‘She Can’t Give Children,’ They Said — Until a Lonely Cowboy With 5 Kids Chose Her

Chapter 4

Dawn broke over the Territory with the subtlety of a hammer strike, all harsh light and immediate heat, even in the early hours. Esther woke to a rooster, and cattle lowing somewhere distant, and the unmistakable thunder of children’s feet on wooden stairs, and for a moment she was lost — strange room, strange bed, a life she had stepped into less than twelve hours ago. Then she remembered everything, and she got up, and she went to face it.

The kitchen was a disaster of smoking pans, scattered flour, and five children in various states of dress and distress. Jasper stood at the stove wielding a spatula like a weapon, his face flushed. Micah sat at the table with his arms crossed, scowling at the world. Luke hovered near the window with enormous, silent eyes. The twins, both still in their nightclothes, were attempting to set the table with more enthusiasm than aim, forks scattered across the floor like autumn leaves.

“Good morning,” Esther said. Five heads swiveled. The room went unnaturally quiet.

“Papa’s already out with the cattle,” Jasper said finally, the words a warning more than information. “He said there’s eggs in the coop, milk in the cold cellar, flour in the pantry.”

“Thank you.” She moved into the kitchen, assessing the damage: burned eggs in one pan, the wreckage of a pancake in another, coffee boiling over on the back burner, bitter and sharp. “May I?” Jasper stepped back from the stove, relief masquerading as indifference. “Suit yourself.”

Esther had learned to cook in her mother’s kitchen under a woman who believed feeding a man was the highest calling a woman could have. She had never enjoyed it. But she knew her way around a stove. She dumped the coffee, scraped the pans, started fresh. The children watched her in silence. Chester under her breath, she measured coffee grounds and gave the twins a task — collect the forks into the basin, and they treated it like a game. “Micah,” she said, cracking eggs into a bowl, “would you fetch water from the pump? We’ll need it for washing up.”

“Get it yourself,” Micah said, not moving.

Esther paused, an egg in each hand, and looked at the nine-year-old properly. His jaw was set; his eyes were bright with challenge. She’d seen this before, with every child who’d ever been told they had no power. “I will,” she said mildly, turning back to her work, “in a moment. Though I have to say, your father struck me as the kind of man who raises children with better manners than that.”

Something flickered in the boy’s face — shame, or the ghost of remembered lessons. He shoved his chair back. “Fine,” he muttered, and he grabbed the water bucket and stalked out the back door. Small victory, Esther told herself. She let it count.

Breakfast was a study in cautious truces. The eggs were good and the coffee actually tasted like coffee, and nobody complained out loud, which she measured as progress. When Boaz came in, hat off, hair showing first threads of silver, he paused in the doorway taking in the scene — children fed, kitchen more or less clean, Esther at the stove — and something shifted behind his eyes. “Miss Calloway. You’re up early.” “The rooster was very insistent,” she said, drying her hands. “There’s coffee, if you want it. Can I make you a plate?” “No need, I ate before dawn.” He cleared his throat. “How did — how did everything go?” The real question was under the polite words, and she heard it clearly. Did they break you already? “We managed fine. Nathan and my namesake are going to help me make stew for dinner tonight.”

Something complicated crossed his face at the word stew. “Corrine’s stew was always my favorite,” he said quietly, and for a moment he was somewhere far away. Then he shook himself. “I need to head back out. Jasper, you’re with me. Micah, chickens and eggs. Nathan, mucking out the barn. Luke —” He paused, studying his quietest son. “Help Miss Calloway with whatever she needs. Can you do that?” Luke nodded silently. “And Nellie, you mind your manners.” He settled his hat and turned, then stopped. “Miss Calloway, if you need anything, ring the bell on the back porch. Two long rings means trouble. Otherwise, I’ll be back for dinner.”

“We’ll be fine,” she said, with more confidence than she felt.

Boaz studied her a long moment, weighing whether to believe her, then nodded and was gone with Jasper trailing behind, the twelve-year-old’s shoulders already carrying the set of a man’s burden.

The rest of the morning passed in a blur of domestic war. The house was sixteen months deep in grief and dust, and Esther worked like a woman possessed, because working was easier than thinking. She swept. She washed windows until they wept clean water. She shook out rugs. Luke shadowed her, wordless and watchful, and somewhere around noon he began, unprompted, to carry things. Amazing what goodwill could live under silence. Nellie chattered. Nathan, who had inherited his mother’s sunny disposition and his father’s stubbornness, announced she was the first grown-up who’d ever let him dry dishes.

It was midafternoon, the house finally standing at attention, when she found the garden. It had been a real garden once — the bones of it were still there, a fence and some wire — but sixteen months of drought and neglect had left it a graveyard of brittle stalks and dead vines. The drought had been cruel all territory; the pump and the well strained for every drop. Esther crouched and touched the cracked earth, and something inside her refused to let it stay dead. She hauled water from the well until her arms ached, and began to clear the dead.

That night, after the children were bathed and bedded, Esther found Boaz on the back porch with two tin cups. He handed her one, filled with coffee that was, for once, actually drinkable. They stood in the dark, watching the stars rake themselves across the sky. “The house,” he said finally, “looks different tonight.” “I cleaned it.” “I could tell.” He was quiet. “Corrine’s garden was her pride. She’d plant everything she could get her hands on. It died when she did, I suppose. Everything did.” “I started clearing it today. I hope that’s all right.” “It’s more than all right.” The silence was a companionable one. “Miss Calloway —” “Esther,” she said. “You can call me Esther. Misstag Miss Calloway makes me feel like a schoolteacher.”

The corner of his mouth lifted — not quite a smile, but close to family. “Esther, then. Good night.”

“Good night, Mr. Hartley.”

“Boaz,” he countered. “Fair’s fair.”

Boaz, she repeated silently, lying in bed. Boaz. The name tasted like water, which she supposed beat even the taste of keeping a household going on nothing but will, and she fell asleep before she could finish the thought, dreaming of a garden that refused to stop growing.