“I’ll get it,” he said, easing his horse forward and reaching into the bag for her. He pulled out another small blanket, and they both tucked the fuzzy blankets around the girls.
Then he nudged his horse around, and they headed into the wind and toward shelter.
“No, I wasn’t,” Jane said after a moment, raising her voice above the wind.
“What’s that?” He looked over at her as another couple drops of rain hit the brim of his hat.
“I wasn’t happy,” Jane said. “Not...as one would describe it. But I was hopeful. I think that matters more.”
And maybe it did. He wasn’t trying to tear apart her memories or tarnish anything for her. What kind of guy would that make him? All he was wanting was for her to understand where he was coming from, because his position was a lonely one.
People wanted romance, marriages that lasted, and they kept on trying for it. And yet he couldn’t quite forget that feeling he’d had in church on Sunday, sitting next to this beautiful woman as they kept the toddlers occupied. It was that feeling of togetherness, tenderness, that people chased. What guy didn’t want the pleasure of a life with a woman as beautiful as the one next to him? What man wouldn’t want to call her his?
But marriages always started out with that optimism, and he just didn’t think it made sense to throw his own hat into that ring. After all, the unions he’d seen hadn’t given him any hope that he’d fare any better.
Chapter Ten
The spatter of errant raindrops spurred Jane on faster toward the moldering house. Its roof was sagging in on one side and one of the windows was broken, but it would shelter them for the time being. Micha didn’t seem to mind the rain at all and kept squirming a hand out from under the blanket, trying to catch a raindrop.
Jane had said too much. She’d never thought of herself as unhappy in her marriage to Josh before he died, because she’d loved him. It wasn’t possible to love a man and be unhappy with him, was it? But after he’d died, she had been forced to admit to herself that she hadn’t been happy. She’d been stressed, frustrated, wrung out...and that felt like a terrible thing to admit. She felt like she was letting Josh down, somehow. The things Josh had seen at war that changed him—those weren’t his fault. But life together hadn’t been easy, either.
Jane shouldn’t have said anything. She should have kept that to herself. She looked up at the broiling clouds overhead—a downpour was imminent.
“There are some trees behind where we can tie the horses,” Colt called, and she ducked her head and guided her horse around the side of the house. Colt was right—three very leafy trees grew close together just behind the house, and the horse didn’t need any encouragement to move into the shelter of those low-hanging branches. Jane ducked her head to avoid being hit.
“Okay, Micha, you’re going to have to hold on,” Jane said. “I’m getting down first, and then I’ll lift you down, okay?”
Jane swung her leg over and dismounted, but the minute she took her foot out of the stirrup, Micha held her arms out and launched herself toward Jane. Jane shot her arms out to catch her daughter with a laugh of surprise.
Colt rode up beside her, and Jane switched Micha to her hip and reached for her other daughter. Suzie was just blinking her eyes open again, looking groggy.
“Hey, you,” Jane said with a smile, and as Suzie reached for her, Colt lifted her down into Jane’s grasp. “You look tired, sweetie.”
Colt dismounted and took the reins, then led both horses deeper into the shelter of the trees. Jane looked toward the house as a gust of rain-scented wind whisked her hair away from her face.
“It isn’t locked,” Colt said as he strode up beside her. “Let’s get inside.”
They burst through the door just as the rain started to hammer down. Jane looked around at a dusty, nearly empty cabin. There was a chair missing one leg leaning in a corner, and a small table sat in the center of what had once been a kitchen. Some dried leaves filled another corner beside the front door and the broken window, and at the far side of the room was an iron stove attached to a tin chimney.
She put the toddlers down, and they blinked uncertainly in the dim light and clung to her jeans.
“Who used to live here?” Jane asked.
“Beau’s parents,” Colt replied.
Jane took another spin around and spotted an old narrow staircase that led upstairs, but the cabin was tiny at best.
“How many kids did they have?” she asked.
“Six. But only the first four were born here,” he replied. “Beau told me the stories about them. So did Josh, for that matter. This is Marshall pride right here.”
Four children and two parents all in this one tiny cabin. It was hard to imagine being that cramped. But this was the site of her daughter’s great-grandparents’ home—so it was a part of their heritage.
“There’s not a lot of space for that many people, is there?” she said.
“It was a different time, I suppose,” he replied. “They had different standards.”
Micha sidled away from Jane and headed for the closest window. She pointed outside.
“Horsey.”
Suzie followed Micha and they both stood there in gray light by the dusty, rain spattered window, fingers pressed against the glass. Jane followed them and looked out at the horses. They were sheltered well enough under the trees and were eating oats out of feed bags. She turned back to the room and looked around.
“Can you imagine feeding an entire family on that stove?” she said, nodding toward the small iron stove on the other side of the room. “That would have been a lot of
