A Widowed Mother’s Second Hope (Preview)

Chapter One

Still Creek, Colorado

August 1884

She should have taken the horse. Emma Blackwell considered how silly she had been to walk to the general store in town rather than ride.

The basket was heavy, even though she had only needed a few things, and the walk back up to the house on the ridge was taxing. She should have taken the horse and the buckboard.

Stopping to catch her breath, the day being hot and the sun quite merciless in the summer sky, Emma sat down on a tree stump on the side of the road.

If she hadn’t been so angry with George, she might have thought about the walk and decided on the horse before setting off. She might have considered that sugar and rice were heavy, and that baskets were designed badly—they were needlessly cumbersome, and should have straps so they could be carried on her back.

But she hadn’t thought, because she’d been so terribly angry. Livid, in fact.

Sighing, she looked up at the road she still had to travel and decided it could wait another couple of minutes. Sitting in the shade, she was quite happy to stay there a while and cool off.

Yes, the horse would have been nice. Although, what would have been even nicer was having a house in town, not just outside of it. Why would a sheriff want to live up on a ridge when the town was in the dip between the hills? It made no sense to Emma. She felt like she was miles and miles from everything and everyone.

George, however, loved the log cabin and wouldn’t even consider moving. Even though when Sam, their five-year-old son, started school in a year or so, he would have to walk for ages to get there. Buying groceries, going to church, even visiting friends was a long-winded thing that took ages.

Having grown up in an orphanage where there was no shortage of company, Emma found that all the time she spent alone with nothing but the birds in the trees and little Sam for company was becoming taxing for her. She was lonely, and George didn’t seem to care.

Well, what did I expect out of a marriage of convenience! Did I really expect romance?

Maybe a little. She had expected George to listen to her, take her feelings into consideration. But he wasn’t good at that.

The thing was that George had needed a wife—being a newly appointed sheriff and all—and she had needed a husband. No one wanted to marry an orphan, and so Emma had jumped at the opportunity to marry well. A sheriff was a good catch for someone with no prospects at all.

Six years later and a good deal wiser, Emma was beginning to wonder if marriage was such a necessity in a woman’s life. All she and George had done for the last year or so was fight. All the time. They could hardly even carry a conversation anymore.

He was always at work or asleep, and when he was awake, he was distant. Emma had begun to wonder if he was having an affair.

After all, George was being called out at all hours lately. Something was going on. Something he had decided not to tell her anything about. Which, of course, made her wonder if he was cheating.

There were plenty of women who wouldn’t mind him warming their beds. George was a good-looking man in his prime. He would have takers if he was looking.

That hurt.

She didn’t want to think about that, but it was where her mind instantly went.

Why else would he be secretive, and stop talking to folks the moment I come into a room? Emma thought.

He was hiding something, and it was most likely a mistress. Heaven knew there wasn’t enough crime in Still Creek for him to be busy with that.

“I’m going to have to talk to him about this,” she said out loud.

She let her head slump into her hands and sat there wondering if she wanted to cry or not. So far it seemed not, and she began to feel foolish, even if there wasn’t anyone to see her.

Lifting her gaze, Emma looked up the track again and her breath caught in her throat.

Is that smoke coming from the cabin?

It was gray and billowing up above the treetops like short-lived clouds. It had to be from the house. There wasn’t another building up there. What if it was a forest fire?

The hills were covered in pine, fir, and spruce all trees that burned really quickly and easily. Still Creek’s residents always cleared away the dead pine needles each year in spring to try and stop any fires from starting. Still, something was making that smoke. It was too much for it to be George stoking up the fire in the kitchen.

Picking up the basket she began to walk, keeping an eye on the smoke. It was getting worse. What was burning? She could smell it, the pungent odor of pine turning to ash.

Did George have an accident? Maybe knock something over?

Had Sam come back home from his friend’s house early and somehow set fire to the house? Had he knocked something over and set the rug on fire?

The mere thought that Sam could be involved in the fire made Emma’s heart climb into her throat and lodge there. She began to run up the road with her mind disgorging every possible, horrible scenario for her to consider… Sam burning. Sam choking on the smoke. Sam lost and afraid in a house that was burning down around him.

“Sam!” Emma yelled, turning onto the path that led to her front door.

Then she heard the gunshot.

Bang!

Emma stopped dead in her tracks. The basket fell from her fingers. She didn’t know what to do—a sound of horses’ hooves thudding on the ground seemed so close.

At first she thought they were coming from below, that they were the townsfolk coming up to the cabin to help. But that wasn’t right. The sounds were coming from along the track, in the direction of the cabin, not from the town.

