He cupped the back of my head. “I’m here.”
“I could never be thankful enough, for that,” I whispered, hiccupping, my voice rough. Before we left the creek, Marshall curled a hand around Miles’s name on the wooden cross, rubbing with his thumb as he said, with quiet respect, “Thank you, Rawley, from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for loving Ruthann, and for keeping her safe.”
“You’ve told him that before,” I recognized as we walked back to the house a little later. I tucked close to his side, my arms locked around his ribcage; I’d almost forgotten Marshall had lived here for the duration of last winter.
“Of course. Every time I sit there.” His chest expanded with a breath and his low voice grew confessional. “I can’t admit I’m not insanely jealous of the man. I’m not gonna lie.” A hint of his usual good nature crept into his tone. “After all, he was me. Or, I was him. I can’t quite figure it all out, but if he had even one-tenth of the same thoughts you inspire in me, angel-woman, then I would have to kick his ass to the future and back, just on principle. Damnation.”
“Marsh,” I scolded, unable to keep from smiling; I knew without a doubt that Miles would have found Marshall’s comments amusing. I imagined the two of them regarding each other, face to face, and then shook my head to clear it of such bizarre pictures.
Marshall stalled our forward progress, studying the ground near his boots as he muttered, “He never…you two never…”
“We didn’t,” I said at once, honest enough to admit I would have wanted to know the answer, were the situation reversed – if somehow a past version of me was here to interact with Marshall, let alone make love with him; undoubtedly she would be drawn to him the same way I’d been drawn to Miles. The thought was so strange and inspired such a blazing surge of possessive jealousy my hands became fists. And then I pictured confronting this past self, ripping at her hair and clawing her eyes for thinking she had some hold on Marshall that trumped mine – that is, if she and I could even exist in the same physical space without a thunderclap and a ripping apart of the entire cosmic continuum.
Jesus Crimeny, Ruthann.
It wasn’t a thought for the fainthearted.
Marshall released a tense breath and his shoulders relaxed. “I didn’t really think so and I’m sorry for asking, sweetheart. I told myself I wasn’t going to ask, no matter what, and now I feel like an asshole…”
“Honey,” I admonished, and flicked his lean belly, just for good measure. “Don’t feel that way. And, just so you know, I would have asked, too.”
Hours later, at the crackling fire, I felt the subtle heat of Marshall’s gaze and met it with a smile, my chin resting on Jacob’s head. The little boy was soft and plump, fond of kicking his legs and gurgling spit bubbles, and my entire being, from the inside out, ached with love for Miles’s son. I couldn’t hug and kiss him enough to satisfy the strength of my feelings; I thought, Marshall and I will have a baby by next year and it’s because of you, sweet little Jacob. It’s because you survived and stayed here in Montana that Marshall’s family will exist in the twenty-first century, I truly believe this and I could never be thankful enough for you.
We told everyone about my pregnancy and though they shared Axton’s opinion that we needed a preacher to marry us as soon as humanly possible, they were nothing but delighted.
“March,” Birdie said knowledgably. “Right in the midst of sap season, that’s what I predict. Oh, how very exciting. You’ll have staked a homestead claim by then, of course.”
“There is still available homestead acreage to be had near ours, dear Ruthann.” Una Spicer sat on Birdie’s other side, wrapped in her knitted red shawl. I watched the fire’s light touch Cole’s mother’s face as she spoke, marveling anew at the fact that I was interacting with her, when I’d known about her for so long, when I’d read her letters in a century long after her death. I thought again of what Marshall had told me about his first glimpse of Una – that she looked very much like Melinda Spicer, Case’s mother and the woman who would have been Tish’s mother-in-law, had she lived. Marshall remembered Melinda from his childhood; he said it was like seeing a ghost.
I didn’t have the heart to admit to these dear women that I hoped and prayed Marshall and I would be gone long before next March; for tonight, at least, I couldn’t bear to think so far in advance. I murmured, “The land is gorgeous here, that’s for certain.”
Una had exclaimed over Axton with maternal affection, announcing that he looked enough like a Spicer to be her own son. Besides her eldest, Cole, Una was the mother of four additional children; two of her girls had remained in Iowa, already married and settled; the youngest son and daughter, Charles and Susanna, had made the journey west. Charles – and how I wanted to ask him if his middle name was Shea, like Case’s – was nineteen but appeared much younger, slim and frail; I remembered Cole saying that Charles had been very ill as a child. Susanna, the baby of the family at fourteen, was fair and shy and quiet. They were frequent visitors at the Rawleys’ homestead. Axton, who’d never known a mother or siblings of his own, was quite taken with the kind family, I could tell.
The only thing dampening the joy of our arrival was the fact that there had been no word
