Everyone had worked so hard to create this world for her, and Rachel loved it. She truly did. The courtyard was even larger than the first one. Joseph had slaved from dawn to dark building the walls, taking them out much farther from the house this time so she wouldn’t perish in the event of another fire. The thought brought tears to her eyes. So much love, and so much work. When she thought of all the hours of labor that had been invested, she didn’t know how to tell Joseph that she no longer needed any walls.
Directly after Ray Meeks’ death, Rachel had needed the barricades, just like always. Boards over the windows. A shotgun within easy reach. No doors that opened onto the outdoors. Only somehow, over the weeks that followed the fire, something within her had inexplicably healed, and she awoke one morning wanting the boards off the windows so she could see out. And once outside in her courtyard, where before she had always felt so miraculously free, she suddenly felt imprisoned, all that was within her yearning to see the world beyond the walls.
She didn’t know what to do. Joseph had spent a small fortune adding on to the front of his house to build her a vestibule. And he’d neglected his ranch to build these fabulous, impenetrable walls of rock for her. How could she tell him that she no longer needed or even wanted them?
She heard a conveyance pull up out front. No urge came over her to run into the house to hide. The demon that had haunted her dreams for so very long no longer existed. Maybe it was Doc, coming to check on her again. Or maybe it was someone from town, bearing yet another sweet gift to make her little world more beautiful.
Only she wanted the real world now. She wanted to go walking through the fields with her wonderful husband. She wanted to go horseback riding and lie on her back in a shady place, watching the clouds drift by and listening to the birds.
Rachel had prayed for so long to get well. For years. And she had despaired, convinced she never would. But that was before Joseph. Before Buddy. Before Joseph’s wonderful family. Maybe she would pretend to be sick a while longer. She’d lived in a dark cave for so long. She could surely do it for a few more months. Then everyone who had worked so hard on this beautiful courtyard might not feel quite so deflated when she informed them that she no longer needed it.
“Rachel?”
That voice. It was one that Rachel had adored all her life. She sat frozen on the bench for a moment. Then she twisted to look over her shoulder. There, gazing at her through the bars, was Aunt Amanda.
“I’ll go if you want,” she said shakily. “I’ll understand if you hate me. I truly will. But I had to at least try to see you one more time.”
Tears filled Rachel’s eyes, nearly blinding her. “Mannie.”
“Yes, it’s me. I’m a little worse for wear, I’m afraid.” She curled a shaky hand around a bar. “I won’t stay but for a minute, sweet girl. Only for a minute. I just want to say that I’m so very sorry. I loved him, you know. My Raymond.” Amanda grabbed for breath and shakily exhaled. “Sometimes when we love a child so very, very much, we’re blinded to his faults. I won’t lie to you. Deep down, I think I always knew. But I couldn’t believe. Does that make any sense?”
Rachel tried to nod, but the muscles in her neck seemed to have turned to stone.
“As a mother,” Amanda continued, “I couldn’t believe it of him. So I found others to blame, and I pretended he was all that I wanted and needed him to be, the wonderful son that I had lost and found again.”
Rachel pushed slowly to her feet. Her throat had closed off, and she couldn’t speak.
“I just need you to know that I never stopped loving you. Never. I was an old fool, and you and your family paid the price for it. I can never undo that. I will never forgive myself for the pain I’ve caused you. I just hope that someday, when you hold your own little boy in your arms, you’ll come to some sort of understanding and finally be able to forgive me. There’s no love like the love a mother feels for her child. Nothing compares. And when that child goes wrong, it is so very hard to stand back and see him for what he really is, without the love clouding your vision.”
Rachel moved slowly toward the gate. Struggling to reclaim her voice, she finally managed to say, “I don’t hate you, Mannie. I love you with all my heart.”
Amanda raised her chin in that prideful way she had. “What?”
And suddenly Rachel knew why she was finally well. The imagined betrayal—the terrible hurt of it—had never happened except within her mind. Mannie had had nothing to do with what had occurred on that horrible day. Her only crime had been to love her son too much and to remain loyal to him to the last.
