Prologue

Paradise Valley, Montana, 1884

“Supper’s on the table, Weston,” Grace Hayes said, drying her hands on her apron and removing it.

Weston watched from the doorway as his mother meticulously folded the apron and set it on the counter next to the dish drying rack. The routine after their evening meal would be the same as it always was—she would insist on doing the dishes and the laundry. She does too much, he thought, taking his seat at the table.

Even the meal had been entirely her doing—she had killed the chicken earlier that day, cleaned it, then prepared it and the vegetables all on her own. Weston wished he had the time to be more helpful, but maintaining the ranch was an all-day affair and there wasn’t any money to hire help. The house chores had to be left to his mother. It was the only way.

She put a plate in front of him with a smile. Grace Hayes never complained. “Eat up, now, while it’s hot,” she encouraged.

“Get some for yourself, too,” Weston said. He let his knife and fork lie on the table, unwilling to touch the meal until his mother was seated and served.

It was a familiar standoff. She waited only a moment before filling a second plate and joining him at the table. The moment she did, Weston reached for the silverware. Everything smelled delicious.

“Hold on a moment, Weston,” his mother objected. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

Ah—the other familiar standoff. The difference was, every night, Grace acted as if this part was a surprise to her, making Weston feel as if he was breaking her heart anew with each passing day. Guilt tightened his stomach. “We’ve talked about this, Mother.”

“Weston, it won’t hurt you to thank the Lord for what’s been provided. Go on. I raised you to say grace before you eat.”

“What’s been provided?” Weston repeated incredulously, his jaw tightening. “Mother, everything has been taken from us. And you want me to sit here and be thankful for that?”

“It was your stepfather and your stepbrother who took what we had. You mustn’t blame God for their wrongdoing. If you need to blame someone, Weston, blame me. I’m the one who brought them into our lives.”

“You were only trying to help us survive,” Weston said through gritted teeth. He didn’t want to respond to his mother with anger when she was blaming herself for everything that had gone wrong. But how could she continue to blindly trust in God after all they had lost? After the tragic stagecoach accident in Weston’s youth that had robbed them of a good man, Weston’s father and the husband Grace had truly loved? After she had felt compelled to marry Cain Slade to keep the family afloat and had spent years enduring his abuse?

No God who was truly loving would inflict such hardship on good people. There were only two possible conclusions. Either God didn’t care one bit for the well-being of Grace and Weston Hayes, or else He actively wished them suffering.

Either way, Weston couldn’t see why he ought to spend every evening giving thanks to someone who had been the cause of such misery.

His mother pursed her lips unhappily at him and began to say the blessing herself. Weston tuned out her words and sat silently, letting them wash over him, his mouth watering at the smell of the chicken. He ran his hands over the weathered kitchen table. It had been his first carpentry project nearly fifteen years ago, and it had stood the test of time. He was proud of the construction—it sat evenly, didn’t wobble or tilt—but at the same time, there were negative memories attached to it. He closed his eyes and recalled his stepbrother Levi, who had been nineteen at the time, stubbing out cigarettes against the wood. The scorch marks were still visible. They would remain forever, even now that Levi was gone.

“Amen,” Grace said, finishing her blessing. Weston had no idea what words his mother had spoken, nor did he care. He wished she would stop indulging in this ritual and accept the fact that her life had not been remotely blessed. Theirs had been a life full of nothing but hardship and loss, and it was only by constant hard work that they still had the ranch at all.

“All right,” his mother said. “Thank you for waiting, Weston. We can eat now.”

Weston cut into his chicken. The meat fell away from the bone with luxurious ease. “It all smells great, Ma,” he said.

“Oh, it’s only chicken. Nothing special.”

“No, it is special,” Weston countered. “Your cooking is so good that you make me feel as if we’re wealthy folks. No one in all of Montana is eating better, I can guarantee that.”

His mother flushed with pride, unable to keep a smile off her face. “Well, it just means the world that you’d say so, Weston.”

They ate in silence for a few minutes. Weston was a man who appreciated quiet at the end of a day’s work. Ordinarily, his mother understood that and could be counted upon to cooperate, to give him what he needed.

Tonight, she clearly had something on her mind. She fidgeted, pushing her food around on her plate with her fork and not taking a bite until Weston felt compelled to speak up. “What’s going on, Ma?”

“Well, Weston, I’d like you to reconsider coming to church with me this Sunday.” She avoided his gaze.

Weston sighed. “Ma, you know how I feel about that.”

