They Called 19-Year-Old Abigail a Liar and a Harlot—Then the Feared Mountain Man Walked In and Said, “That Child Is Mine.”

Chapter 8

Weeks passed, and then something strange happened, because Martha Bell visited one afternoon and held the baby in her arms and frowned, and Abigail became frightened and asked if something was wrong, and Martha said no, and leaned closer to look at the child, and then she laughed and said, “Oh, my.” Morgan narrowed his eyes and asked what, and Martha pointed toward the child’s left ear and told them to look, and there was a tiny crescent-shaped birthmark behind it, and Morgan stared, and Thomas entered carrying firewood and asked what they were looking at, and Martha showed him, and Thomas dropped the wood. Morgan looked at his brother and asked what, and Thomas slowly turned his head, and behind his own left ear was the same crescent-shaped mark, and Morgan had one too, and Abigail stared and nobody spoke, and Morgan’s face became unreadable as he said, “That doesn’t mean anything.”

Martha frowned and said, “It might,” and Abigail’s heart started racing, and she said, “There’s only one way it could,” and Morgan stood and said, “No,” but Thomas turned to Abigail and asked, “When did you first realize you were pregnant?” and she gave him the date, and Thomas calculated silently, and then his face changed, and Morgan saw it and said, “No.” Abigail looked between them and asked what was happening, and Thomas spoke carefully and asked Morgan when he had first met Abigail, and Morgan said, “At the church,” and Abigail shook her head and said, “No.” Morgan looked at her and asked what, and she said, “That wasn’t the first time,” and he frowned, and she smiled faintly and said, “The winter before,” and Morgan went still. “You were injured,” she said.

Memory returned to him slowly, and it came back as fragments, a snowstorm, a fall, a fever, and the knowledge that Morgan had been found unconscious beside the Preston barn after bringing medicine to Bitter Creek, and that Reverend Preston had refused to let the feared trapper inside the house. But Abigail had secretly taken him into the unused shepherd’s cottage, and for three days she had cared for him, and Morgan barely remembered any of it, only warm hands and a girl’s voice and water against his lips, and he had believed it was a fever dream. Abigail’s cheeks reddened and she said, “You recovered on the third night,” and Morgan stared at her and said, “We…” and she nodded, and it had been once, a single frightened, tender moment between two lonely people, followed the next morning by Morgan leaving because he believed a respected reverend’s daughter could never want a mountain trapper. Abigail had never told him she might be carrying his child, because Billy had attacked her only weeks later, and the dates had become confused, and fear had made everything worse, and Billy had encouraged everyone to assume the pregnancy proved his crime had produced the child.

But it had not. The baby was Morgan’s, truly his.

Morgan sat down heavily, and Thomas began laughing, and Martha covered her mouth, and Abigail had tears in her eyes, and Morgan looked at the child and then at her. “In the church…” he said, and she said, “Yes,” and he said, “When I said, ‘That child is mine’…” and she said, “You were telling the truth,” and he said, “I didn’t know,” and she said, “Neither did I,” and Morgan laughed, a deep stunned laugh that filled the entire cabin, and then he pulled Abigail into his arms. For months he had protected a child he believed belonged to another man, and he had never cared, and that was why the truth mattered so much now, because it was not blood that made him a father, he had already chosen to become one, but because fate had somehow taken his desperate lie inside the church and turned it into the strangest truth of all. Morgan kissed Abigail’s forehead and then stopped and asked, “Can I ask you something?” and she smiled and said, “You look terrified,” and he said, “I am,” and she asked if he was more terrified than when Billy had brought eight riders, and he said, “Yes,” and she said, “Then ask.”

Morgan reached into his pocket and removed a small silver ring, roughly made and hand-carved, because he had shaped it himself, and he said, “I don’t want you to marry me because I protected you, and I don’t want you to marry me because of him,” and he glanced toward the cradle and said, “I want you to marry me because every morning since you walked into my cabin, it has felt less like a cabin and more like a home.” Abigail began to cry, and Morgan panicked and asked, “That bad?” and she laughed through her tears and said, “Finish,” and he swallowed and said, “Abigail Preston, I love you,” and his voice almost failed as he added, “I have loved you badly, silently and probably stupidly for months,” and she said, “Definitely stupidly,” and he said, “Thank you,” and she smiled, and he continued, “Will you marry me?” Abigail looked at the man Bitter Creek had once feared more than wolves, and she thought of him standing inside the church saying that the child was his, and she thought of his coat around her shoulders and his unfinished cradle and his trembling hands holding their son, and she said, “Yes.” Morgan stared and said, “Yes?” and she said, “Yes,” and he kissed her, and outside the window Thomas shouted, “Finally!” and Morgan threw a wooden spoon at him.

By autumn the church in Bitter Creek was full again, but everything was different, because Morgan stood beside Abigail at the altar while their baby slept in Martha Bell’s arms and Thomas stood as Morgan’s witness and Silas filled the front pew, and at the back of the church stood Reverend Preston, who had not assumed he was invited. Abigail had sent him one sentence, “If you wish to see your daughter married, come without your pulpit,” and he came, wearing no minister’s collar and carrying no authority, only a father, and when Abigail saw him she walked down the aisle before the ceremony, and everyone watched. Her father lowered his head and said, “I don’t deserve—” and she said, “No. You don’t,” and he nodded, and then Abigail hugged him, not because the past had disappeared, because it never would, but because forgiveness, she had learned, was not pretending a wound never existed, and sometimes it was simply refusing to let the wound choose the rest of your life. Reverend Preston began to cry, and so did Morgan, although he later denied it.

The ceremony was simple, and when the minister asked Morgan if he would take Abigail as his wife, the mountain man looked at her and said, “Already did,” and everyone laughed, and Abigail squeezed his hand, and when they stepped outside, snow had begun falling, softly, not like the storm that had carried Morgan into the church and not like the avalanche meant to bury them, but quiet snow. Their son slept against Morgan’s chest, and Abigail leaned into him and said, “You know, Bitter Creek will talk about us forever,” and Morgan looked toward town and said, “Let them,” and she asked what they would say, and he thought about it and smiled and said, “They’ll probably say the mountain man stole the reverend’s daughter,” and Abigail laughed and asked, “And did he?” and Morgan looked down at her and said, “No,” and he kissed her and said, “She stole him.”