooms above a widow's boarding house near the doctor's practice.
The frontier woman hated the stairs.
The widow arranged a downstairs room.
The cowboy tried to pay double.
His wife stopped him.
“We are not buying the building because I need a wider chair.”
“I wasn't.”
“You were thinking it.”
“A little.”
The final weeks passed slowly.
People asked constantly whether the child had arrived.
The frontier woman became increasingly hostile.
A shopkeeper asked:
“Any day now?”
She replied:
“Eventually.”
A woman at church reached toward her belly without permission.
The frontier woman caught her wrist.
“Ask.”
The woman recoiled.
“I only meant—”
“Ask.”
The woman swallowed.
“May I?”
“No.”
The cowboy nearly laughed aloud.
His wife glared.
He looked away.
Later:
“You enjoyed that.”
“Yes.”
“Terrible man.”
“Yes.”
Labor began before sunrise.
Not dramatically.
No broken water during a thunderstorm.
No horse racing through snow.