“I said I love you,” Rachel repeated more firmly. “I always loved you best, more than anyone. I always loved you best.” She reached into the pocket of her new skirt and withdrew the key to the gate. “Please, Mannie, come in. Let’s talk for a while.”
“Oh, no. I know how you are about doors opening onto open places, sweetheart.”
Rachel sighed wearily. Then she shoved the key into the lock and opened the gate. “How I used to be.”
Once Amanda was inside the courtyard, Rachel led her to the garden bench, and after a time, when they’d healed all the old wounds and clarified all the misunderstandings, Rachel said, “Joseph went into Denver last week to confer with a lawyer. We’ve talked, and I’ve decided that I don’t want the Bar H. My great-grandfather was a stupid old codger, and Grandpa Peter was just as bad. You worked that land all your life, and it rightfully belongs to you. We’re in the process of deeding it all to you.”
Amanda’s eyes filled with tears. “I appreciate the thought, darling, I truly do. But I’m too old to give a damn about any of it at this age. I just want to be with my Darby during my last days.”
“Poor as church mice? No.” Rachel’s voice rang with firmness. “There’s a fortune in gold on that land. I want you to live out your last days with your Darby, but I want you to do it wanting for nothing, which is just as it should be.”
“Joseph needs more land than he’s got,” Amanda argued. “Such foolishness. You’re the young folks. You need the ranch and the gold far more than Darby and I do.”
“Leave it to our children,” Rachel replied.
“I could do that, but here’s a better idea. Fifty-fifty, dear heart. You and I, the Hollister women, splitting the profits from that mine.” Amanda chuckled and looked up through the bars at the sky. “My father is surely rolling in his grave. I always thought that part of the reason he never forgave me for getting pregnant was the fact that I was a female. It saved him from having to leave any of his precious wealth to someone in a skirt.”
Rachel giggled. And suddenly Amanda’s idea struck her as being absolutely right: a way for Mannie to finally have her revenge, with the last of the Hollister line, two idiotic females in skirts controlling it all.
“We’ll be rich, Mannie.”
“Richer than my father ever dreamed of being,” Amanda replied with a satisfied sigh. “Is it a deal, then? Darby can work the ranch as long as he feels up to it, but you and Joseph will actually own it and manage it. And the gold will be divided equally between you and me. Darby and I will build a grand little house over there and live out our last years like a king and queen, working only when and if we please. What we don’t manage to spend before we die will go to your children, although I have to warn you that I’ve always had a hankering to see far-away places. Maybe we’ll spend it all traveling.”
Rachel hoped so. No one deserved to see far-away places more than her aunt Amanda. “It’s a deal,” she replied.
And they shook on it.
As they moved on to talk about other things, Rachel felt like a child again, confessing her troubles to always understanding Mannie.
When Rachel had told her the entire story about no longer needing any walls, Amanda threw back her head and chortled with laughter. Flicking Rachel an apologetic glance, she wiped tears of mirth from under her eyes and said, “What a pickle.”
“I already know it
’s a pickle. Joseph will want to strangle me when he finds out.”
Amanda laughed some more.
“It’s not funny, Mannie. I’m well, and I can’t tell anyone. Joseph has been so wonderful. You just can’t know. He’s created a safe world for me here, doing everything within his power to make me happy. How can I tell him it was all for nothing?” The back of Rachel’s throat burned. “I always thought I’d be so happy if I got well. Now I just feel awful and wish I were sick again.”
Amanda shook her head. “Sick again? Rachel Marie, bite your tongue. Where is the man?”
Rachel jumped up from the bench. “Why? You aren’t going to tell him?”
Amanda laughed. “No, but you are. Right now, this instant. Where is he?”
“Out in the fields. I think he’s plowing.”
“Well, then. Plowing means he hasn’t turned dirt everywhere yet, and you can still find some grass. Run out there and make best use of it.”
“The best use of grass?” Rachel asked, completely baffled.
