“The sisterly dynamic,” Jane said with a small smile.
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“What about your dad?” she asked. “He never contacted you?”
“A few times,” Colt said, and his mind went back to those stunted phone calls when his mother would stomp out of the room to listen from the other side of his bedroom door. “Dad wasn’t sending any money, so Mom was furious with him. She’d call him up every few years and demand some child support, and he’d have some excuse not to give it. But he’d talk to me on the phone then...ask how I was doing. Call me a good kid, even though he had no idea if I was a good kid or not.”
“Would she have been happier if she’d married again?” Jane asked.
Colt shrugged. “I doubt it. Mom didn’t think too much of marriage. She said it was just a contract, a piece of paper. When Dad left her with me, she was a wreck for a while. At least that’s what Sandra told me. So Beau and Sandra gave her a job so she could get on her feet, and it turned out to be longer term than anyone intended.”
“So that came from her,” Jane said quietly.
“What came from her?”
“That idea that marriage is only a piece of paper.”
He paused for a moment, the realization settling into him. Yeah, he’d first heard that idea from his mom. He could remember being a kid—ten maybe?—and his mother sitting on the steps to Beau and Sandra’s house. She’d had a can of pop in one hand and deep sadness in her eyes. He couldn’t remember what had just happened—his dad refused to send money? Or maybe Beau and Sandra fighting again? It’s just a piece of paper, Colt. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
“Yeah, I guess so,” he admitted. “But just because she recognized it first doesn’t make it wrong, though. As much as we might want it to, marriage doesn’t make people love each other. My dad was legally wed, and he took off.” The wind picked up, and this time it had an earthy scent to it. “And look at Beau and Sandra. I mean, don’t get me wrong, they actually stuck it out together, but they didn’t like each other. At least not far as I could remember them.”
To the east, Colt could see the outline of Josh’s grandparents’ old cabin peeking out from behind a spread of trees. It was deteriorating quickly these last few years, but there was a time when he used to like to ride out and look at it. They weren’t his blood relatives, but he still felt a connection to them. His mom’s father had been an alcoholic, and she’d never told a happy story about the man. Sometimes it was easier to connect to Josh’s family. They seemed worthier, somehow. Even if that was unfair.
“I don’t agree with her,” Jane said, and he could hear the disapproval in her tone and he understood that. People didn’t like to look ugliness in the face. And maybe most people didn’t have to. He didn’t seem to have a choice anymore.
“Look around you, Jane,” he said. “I mean, not here.” He laughed quietly. “But I mean at the relationships around you. I’ve got several friends who got divorced. They just grew apart, they said. And I was a guest at those weddings. I saw how in love they were at the start. I even felt a little jealous watching them dance and stare adoringly into each other’s eyes. It didn’t last. Five years, seven years pass, and they change their minds. A piece of paper doesn’t stop that from happening.”
“Just because some marriages go wrong doesn’t mean that God isn’t offering something incredibly beautiful in the institution,” she countered.
He couldn’t argue with that. She was right, but how could anyone know if their marriage was going to soar to the great heights of what was possible in God’s plan or nosedive with the others? He rode along in silence for a few more minutes. That cool wind was getting ever stronger, and he glanced up at the overcast sky. Were they in for rain today, after all? It was still hard to tell. Sometimes these threats of rain could sail right on overhead and hit another area.
Jane rode along next to him, her gaze turned away so he couldn’t see what she was feeling. Micha was nodding off against her arm, and he glanced down to see that Suzie was getting pretty dozy, too. There was something about that rhythm on horseback that worked like a lullaby.
“I’m not saying happily married people don’t exist,” he went on. “I’m just saying that a piece of paper doesn’t guarantee anything. It just locks people down, makes them financially obligated toward each other.”
“I wasn’t locked down,” she said, turning toward him again.
“But were you happy?”
A fat drop of rain hit his hand, and he tipped his hat up, looking at the darkening clouds.
“It’s starting to rain,” Jane said.
“Sure is,” he agreed, and he reined his horse in. “I want to hear you fess up—tell me the truth. Were you happy with my cousin?”
Jane reined in her horse, too, so that it pranced around in a circle to come close to him again.
“The girls will get cold,” she said, and she turned to pull a small blanket out of her saddlebag. “I’ve got some little blankets for them, but—”
“There’s an old house over there,” he said, pointing toward the old cabin. “We can wait out the thunderstorm there.”
Jane met his gaze for a moment and he could read the pain in her