“I do, but Weston, you need to have a relationship with God. You need to let Him into your life.”

“I don’t need any such thing. What good has that ever done me? Besides, I have to spend my Sundays working to keep this place running smoothly. If God wanted me to have spare time to sit around singing hymns, maybe He shouldn’t have sent so many challenges into our lives.”

“You have to stop blaming God for all your problems, Weston.”

“You’d have me give glory to God for everything good that happens but never blame him for the bad things. You can’t have it both ways, Mother. Either God is managing the events in our lives—events which, you must admit, have been overwhelmingly negative as of late—or else God isn’t taking a hand in our affairs at all. Which is it?”

“Weston…”

Thankfully, the conversation was cut short by three sharp knocks at the door. The hot frustration that had been boiling up in Weston dissipated as quickly as steam when the lid was removed from a boiling pot. He looked toward the door. “Who could that be during the dinner hour?”

“I have no idea,” his mother confessed.

An unpleasant shiver ran down Weston’s spine. Cain and Levi had been gone for months now and he hadn’t expected to see them ever again. But was it so impossible that they might have come back? He rose to his feet and collected his rifle from its home near the door, checking to make sure it was loaded and snapping the barrel into place.

“Weston!” His mother jumped to her feet as well. “What are you doing? Surely you don’t need that firearm to answer the door?”

“Back away, Ma.” If this was Cain and he so much as entertained the notion of laying a finger on Grace again, Weston wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger. He had put up with far too much from that man when he had been a child and unable to put a stop to it—they both had. Now that he was a man, nobody was going to mistreat his mother.

He grabbed the doorknob and threw the door open, bringing the gun up quickly to aim at…

Nothing.

For a moment he stood there blinking, struggling to comprehend what was before him. Or rather, what wasn’t before him. Because there was no one at all there. The porch was empty. Who had knocked? He made as if to step out onto it, to look around…

He nearly tripped over it before he saw it. There, at his feet, was a small wicker basket. And nestled within… a baby.

A baby?

His mind still couldn’t process it.

A baby could not have knocked on the door. And this baby was tiny. Weston knew nothing about babies, but he would have guessed it was only a few weeks old.

“Oh, my goodness!” His mother had come forward without his noticing. She bent down, scooped up the basket, and brought it into the house. “What on Earth are you doing out there all alone?” she cooed, setting the basket on the table and bending over it.

“Oh, Ma, don’t bring it inside…”

“Don’t be foolish, Weston, we aren’t going to leave a baby out on the porch! Look, there’s a note. You’d better read that.” She passed him the piece of folded paper and turned her attention back to the infant, who, mercifully, seemed to be asleep.

Weston unfolded the paper and read—

Mr. Hayes,

Please take care of my baby. I think you are her best chance for a proper home and a proper father.

He turned it over. Surely there had to be more? A signature, at the very least?

But no. There was nothing.

“It’s a girl,” his mother reported. “Does the note say her name?”

“It doesn’t really say anything.” Weston handed it back to his mother.

She frowned as she read it. “But… surely you must know where she comes from?”

“What do you mean?”

“Forgive me, Weston, but if this baby’s mother thought she belonged here with you…?”

“I don’t know what you’re suggesting,” Weston said, although he did, and he could hear how tight with indignation his voice had become. “I haven’t so much as looked at a woman since… since five years ago.”

“You’re certain this baby is not… yours?”

“Very certain.” Weston’s words were like barbs, and he regretted them the moment he had spoken. There was no reason to be harsh toward his mother. None of this was her fault.

“Well,” Grace said, “I think we should call her Annie. That’s what I would have named a daughter if I had been blessed with one.”

“What—Ma, we aren’t going to keep her. She isn’t ours. We’ll take her to the sheriff.”

“And see her handed off to some orphanage? We most certainly will not,” Grace said indignantly, holding the baby close and pivoting slightly away from Weston as if to shield it. “Her mother, whoever she may be, entrusted her to you.”

“Well, that’s insane. No one in their right mind would entrust a baby to me.”

“When you marry, you’ll be perfectly fit for fatherhood.”

“Marry! You know I have no such intentions.”

“I know it’s been five years since things ended between yourself and Cassidy,” his mother said gently, turning back toward him and taking a step closer. “This is a sign from God, Weston, that it’s time for you to try again. Here. Hold Annie for me. I need to clean up our supper.”

Before Weston could argue, the newborn baby girl had been deposited in his arms and his mother had walked off to begin washing the dishes.

