The Cowboy Waited Months for His Mail-Order Bride — Then She Rode Into Town Like a Legend
Chapter 5
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On the last evening of May, after supper at the ranch, Peter drowsing in the next room, a storm making up its mind beyond the ridge, she did a plainer, braver thing than praying for him in secret: she stayed at the table."Isaac, nobody has said grace over a meal in this house for a long while, and the meals deserved better. Tonight somebody will." She folded her ruled hands on the table where he could see them. "You first. Stiff counts. A hinge moves stiff before it moves free."So Isaac Bennett prayed aloud at his own table in front of another living soul for the first time in two years. It was short and stiff and stopped twice like a wagon in mud: thanks for food, for a son asleep, for help that had come by a long road. Peter chimed his amen from the doorway in his nightshirt and was sent back to bed.Then Willa prayed openly at the table with the man himself sitting across from her, hearing every word."Lord, he reads old letters like a man checking a fence line, and he is ashamed of his own loyal heart. Do not let him be ashamed of loving Bethany well. And do not let him think he has to finish grieving to be allowed to live, because nobody finishes. They just learn where it sits.And the boy, Peter, is brave past his size, and nobody should have to be at six. Give him back some smallness, Lord. Let him be scared of thunder again like it is his biggest problem.And Crowe..." A pause, with Isaac's eyes right on her. "...yes, and Crowe. It would be satisfying to pray him into a ditch, but his own house went quiet once. Put somebody in his path who can stand him, because at present that person is not me. Work on that.And the woman praying is scared, too, Lord. She does not want to be a chapter that ruins the book. If there is a place here that is honestly hers, show it plain to both of them at this table, not in corners. Amen."Isaac sat with his hands flat on the table, a man who had been prayed over to his face and had survived the mercy of it."A place honestly yours," he said at last. "That is already being built. A man does not open a drawer he has kept shut for two years in front of just anybody.""Then say it plain from time to time," she said, "and the building will go faster."She poured the last of the coffee for both of them, and the kitchen felt larger, though no furniture in it had moved an inch. From that evening, prayer at the Bennett table was said out loud together: stiffly at first, then as a habit of the house.Once, mending a shirt while Peter shelled peas, she answered the question the boy had stored up for a week: what to call her after the wedding."Your ma is your ma forever. Her name is Bethany. If someday 'Ma' grows in your mouth for me, too, that will be your gift to give, not my wage to collect. Deal?""Deal," Peter said with enormous relief.