She wandered over to the stove and tried to open the oven, but the handle was rusted into place. With two girls of her own, she could only imagine how much work it would be to build the fire, cook the meals, keep the kids from burning themselves...
“It’s not a lot of space,” Colt said. “But considering they would have built it themselves, it’s pretty impressive.”
“It is.” Jane’s gaze stopped at a tarnished metal tea canister sitting on a shelf. She picked it up—it was empty. There was writing on the side she couldn’t make out.
A family had lived here—a couple who had pulled together and started a ranch. It made her wonder about how their life had gone. One day, her daughters might ask about them, but they’d be more interested in the father they’d never met.
Guilt wormed up inside of her.
“I shouldn’t have said what I did earlier,” Jane observed quietly, putting the tea canister back on the shelf where she’d found it. “About my marriage. About Josh.”
“Was it a lie?” Colt asked, fixing her with a direct stare.
“I don’t lie,” she said irritably. “It was just hard being married to him. That’s all. And I don’t think it was his fault. I think marriage is hard. I think it takes a reserve of character that no one realizes before they get into it.”
“Very likely,” he replied.
“Like this family that lived here all those years ago,” she said. “They would have had a tough time. Especially in winter, and with baby after baby coming... It wouldn’t have been easy for that mother, but life can be hard. And marriage can be hard, too.”
“But back then, they had different expectations,” Colt countered. “They didn’t get married for the romantic reasons we tack on to the institution today.”
“Says who?” she retorted.
“Come on! It wasn’t about warm fuzzy feelings back then in a ranching community. There were a lot of practical things to take into account—including a woman needing a man to provide for her. A woman would have chosen her best option and gone with it.”
“So you think this couple didn’t love each other,” she said.
“I’m not saying that. They probably learned to love each other,” he replied. “But they wouldn’t have expected all the warm fuzzies that we do these days.”
“You can’t know that,” she countered. “There have been people who loved each other deeply all throughout history.”
“Have they all been married?” he asked. “To each other?”
He was teasing now, but this wasn’t just an argument for the sake of a debate for her. This mattered, because her faith was based on an understanding of things that included love in marriage. From Adam and Eve to Jacob and Rachel to Abraham and Sarah... Even Mary and Joseph! She’d struggled with Josh precisely because she wouldn’t settle for less. She refused to sink into the background of his life and his heart.
But for all of her trying, it didn’t seem to help much. And all of her trying had left her deeply exhausted.
“So what are you saying?” Jane asked with a faint shrug.
“I’m saying that marriage has been a lot of things, but romance hasn’t always been part of it. Women were married off for family alliances. Men got married to produce an heir. Sometimes you’d get a widow and widower who would marry just to share the workload to feed their kids and survive winter!”
“I think God intended something more. Just because humans have ruined something that God created doesn’t mean it’s worthless,” she said.
“What makes you so sure?” he asked.
“I can feel it,” Jane said, putting a hand over her chest. “Here. I can feel it. Women weren’t created to be sold off in blind marriages for political reasons. We aren’t just vessels for bearing children!”
“Hey, I’m not saying that,” Colt said quickly. “I’m just saying that marriage hasn’t always been romantic. I’m not saying that women should have been treated that way. I’m against that, for the record. I think women deserve their freedom.”
“Fine.” She sighed and pulled her hair away from her face. “It hasn’t always been romantic.” She didn’t know why this annoyed her so much, but it did. “But I married Josh for love.”
“I believe you.” Colt heaved a sigh, then looked toward the window and the pounding rain again.
“And I’m willing to believe that the couple who lived in this little house got married for love, too,” she added.
“Yeah?” A smile curved up his lips again.
“Why...do you know otherwise?” she asked.
“Nah, no one told me how they met.” He grinned at her, and she felt her ire rise again.
“I’m not joking around, Colt.”
“Jane, what does it matter?” he asked, the humor evaporating. “You don’t want marriage any more than I do!”
He stood there, staring down at her with fire in his eyes. He was standing closer to her than she’d intended, but the dimensions of this room didn’t allow for much space. His arms were hanging at his sides, and he met her gaze, waiting for an answer with his eyebrows raised. She found her breath a little short, and she swallowed.
“No, I don’t,” she admitted.
“And that’s okay,” he said, taking a step back again. “Because if you look back on it, marriage was often just a piece of paper between a father and another man he was passing his daughter off to. And if you look at what marriage has become in our society, it doesn’t last! But that doesn’t mean that anyone was happier back when this cabin was a home. It just meant people didn’t have an escape.”
“Like your dad,” she said.
Colt froze, and she realized she might have gone too far. His father’s abandonment of his family shouldn’t be part of her argument to make a point. She felt a well of regret at the words. She couldn’t take them back, though, and they hung in the space between them.
“Would it have been better for my father to stick around and treat my mother the way Beau treated her