He looked down at her. She yawned and shifted slightly without waking.

Oh, I’m in over my head, Weston thought miserably, and eased down into a chair, holding the baby closer for fear of dropping her or letting her come to harm somehow. What in the world am I doing?

Chapter One

Red Lodge, Montana, 1884

The smoke was thick and suffocating. It was impossible to see. The heat was unbearable. This was what death would feel like, and the only mercy in it was that consciousness surely wouldn’t last much longer, that soon her eyes would close and she would be spared the worst pain of it all…

“Mae! Wake up!”

Mae Anne Harland jerked from sleep with a gasp at the sound of her best friend’s voice.

She understood at once what had happened. There was no disorientation. She’d had this nightmare far too many times to be taken in by it anymore. Even so, her heart raced and she struggled to catch her breath. She sat in her bed, one hand clutching her faded quilt to her chest, the other reaching out for her gray terrier, Cricket. A moment later she felt the reassuring sensation of a cold, wet nose pressing into the palm of her hand. Cricket always seemed to know when Mae needed her.

She looked up into the familiar warm brown eyes of Ida Parker. With her thick, dark, curly hair and boundless energy, Ida had a way of looking as if she was in motion even when she was standing still and it pulled Mae the rest of the way out of her sleep. “Ida—what are you doing here so early in the morning?”

“Early is hardly the way I would describe it!” Ida threw herself down on the foot of Mae’s bed. Cricket jumped up to sit beside her, and Ida ruffled the dog’s ears. “It’s almost noon. You’ve slept in. Josephine said I might find you back here. I think she thought you’d be awake.”

“I haven’t been sleeping well.” Mae got out of bed and went to her wardrobe. Living in the spare room at the back of the church meant a modest life. She had few possessions. Four simple dresses hung in the wardrobe. She chose the one in the front—like all the others, it was plain and brown, lacking any adornment—and stepped behind a modesty screen to put it on. All the dresses were of similar inexpensive cotton, all sewed from the same simple pattern. Today’s was a little too small, though. It pinched at the waist and the hem fell above her ankles. She was going to have to make something new sometime soon.

She stepped back out from behind the screen. Ida was still sitting on the bed, stroking Cricket, whose tail thumped on the quilt. “Get up,” Mae said mildly. “Both of you, now. I have to make the bed.”

Ida got to her feet obligingly and coaxed Cricket down from the bed. “I still can’t believe you’ve been living here,” she said. “I did tell you that you could move in with me and my family.”

“I couldn’t possibly have taken you up on that. Your family has enough to deal with. All those children.” Ida was the eldest of six siblings. “Besides, your marriage was pushed back after the fire.”

“Clark and I wanted to make sure we were ready to move in together.” Ida spun in a happy circle, as she so often did when talking about her husband to be. “The house was damaged in the fire. We couldn’t rush things. Since he was rebuilding anyway, Clark decided to add a wing and make the place even nicer for us. It’s going to be beautiful.”

Mae’s stomach clenched painfully at her friend’s words. She was happy for Ida, of course. She was pleased that her friend had found a good man and that they were going to be married. Even though Ida hadn’t meant to be cruel, it was like swallowing barbed wire to think of people being able to rebuild after the wildfire that had ravaged the community and stolen her father from her. Pa had been the only thing in Mae’s world after her mother had died in childbirth. When lightning had struck and caused that blaze, of course he had insisted on running straight into it and trying to help the community. It was exactly the kind of thing Peter Harland would do.

Now, Mae was alone. She would never get back what the fire had stolen from her.

“At any rate,” Ida said, clearly not noticing Mae’s distress, “it no longer matters that you didn’t choose to come live with me, because you won’t be in Red Lodge at all for much longer.”

“What do you mean, I won’t be in Red Lodge?” Mae couldn’t help feeling amused, and the good humor was a balm to her anguish of a moment ago. “Am I going somewhere?” This was entirely like Ida. She always started every story in the middle. No doubt she had cooked up some elaborate fantasy about Mae traveling to some exotic location. It would never happen, of course. Mae wasn’t the sort to go on adventures like that. But it would be pleasant to hear the daydream her friend had concocted.

Ida hurried forward and took Mae’s hands in hers. “You’re going to be so excited when you hear,” she said, bouncing up and down lightly on the balls of her feet. “I’ve responded to an ad for a mail-order bride!”

Mae blinked. “But you’re engaged to marry Clark.”

“Not for me, silly. For you!”

