“She is a baby.”
“I'll hurt her.”
“You won't.”
“My hands—”
“Elias.”
Clara looked exhausted and impossibly beautiful.
“Hold your daughter.”
I did.
Hannah's entire body fit along one forearm.
Her fingers wrapped around the end of my little finger.
That locked room inside me finally disappeared.
Three years later, we had a son.
Samuel.
Two years after that, another daughter, Rose.
By then our house no longer contained silence.
There were boots beside the door.
Wooden toys beneath chairs.
Crayon marks appeared on a wall even though Clara insisted crayons should not have existed anywhere near the wall in question.
Hannah climbed me like a tree.
Samuel believed my shoulders were transportation.
Rose refused to sleep unless I carried her through the kitchen twice.
Sometimes I stood in the doorway after supper and simply watched them.
Clara always noticed.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
She smiled.
“My favorite lie.”
Years passed.
The rumors became stories old people told badly.
New families moved into Copper Hollow and could not understand why anyone had once called me the Devil.
Ezra Cole eventually sold the mercantile to his daughter.
Beatrice Vale became one of Clara's closest friends, though neither woman admitted how unlikely that friendship had once seemed.
The medical room at our ranch became too small.
So I built Clara a proper clinic in town.
She protested the size.
I ignored her.
The sign read:
CLARA THORNE
MIDWIFE AND WOMEN'S HEALTH PRACTITIONER
Clara stood beneath it for ten minutes the first morning.
“You made the letters too large.”
“I like large things.”
She turned slowly.
I realized my mistake.
Clara's smile became wicked.
“Do you?”
I walked inside before she could continue.
At fifty, I still blushed because of that woman.
At sixty, she still enjoyed causing it.
Our children eventually learned there had once been rumors about me.
Hannah discovered them first.
She was sixteen.
A boy at school repeated something his grandfather had said.
Hannah broke his nose.
Clara was furious.
I was secretly impressed.
We sat Hannah at the kitchen table.
“You cannot strike people because they insult me,” I said.
“He deserved it.”
“Possibly.”
Clara glared at me.
I corrected myself.
“But that does not make it acceptable.”
Hannah folded her arms.
“What they said was disgusting.”
“Yes.”
“How did you stand it?”
I considered the question.
“I pretended it didn't hurt.”
Hannah looked sad.
“That sounds lonely.”
“It was.”
She looked toward Clara.
“What changed?”
I followed her gaze.
Clara was older now.
Silver ran through her chestnut hair.
Fine lines surrounded the hazel eyes that had first looked up at me through Montana rain.
She was still the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.
“Your mother,” I said.
Clara shook her head.
“No.”
I looked at her.
She reached across the table and touched my hand.
“I did not change you.”
“You did.”
“I gave you company while you changed yourself.”
Hannah made a face.
“That sounds like something you'd tell a patient.”
“It is.”
Years later, after our children had families of their own, Clara and I returned to the old depot during another spring rain.
The building had changed.
Copper Hollow had changed.
Railroad men had widened the platform.
The saloon across the street had become a hardware store.
Nobody remembered where Ezra and the others had stood that morning.
Clara did.
She stopped beneath the eave.
“Right there.”
“What?”
“You were standing right there.”
I looked.
“Possibly.”
“You had your hat in your hand.”
“I remember.”
“You looked miserable.”
“I was expecting you to run.”
Clara smiled.
“I almost did.”
I stared at her.
“What?”
She laughed.
“You never knew?”
“No.”
“Elias, you were enormous.”
“You told me you were relieved.”
“I was.”
“Then why would you run?”
“Because you were handsome.”
I stared.
Clara laughed harder.
“That frightened you?”
“I had traveled halfway across America preparing myself to marry some terrifying mountain brute.”
She wiped rain from her cheek.
“Instead I stepped off the train and found a giant man with gray eyes standing there looking like a wounded dog.”
“I did not look like a wounded dog.”
“You absolutely did.”
I grumbled.
Clara took my arm.
“The truth is, I was terrified.”
My smile faded.
She squeezed gently.
“Not of you.”
“Of what?”
“Of hoping again.”
I understood.
Clara rested her head against my shoulder.
“I had already lost one husband. Lost a home. Lost nearly every idea I once had about how life was supposed to unfold.”
Rain struck the street beyond the depot.
“Then I saw you.”
I looked down at her.
“And?”
“You were too large for the doorway.”
I frowned.
She smiled.
“And you were holding your hat like you might apologize for existing.”
My throat tightened.
“I decided I would not let an entire town tell me what kind of man stood in front of me.”
She took my hand.
“That was the smartest decision I ever made.”
I bent and kissed her forehead.
“No.”
“What was?”
“Stepping closer.”
Clara smiled.
Perhaps that was the real story of us.
People liked to say Clara was the only woman brave enough to marry the Devil of Copper Hollow.
They were wrong.
Clara never believed she was marrying a devil.
She simply refused to confuse size with cruelty, rumor with truth, or another woman's fear with her own judgment.
And I had not needed a woman fearless enough to endure me.
I needed one stubborn enough to demand that I stop thinking of myself as something that required enduring.
Seven women left.
I never hated them.
Fear is complicated.
Marriage is more complicated still.
But Bride Number Eight stepped through the rain, looked up farther than any woman should reasonably have needed to look, saw an entire town waiting for her to recoil, and made one simple decision.
She moved closer.
And for the first time in my life, so did I.