“Yes, the grass. Where’s your head at, young lady? By the time you finish with him, he won’t care about the damned courtyard. He’ll only be delighted that you’re well. How can you think otherwise?” She glanced around the courtyard. “You got a lovely garden out of it. Be thankful for that and count your blessings.”
“But what of all the people from town?”
Amanda rolled her blue eyes. “They wanted to give you sunshine. Do you think caring hearts like that will nitpick? They are going to be happy as can be that you’re well.”
Rachel cast a dubious look at the gate. “Oh, Mannie, I’ve never been so scared in my life.”
“Pshaw.” She flicked her fingertips at the gate. “Off with you. Are you the daughter of my heart or not? Sometimes you have to dig deep for courage, girl. Start digging.”
Rachel ran over to hug her aunt. “Oh, Mannie, I have missed you so.”
Amanda gathered her close for a long, tight embrace. Then she pushed Rachel away. “Go on. Give the man something to smile about. You can tell me about it later.”
Rachel let herself out the gate. Deep breath. And, oh, that felt so wonderful. She was free. After five long years in prison, she was absolutely free. Way off in the distance, she saw Joseph shuffling along behind the mules, his strong shoulders braced to control the plow as it dug deep into new earth.
“Joseph!” she called.
He didn’t look up.
“Joseph?” she called again.
Her voice must have carried to him on the summer breeze, for he drew the team to a halt and looked up. Rachel ran faster, her arms held wide. She saw him pull the gear off over his head and start toward her, haltingly at first, as if he couldn’t quite believe his eyes, and then surging into a flat-out run, as if every second that passed might be their last.
They collided in the pasture between the house and the field. Rachel locked her arms around his strong neck. “I’m well, Joseph. I’m well! I didn’t know how to tell you.”
She babbled on about the courtyard and the vestibule and all the boarded-up windows and how terrible she felt for not needing them anymore. And then Joseph locked an arm around her waist, dropping to his knees and taking her down with him.
“You’re well? You’re well and you couldn’t tell me? Sweet Christ, woman. Like I care about that damned courtyard?” He caught her face between his hands. Dirty hands, ingrained with the soil that provided their livelihood. “Being out here doesn’t bother you? You can breathe?”
Rachel took a deep breath, just to show him. “I’m so sorry, Joseph. I didn’t realize. Not until the courtyard was almost finished. And then I felt so awful. All that work for nothing. I didn’t know how to tell you, and I just—”
His hungry mouth cut off the rest of the sentence. The next thing Rachel knew, she was on her back in pink clover, with the most wonderful, handsome, sexy man on earth braced on his arms above her.
“I love you,” he whispered raggedly as he trailed kisses down her throat. “It’s a miracle, Rachel. A miracle. We won’t have to shove our kids out the wood safe to send them to school.”
Rachel snorted with laughter. And then as his hot mouth found one of her breasts, she forgot what she was laughing about. Joseph. She loved him as she’d never loved anyone. As he shoved up her skirts and thrust himself deeply into her, Rachel drank in the blue sky above them, reveling in the wondrous feeling of a summer breeze flowing gently over her bare skin.
Joseph’s gift to her.
When their passion was spent and he collapsed beside her, Rachel whispered, “It’s a good thing the grass is tall. I’ll bet anything that Mannie stayed to watch.”
“What?”
Rachel giggled and then told him about her aunt’s visit. “She still hadn’t left when I ran out here to tell you.”
Joseph jerked his pants up. “You mean I was flashing my bare ass at your aunt?”
“Oh, I doubt that. I think the grass is tall enough to have covered you.”
“You think. You don’t know for sure. You just think? I’ve a good mind to turn you over my knee and paddle your bare butt.”
“Hmm. That sounds fun.”
He grabbed her and wrestled her across his lap. Rachel shrieked and burst out laughing when he threw up her skirts and playfully pinched her bottom instead.
Laughter. Wrestling with her husband in the grass, with clover forming a pink blanket all around them. If she lived to be a hundred, she doubted that life would ever get better.
Everything, absolutely everything, was perfect just as it was.
