“Mr. Vern was?” She looked back at Casey over her shoulder, and his cheeks flushed slightly. She felt the smile tickle her lips. “It wasn’t Mr. Vern who was worried, was it? It was you.”
“It was both of us. You have no gun,” he said. “And you’re a bit far from the truck, aren’t you?”
Ember looked toward her vehicle and realized it was hidden behind trees. She sighed. “I may have strayed a little far. But I’m obviously fine.”
“Obviously,” he said dryly. “And that couldn’t possibly have changed at any moment.”
“So maybe I should be glad you found me,” she admitted.
Ember turned back toward the creek and squatted back down. The beavers had disappeared—all was silent except for the twitter of birds and the rush of water from Milk River a few yards off. She scanned the dam—a bulging tangle of sticks and branches that seemed to hold together by a will of their own.
“There is a story in that old journal about beavers damming up a creek and turning the garden into a marsh.” Ember sighed. “They had to move the garden. It was easier than moving the beavers. But the potato crop was ruined. They nearly starved that winter.”
Twigs cracked under Casey’s boots as he came up to her side. “This land might be beautiful, but it’s not easy. It never has been.”
“I don’t need it to be. My family survived because they learned as they went,” Ember said. “My great-great-great-grandfather did everything from building their log house to trapping meat to feed the family. That winter when they didn’t have enough food, he fed the family on rabbits and deer. When they lost their cow to wolves, they trapped beaver and traded their pelts for another cow the next summer, and then built a new barn right next to the house so they could protect it better.”
She’d been raised on those stories—the tales of ancestors from long ago who had passed down their grit and determination to the generations that would come after. If they could survive blinding blizzards that lasted for days...if they could keep their family warm by burning cow dung and stopping up the cracks in their house with mud and hay...if they could break up that hard prairie earth and make it grow vegetables...then what about the rest of them? What could they survive?
“Those journals are priceless,” he said.
“They are. They tell us what we’re capable of. They homesteaded on the prairies before it was tame. And they made it.”
Casey was silent for a moment. “Your mom sounds like she was pretty tough, too.”
“She was.” Ember smiled sadly. “But she was pragmatic, too. She always told me not to make her mistakes—never get pregnant before I was ready. She worked her fingers to the bone to provide for me, but she also reminded me that my great-great-great-grandmother who survived so much on the Montana prairies died in childbirth having her ninth baby. She was only forty-three.”
“Was that a warning?” Casey asked.
“Yes,” she replied, her mind going back to her mother’s earnest face—tired and lined from long hours at work. They used to talk together late at night when Mom got back from her cleaning shift at the high-rise office building and after Ember had finished her homework. They’d sit in the kitchen together, eating a quick dinner, and that was when Mom was the most honest, when she had the least energy to keep things bright for Ember’s sake.
“Mom always said that we can survive nearly anything for a while, but eventually life catches up. She didn’t want me to be foolhardy.”
“Like coming out here on your own?” he asked with a small smile.
“I was thinking about my son—what she would have advised if she’d been around,” she replied softly. Ember glanced over at Casey, gauging his interest, worried that he might be judging her. His dark eyes were pinned on her, but she saw sympathy there, nothing else.
“Would she have suggested you raise him on your own?” Casey asked.
“I didn’t think so at the time,” Ember said, her throat thickening with rising emotion. “I thought she’d say the same thing my dad was saying—that the best thing I could do would be to give him a life with someone else. I wasn’t ready to be a mom yet. She always told me not to make her mistake—to wait until I was ready. She said it was harder than I needed to know, and she wanted better for me. So when I found out I was pregnant—” Ember could hear the hoarseness in her own voice, and she took a beat to swallow. “She would have been really disappointed in me.”
“And your father knew that.” Casey’s voice hardened.
“I don’t think so,” she replied with a sigh. “He just had no intention of supporting a single mother. He wanted me to make something of myself. It seemed like the smart choice.”
“If you had it to do over again?” he asked, and a breeze picked up, chilly, wet air winding through the woods, and Ember wrapped her arms around her body and found herself stepping instinctively closer to Casey just as he did the same. He didn’t retreat, though, and instead put his warm palms on her upper arms.
“I’d keep my son,” she said, her voice nearly choked. “I’d do whatever it took.”
“Why don’t you hate your father for putting you in that position?” Casey asked, shaking his head.
“Because it wasn’t his fault. My choices were on me. I was an adult and I could have told my father to get out of my life and leave me alone. I could have done what my mother did and worked my heart out to provide for my child.”
But she’d believed what everyone told her—life didn’t have to be that hard. Life could be sweet and simple. She could get another chance to build a life she was proud of, and this mistake could all just melt into the past. They were wrong,