Emma was terrified now. Who could this be? Who was at her home and what were they doing there?

She had just enough of her wits left to slip into the trees on the side of the road. Peering around the large trunk of a pine, she watched as six men on horseback rode by. Their horses’ hooves thundered on the ground, kicking up dust and turf as they raced past her.

At the end of the road, they turned right, heading away from town. Emma watched, dumbfounded as they rode on and disappeared without a backward glance.

The smoke was creeping between the trees now like a smelly choking mist. She held her handkerchief over her nose and mouth and ran the rest of the way to the cabin, not sure what she would find there—equally unsure what she would do when she got there.

After a while the cabin came into view.

It wasn’t on fire, but the shed at the back, where they kept the horse and the buckboard was. The horse, an old mare named Posey, was kicking and stomping in fright.

Before heading into the house, Emma ran to the shed. The door had been barred on the outside. The bar was heavy. Emma lifted it, two handed, and dropped it on the ground. Then she flung the doors wide open.

Flames leaped at her and she reared back.

Posey came flying out of the tiny stable, her eyes wide, ears back on her head. She galloped away down the track, escaping her prison that was quickly being engulfed in flames.

Emma got to her feet. Her right had a small gash in it from a stone she’d landed on. She wiped it on her dress and turned to look at the cabin. If they had set fire to the shed with the horse in it, they might have done even worse things in the house.

But only George was there.

She thought about the gunshot. Emma had only heard one. Had there been more that she hadn’t heard? Why had those men come to her house?

Suddenly, Emma wasn’t so sure that George’s secretiveness had anything to do with another woman in his life.

“Oh George, what did you get yourself into?” she asked.

Well, she would never know if she didn’t gather her courage and go inside the cabin. She would never know if it was really just George in there, if he had escaped, or if Sam had some home early.

“Oh Lord, give me strength,” she said and mounted the back steps.

The door creaked so loudly in the still air that Emma jumped at the sound. Of course, it was familiar and yet in that moment, it was eerie and full of foreboding. She didn’t want to take another step, but she had to.

The kitchen was empty. Emma moved through it quickly. On her way she took a sharp knife from the drawer and held it in a shaking hand.

Walking slowly down the passage, she made her way to the front of the house. She passed the bedrooms, the parlor and finally came to George’s study. The door was open, which in itself was odd. He never had it open if he was in there, and it was always locked when he wasn’t.

Peeking into the room Emma gasped. Goerge lay on the rug in front of the one filing cabinet. Its drawers were open and there were pages scattered all over the floor. The whole place was a mess.

Rushing into the room, the knife clattering to the floor as she knelt beside George, Emma reached out her shaking hands to him. Gently, she turned him over. There was a large patch of red blood on his shirt.

“George!” Emma exclaimed. “George! What happened? Why did they shoot you?”

She was babbling, terrified and very upset. In one moment, her whole world had turned upside down. Emma didn’t know what to say or do. She gingerly lifted his shirt to get a look at the wound. It was just below his ribs and bleeding badly.

Is there time to fetch someone? Time to get help? How? The horse has run off and I can’t go fast enough on foot.

“Em…”

“George,” Emma said, taking his hand in hers. His palm was slippery with blood. There was so much of it.

“Don’t… let them… take it,” he said.

She stared at him. “What?”

George’s large brown eyes were even larger and rounder than they usually were. He looked terrified. His cheeks were ashen, and Emma began to panic and there was nothing she could do about it.

“Tell,” George croaked. “Tell…Sam…I love him.”

“Oh, George, I will. But you can’t leave us like this,” she said, taking his head into her lap and looking around feverishly for something that could save him. “You’ve got to fight; you’ve got to hang on.” She was starting to panic. “George! Don’t leave me!”

He was fading fast. Emma watched at the blood drained from his face, his skin going ghostly white. There were so many things she wanted to say, to know from him. Foremost was who had done this.

“Who were they?” she asked. “Please, George, you have to tell me what’s going on. Is Sam in danger? Will they come back?”

“Take my coat… the answers… are… in… my coat,” George breathed.

Something left his eyes and Emma realized that George was gone. “Oh George,” she said sadly. “What did you do?”

The clock on the mantle in the parlor ticked and ticked, and Emma continued to hold her husband’s head in her lap. She couldn’t seem to let him go but she also knew that she had to. If Sam came home and saw his father like that it would devastate him.

Emma was too shocked, too scared, too confused to know how she felt or why no tears would come, no matter how much she told herself she had to cry. He was her husband for heaven’s sake. Surely, she should be able to squeeze out a tear.

But her eyes remained dry and the only thing that grew in her heart was dread for her child.