EPILOGUE
Tucker stared long and hard at the last page of Rachel Hollister’s diary, feeling oddly empty inside, as if the last few pages of her memoirs had been dribbles of water, spilling from inside of him, leaving nothing. Such an incredible story, with such happiness at the end, the kind of happiness he had never experienced and wasn’t sure he ever would.
He turned to look at his mom. On this, the fifth afternoon of their diary reading, she was smiling dreamily, staring at the curtains over her kitchen bay window, as if remembering something.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
Mary Coulter shrugged and grinned. “About your dad. About the first time I ever saw him. About our courtship.” She sighed. “What a glorious thing true love is. It only gets better with time. Comfortable, like Ace tried to explain to Joseph, and ever so precious after all the excitement wears off. I nag at your father to change his shirt, and I chew him out whenever he messes up, never sparing any words. But I love him more now than I ever dreamed possible when we were young and just starting out.”
She patted Rachel’s diary. “It’s so good to read something like that. They lived and loved so long ago, but even then they found a happy ending. Isn’t that wonderful?”
“How can you know that?” Tucker asked. “Maybe Joseph woke up one morning and his feelings had changed. Maybe the excitement all wore off.” It had happened to Tucker more times than he wanted to count—a sizzle, thinking he’d found the woman of his dreams, and then the inevitable fizzle. “They got married so fast. What was it—a month after they met, maybe? They barely knew each other.”
His mother looked at him as if he were an alien and rapped him sharply on the forehead with her knuckles. “They were together almost constantly for all that time. Trust me, they knew all the things they needed to know about each other, and the love they felt was real.”
Tucker shook his head. “Ten years later, I’ll bet Joseph Paxton was sweating behind a plow, wishing he’d never bitten off all that responsibility. A wife and kids and bills to pay. The romance doesn’t last. If you buy into that, you’re in for a big fall.”
Mary smiled. “I knew you’d say that.” She turned on her kitchen chair and plucked something off the counter behind them. “Read that, you doubting Thomas. It’s Joseph’s last letter to Rachel, shortly before he died.”
“What?” Tucker was so into th
e story by now that he reverently took the yellowed paper from his mother’s hand. Unlike the paper in the diary, these sheets looked familiar, lined in blue and from a tablet, much like the sheets of paper he’d used to do his lessons in grade school.
His mother’s eyes shone. “He was ninety-four when he wrote that letter. It’s dated 1952. Your grandma Eden received it from one of Joseph and Rachel’s children, and she saved it in the family Bible. I’ve never read it without crying. It’s so beautiful.”
My darling Rachel: the letter read in spidery, faded ink, clearly written by an old, palsied man. I fear that I may leave you soon.
“He died a year later,” Mary whispered reverently. “He knew his time with her was almost over, and he wanted her to know all the things in his heart. Isn’t that beautiful? She passed on about a year after he did, but she had this to sustain her.”
As Tucker read on, his throat got tight, and he wasn’t the sentimental sort.
You have given me so much. When I first met you, I thought I was opening up the world for you, but I was so wrong. You were the one who opened up all of my windows so I could see the beauty beyond the glass. Holding Little Joe in my arms, watching him grow into a man. Then Paul, Peter, Mary, Sarah, and John. When did we start giving them biblical names? We never reached our goal of replicating the twelve apostles, my darling, but each one is so very special.
I am afraid now as the end draws near, not of dying, but of growing so weak that I’ll have to leave you. I feel the time coming close. But even though I will leave you in the flesh, I will never leave you in spirit. I’ll be a ghost to haunt you, my sweet Rachel. I will be the scent of roses in the summer breeze. I will be your comfort in the shadows. I’ll be the creak you hear when the house settles at night. I am going to stay with you as long as you remain here, a good ghost who can’t bring himself to depart for heaven until you can go with me. I have unfinished business here, the other half of my heart. Heaven won’t be heaven if you aren’t there with me. I guess I’ll be one of those disobedient spooks I once told you about, refusing to follow all the rules, only I won’t be an evil one. Just the spirit of a man who isn’t complete without his Rachel beside him.