Lonely Rancher Knocked And Said “I Was Told You Need A Rancher The Widow Saw His Daughter Behind His

Chapter 2

By the time the knock came, the lamps were burning and the table was laid for three. Eleanor realized, in a distant part of herself, that she had not done this since spring. Thomas’s books still lined the shelf he had built their first winter together, his ink-stained ledgers stacked square at the near end, and she had caught herself, half an hour ago, setting out his chair before she stopped, wiped her palms on her apron, and put it back.

Gideon Whitaker stepped in with the care of a man walking into a chapel, his daughter scrubbed pink at the pump and her hair hastily re-braided. Cami’s eyes went wide at the quilts on the walls, the fire, the smell of bread and stew, and she whispered, “It’s pretty,” then looked up at her father as if she had spoken out of turn.

“It’s all right,” Eleanor said. “Thank you. Would you like to help me set the table?”

The child nodded so hard her braids swung, and carried the tin cups with both hands, treating them like borrowed treasure. Over supper the cabin filled up with something it had been missing for so long Eleanor had stopped naming it. Conversation. Gideon ate with the careful, reverent slowness of a man who had been hungry too many times to waste a mouthful, while Cami fought a losing battle against sleep, her head dropping lower with every sentence.

“How long since her mother?” Eleanor asked quietly.