“What?” Mae was sure she must have misunderstood. As usual, Ida had skipped the beginning of her story, had brushed past something vital, and that was why nothing she was saying made sense. Because this… no. This couldn’t be what it sounded like.

“There’s a man in Paradise Valley who’s looking for a wife. Someone who would be a good mother, the ad says—well, that’s you in a nutshell.”

“What are you talking about?” Mae asked. “I’m not a mother. I mean, yes, someday, but I’m nowhere near being ready for that. And this is a man I don’t even know—and neither do you! What if he’s not a kind person? You can’t think I would just board a train to some town I’ve never seen before and marry a man I’ve never met. You planned all this without even talking to me?”

She couldn’t even muster any anger at the situation. The truth was, it was all too ridiculous, and besides, it didn’t seem real. Of course this wasn’t going to actually happen. She wasn’t going to go. It was bizarre that Ida would think she would. The only question was how she would manage her friend’s disappointment when she told her—very firmly—that this was not going to happen.

“Oh, just read it,” Ida said, waving a piece of paper in the air. It could only be the ad she had answered. “You’ll see what I mean. He seems like a lovely man, and perfect for you.”

“How can you say someone neither of us has ever met is perfect for me?” Mae made no move to take the paper. She folded her arms across her chest and sat down on the edge of her bed. “Is this really what you believed would happen, Ida? Did you really think you would come in here and show me that advertisement and that I would pack my things and head directly for the train station?” She chuckled. “You’ve always been a little absurd, but this is the most harebrained scheme you have ever concocted.”

“I don’t see what’s so harebrained about it. You know, lots of women meet husbands in exactly this way and go on to live very happily together. You’d hardly be the first to have a successful mail-order marriage.” Ida seemed to sense that Mae wasn’t going to take the ad from her. She set it down on Mae’s pillow. Mae glanced over at it but did not touch it. Right now the whole thing seemed funny but she had the strangest feeling that touching that ad—learning any details about the man in question—would make it all real, somehow. She eyed the ad as if it was a poisonous viper that could lash out and sink its teeth into her. As long as she kept out of reach of those fangs, there would be nothing to worry about. If the viper was allowed to strike, her life would be turned upside down.

Oh, this is absurd. Ida might think this is a good idea, but this is the same Ida who thought it would be fun to climb to the very top of the church when we were ten years old and who fell and broke her arm. This is the same Ida who said that we would sneak aboard a ship and sail for Paris together the moment we were old enough to leave home. Ida’s dreams have never been realistic. Of course she would come up with something like this.

Mae wasn’t like Ida. Mae was practical. That was why she had chosen to come and live in the spare room at the church after the fire. It only made sense to accept Pastor Jim’s invitation. He’d been her father’s best friend, and Mae knew this was where her father would want her to be right now. That was what had made the decision so easy when Ida had asked her to move in with her family. Being with Pastor Jim simply felt like being with her father in a way nothing else could ever hope to. It was the closest thing to home she had now.

She certainly wasn’t going to give that up for some unknown man who was looking for a wife via an advertisement.

Still, she reminded herself, taking a breath to steady her nerves, Ida had meant to be kind. Even though her tactics always took Mae by surprise, the two of them were best friends for a reason. She had put a smile on Mae’s face after that terrible nightmare and that was something Mae had needed badly.

“I appreciate you bringing this to me,” she told her friend. “Really, I do.”

“I already wrote back,” Ida said. “I told them you’d be coming in a few days.”

“Well, you’re going to have to write again and say you were mistaken.”

“Oh, Mae, you aren’t even going to consider it?” Ida’s face fell. “I had so hoped this would be the solution to all your problems. I mean, don’t you think it would be nice to start your life over? To get away from all the bad memories here?” She came over and sat beside Mae on the bed, taking her hand. “Mae, I know how hurt you were by the fire. I know how much you lost. Ever since that happened… well, it doesn’t feel like you’re moving on. It doesn’t feel like you’re putting the pieces back together or picking yourself up at all. You’ve found a safe harbor here with Pastor Jim, but eventually you’re going to have to leave that harbor. You’re going to have to start living life again.”

“I’m living my life,” Mae said firmly. “I know this isn’t the life you’d have envisioned for me, Ida, and it’s not the one you’re choosing for yourself. I understand that. But I’m happy here. I’m safe and cared for, I have everything I need, and there isn’t anything I want that I don’t have. You don’t need to worry about me, and you don’t need to fix me.”

She pushed down the tiny voice within her that objected to what she was saying.

“I’m perfectly fine.”