Mail-Order Bride Arrived in Rags — The Rancher’s Daughter Whispered, “Please Be Our Mama”

Chapter 2

The wagon creaked along the road that was more track than road, two ruts through grass that had not decided whether to be spring yet, and the wind came down off the hills and did not stop. Eleanor listened to it. Wyoming wind, the letters had not mentioned the wind. She had not thought to ask.

Abby talked the whole way, and Eleanor let her, because she had learned in eight years of teaching that children say the most important things sideways, buried in chatter about cats and schoolhouses, and that the respectful thing is to receive it and let the door close when the child closes it. When Abby mentioned her mother — briefly, in the unself-conscious way young children sometimes talk about loss, as a fact among facts — Eleanor heard it the way you hear a note in a chord, and she did not reach for it. She let it be.