All 9 Children Nobody Wanted Found a Father When a Cowboy Said: They’re Mine Now Forever!

Chapter 10

The morning the papers came was clear and bright, the kind of morning that makes a man believe the world intends to keep its promises.

Mr. Greeley rode out himself, as he had said he would, and he stood in the yard of the big new house and read aloud in his tired official voice that could not quite stay official. The words that made it true in the eyes of the law, that Elias Hart was henceforth and forever the lawful father of nine children by name, each one written out in his careful ink.

Jesse.

Nell.

Ben.

Tess.

Dolly.

Micah.

Malachi.

Lottie.

Iris.

When he finished, there was a silence in the yard. The kind of silence that holds its breath.

And then little Iris — who was three now, and talking up a storm, and afraid of absolutely nothing — marched across the yard to where Elias stood, and she tugged on his trouser leg until he bent down, and she put both her small hands on either side of his weathered face, the way she did when she had something important to say.

“Yours,” she informed him. “Forever and always.”

Elias Hart, thirty-nine years old, a man who had once buried his whole heart under a cottonwood tree and walked away certain he would never love anything again, knelt down in the yard of the house he had built and gathered his daughter into his arms.

And over the top of her head, he looked at the rest of them. At Jesse, who stood tall now and easy in his shoulders, the boy who had been a man for three terrible days and had finally been allowed to lay the weight down. At Nell with her slate and her quick, clever mind, who had stopped being afraid of her own brilliance. At Ben, who had gentled his way into a dozen hearts without a word. At Tess and Dolly, who ran the house and the worry between them. At the twins, who had finally stopped being trouble and turned into the kind of young men a father is proud of. At little Lottie, standing by Mara’s skirts with her crooked braids and her serious eyes.

And he said the only thing there was to say.

“And you’re mine,” he told them. “All of you. Every day of forever. Just like I promised in the rain.”

Nobody in Juniper Falls ever again said it couldn’t last.

That evening, with the children fed and the fire high and the house full of the sound of them, Elias Hart walked out onto the porch and stood a moment in the dark, looking up at the stars. Mara came out behind him and stood beside him, not touching, just there.

“There’s room at this table,” he said at last, not looking at her. “There’s always been room. I’d be obliged if you’d take your place at the head of it. For good.”

She was quiet so long he was sure he had said it wrong.

Then: “I thought you’d never ask, you stubborn cattleman.”

And she took his hand, and the porch creaked under both of them, and the firelight spilled out of the windows onto the two of them standing in the dark, and behind them, in the house, nine children grew warm and loud and safe under a roof that a man had once built for one man who expected no company at all.