Sam can’t see this.

What if those men came back? If she and Sam stayed in the house, they would be sitting ducks. They would be killed. She had to go.

That seemed to inject some life into Emma. Letting George’s head down gently on the rug that was soaked in his blood, she left the study.

The need to run was tempered slightly by knowing that she and Sam would need some things. Emma forced herself to think slowly, carefully, even though her hands wouldn’t stop shaking and she jumped at every little noise.

She would have to go and get Sam from Billy’s house in town. She was going to fetch him later anyway, so it wouldn’t seem strange.

A creaking sound coming from the other side of the house made Emma drop to the floor in the bedroom. She curled into a ball beside the bed, breathing hard, shaking like a leaf.

This is it. They’ve come back to finish the job and I’m going to die now.

Nothing happened. There were no footsteps coming down the passage, nothing.

Emma sat up. This was too much. She needed to go. Wouldn’t she feel better once she left?

Looking down at her skirt and blouse, Emma realized that she had to change. Fetching Sam in those clothes would be the same as allowing her child to see his father lying dead on the floor of his study.

The thought was too much for her, and she only just made to the window before she threw up.

Once she felt better, Emma went to the bedroom, washed, and quickly changed her clothes. Then she packed her things in a suitcase. She was about to leave George’s things as they were, but he had said something about his coat. It was in the closet and Emma took it down gingerly.

She held it in her arms and that’s when the tears came. The coat smelled like him and like better times when they hadn’t been fighting.

Emma cried into the coat for a couple of seconds and then packed it into her bag. There would be time to cry later. Now, she needed to go before the men came back to shoot her.

She had to think of Sam.

I’ve got to pack his things, and pick him up before he decides to come home on his own.

Sam’s things fit into a rucksack, and with that slung across her body and her suitcase in her hand, Emma left the house.

The shed had burned itself out. It was a smoldering heap.

She gave it one last look, and to her surprise found that the buckboard hadn’t been inside it. It was standing behind the wreck of the building.

Posey was in the front yard nibbling on the grass. After her initial flight she must have made her way back when no danger pursued her.

Emma considered that perhaps luck was finally with her. Perhaps her fortunes were changing.

Posey didn’t want to be hitched up to the buckboard near the shed, which still smelled of burning, but Emma enticed her with carrots from the kitchen. She finally got the horse hitched, loaded the bags into the back and then set off for town, constantly checking over her shoulder convinced she would see six riders coming after her.

Emma’s first stop was at the sheriff’s station. She found George’s deputy, Sylvester Shaw, sitting on the porch smoking his pipe. He was hardly old enough to shave and thought the pipe made him look more dignified. Emma thought it made him look silly, but she had never said anything to him about it.

“George isn’t here,” Sylvester said when he saw her pull up in front of the station.

“I know,” Emma said, sliding down from the driver’s seat. “He’s up at the cabin but…there was a…something happened.”

Sylvester sat forward, his muddy green eyes suddenly sharp as daggers on her. “What happened? You two fight again?”

She shook her head. “I was in town. I was on my way back…”

It was hard to tell the deputy what happened, but Emma mumbled her way through it somehow. She described how the men had ridden by her and how she had rushed to the house, only to find her husband dying on the rug in his study.

Sylvester didn’t look as surprised as Emma thought he should. Instead, he took her by the arm and led her back to the buckboard. “Get out of town, now!” he said. “Just go. Don’t look back.”

“What? Where am I supposed to go?” Emma asked. She had been hoping to speak to some friends in town, maybe stay there a night.

“Emma, if you want to live and you want Sam to live, then you have to go now. You don’t have a choice,” Sylvester said. “I’ll do what I can for you, but you have to go.”

Filled with a gut-wrenching fear that instantly began to eat at her insides, Emma got back on the buckboard and drove on to fetch her son. What she would do from there, she had no idea.

Chapter Two

Dawson Farm, Colorado

August 1884

When Mrs. Dernell arrived in the field amongst the cows—something she never did usually—she was wearing her hat and a granite expression on a pale face. Cole Dawson sucked his teeth briefly, wondering what had gone wrong this time.

“Cole, we gotta talk,” Mrs. Dernell said, voice sharp as flint.

“Yes, Mrs. Dernell,” Cole said, dreading what she was about to say. Nothing good in the history of the world ever started with those words. Patting the cow’s back, he stepped around the beast still holding the thorn he’d found in her leg. It was a long, sharp, white one and he wondered where she had picked it up from. He always tried to keep the pasture clear of thorn bushes.

Mrs. Dernell stood with her hands on her plump hips. “I’m sure you can guess what the problem is. That daughter of yours doesn’t need a nanny or a babysitter, she needs a warden.”

“Oh, come now, you can’t tell me that a mere slip of a girl got the better of you?” Cole asked, trying a wry smile. Some found it disarming. Clearly his latest hire wasn’t one of them.

Mrs. Dernell continued to glare, and he stopped trying to make light of the situation. Although, what his seven-year-old could have done to make Mrs. Dernell that angry was beyond him.

“Lily is a menace,” Mrs. Dernell said. “You know I’ve raised three strapping boys, and they were never this much trouble. She put molasses in the flour sack. Molasses, Cole. It doesn’t come out of anything it touches. It’s the stickiest substance the good Lord ever decided to make. And it’s everywhere!”

“Hang on, if it’s in the flour sack then how did it get everywhere?” Cole asked, admittedly lost.

“You should ask her.”

“Where is she?”

“Hiding, joining the carnival if she knows what’s good for her,” Mrs. Dernell said.

“Please just tell me,” Cole said, hearing the defeat in his voice.

“Fine. The little ruffian…well… she blew up the kitchen,” Mrs. Dernell said reluctantly, looking sad and upset.

Cole took a step closer to her, and to his dismay noticed that Mrs. Dernell’s clothing was covered in a fine dusting of flour. There was also a smudge of what had to be flour-covered molasses on her skirt, and something was dripping down the side of her face. It was dark and looked like it might be molasses. His heart sank.

Lily was a bright girl, possibly a little too smart for her own good. She was also lamentably good at causing chain reactions. From what Mrs. Dernell had told him and the evidence, it seemed she’d built a flour bomb in the kitchen again.

“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Dernell. Lily and I had a conversation about—”

“Conversation? What on the green earth are you talking to the child for? She needs discipline—a lot of discipline! She needs a good beating if you ask me! Now, I know that her mother passed on, God rest her soul, but it’s been a year. Lily should be less wild, not more…”

Cole waited for Mrs. Dernell to run out of steam. She did so and sagged a little, straightening her hat. “Look I feel for you, Cole I really do, but she’s a menace. No one wants to come and work for you because one of these days Lily is going to do something that will hurt someone. It’s not just hijinks anymore. You’re going to have to rein her in, somehow, in a big way.”

Cole agreed. She was right. He had given Lily far too much freedom. She was running wild without her mother around to temper her exuberance.

Alison had loved building chain-reaction machines with Lily. That was where she got it from: setting things up so that this would fall into that, would roll to the next thing, and eventually something wonderful would happen. Alison always made sure that there was something beautiful or funny at the end. Without her, though, the wonderful was gone, replaced with dangerous. He could see that now.

“I’ll deal with her, ma’am.”

Mrs. Dernell nodded sternly. “Good.”

She turned on her heel and began to walk across the pasture towards the gate.

“Ah… Where are you going?” Cole asked.

Turning, she fixed him with a surprised look. “What do you mean? I quit. Didn’t I tell you?”

He shook his head.

“Oh, well, now you know,” she said and turned back in the direction of the gate.

“But what am I supposed to do with her?” Cole asked. His words had come out in a whine which he wasn’t proud of.

Mrs. Dernell sighed, her shoulders visibly rising and dropping in something like a small shrug. “I guess you’re going to have to try and get through to her. I wish you luck, Cole, I honestly do. Because you’re gonna need it.” She strode off across the field, the cows scattering in front of her as though they knew not to get in her way.

Knowing that he had to find Lily and have a talk with her, Cole moved through the herd to find Jimmy, his friend and ranch hand.

“Hey, Jimmy!” he called.

Jimmy’s white hat rose between the brown bovine bodies, and he turned around looking for his boss. When he saw Cole he waved. Cole gestured that they needed to talk, and Jimmy came hurrying over.

“What’s going on?” Jimmy asked. “I pulled a nail out of one of their hooves. We’ll have to keep an eye on the yard.”

“Was it infected?” Cole asked.

“A little, but I put that powder Mr. Caraway gave us on it,” Jimmy said.

The apothecary was good with animals, and he had seen a lot of infected feet. Cole was pretty sure that the cow would be fine.

“Okay, good thinking,” he said.

“Yeah,” Jimmy replied. “Was that Mrs. Dernell I saw talking with you?”

Cole nodded. “It was. And you’ll never guess but she’s gone and quit on me.”

Jimmy frowned and shook his head. “Gee, Cole…that’s not fair. What happened this time?”

“Lily,” Cole said.

It didn’t help that Jimmy laughed.

The man loved Lily’s machines and Cole was sure that if he left the two of them alone for a minute, the whole house would blow up. They were of one mind.

“It’s not funny, Jimmy. This is the fourth or fifth housekeeper I’ve lost because my daughter has a knack for explosives,” Cole wailed.

Sobering, Jimmy patted him on the back. “It’s going to be okay. I’m sure Lily will grow out of it.”

Cole wasn’t so sure. He shrugged, feeling hopeless.

“I can talk to her if you like,” Jimmy offered. “She always lends an ear to old Uncle Jimmy.”

“Thanks, but I’d better handle this,” Cole said. “You okay alone with the herd for a bit?”

“Of course. You go deal with your daughter,” he said, smiling.  “I saw her heading into the barn when I went to get the powder.”

“Thanks,” Cole said.

He left Jimmy with the herd and set off for the barn. It was up near the house and quite a way from the pasture the herd was in that day. The sun was hot, and Cole thought he could really do with a cold lemonade. No chance of that, though.

Pushing the door open just enough to enter through, Cole smelled the musty, dusty air of the barn. The smell of animals and straw, feed and age lay on the place. It was a familiar smell that was both cloying and comforting. He’d smelled it his whole life, having grown up on the ranch.

Lily’s favorite hiding place when she knew she’d been naughty was up in the hay loft. The ladder leading up there was fixed to the far wall and Cole walked over to it. He began to climb. When he reached the top, he turned around and sat on the top step.

“Lily, we need to talk,” he said, realizing as the words left his lips that he was saying the same thing Mrs. Dernell had said to him.

There was a scuffling sound farther down the hayloft, like a creature of great size trying to burrow in deeper.

“Lily, come on. You know what this is about,” Cole said, looking at his hands.

Alison, I truly wish you were here to help me with our daughter. She’s coming off the rails and that’s no good at all.

“You sure scared Mrs. Dernell with your prank. Don’t you want to tell me about it?”

The hay erupted and Lily burst out of it. She roared and pulled her raised hands into claws. “Rwar!”

Cole smiled. She was so pretty and reminded him so much of Alison that it hurt. She had her mother’s curls, although Lily’s were brown, not blonde. Her eyes were the same deep blue as Alison’s had been, and they even held a similar twinkle.

Lily pounced on him, and he caught her before she could careen off the ladder to the floor below. The shock of almost missing her wiped the smile from his face.

“Lily, come on, that was dangerous,” he snapped.

She drew back out of his arms. “Why? You caught me.”

“And if I hadn’t?”

“You always do.”

“Yeah but that’s not a guaranteed thing. I could miss. I could—”

“No, you’ll never miss,” she said with a child’s assurance. “You’re too good for that.”

Cole smiled at her. He had to somehow reach his daughter, make her see that what she had done to Mrs. Dernell wasn’t right. He put a somber expression on his face.

“Lily, we really have to talk about the flour bomb,” Cole said. No more beating around the bush. It was best to just have it out with her and be done.

“What about it?” Lily asked, suddenly interested in a butterfly that had some fluttering into the barn. It was a delicate yellow, and flittered through the air in graceful jerks and dips.

Taking his child by the shoulders, he turned her to face him. The butterfly carried on with its inspection of the barn.

Lily turned her deep blue eyes on him. “Okay. What did she say?”

“She said that you blew up the kitchen and got molasses everywhere,” he said sternly.

Lily giggled.

“It’s no laughing matter, Lily,” Cole reprimanded her. “Flour bombs are dangerous.”

She pulled a face. “No, they’re not when you know what you’re doing. I hardly used any flour in the actual explosion. The rest was tossed into the air along with the molasses afterwards. The bomb was just for the wow effect. I could have covered her in all of that without the wow. But I really wanted that extra little bit of excitement.”

“Why did you want to cover her in anything?” Cole asked.

Shrugging, Lily pulled a face. “She was so strict and bossy.” She continued in a falsely adult tone: “Brush your hair Lily, help with the chores Lily, make your bed Lily, and on and on. The woman has never heard of fun or artistic expression or freedom.” Turning to her father with a now somber expression, she added, “I think that Mrs. Dernell is always going to color inside the lines.”

“I suspect she will.”

“And Mama never colored inside the lines unless she felt like it,” Lily said airily. “I plan to be just like her.”

There it was: his way in.

“Lily, do you know what else your mother was, apart from artistic and clever?” Cole asked, willing himself not to back down or to show how much he missed Alison. He had to get Lily under some kind of control, even if it was her own.

Lily shook her head but watched him eagerly. She loved to hear stories about her mother.

“Your mother was also loving. She was kind and was never the sort of person who would play practical jokes on people that would upset or hurt them,” Cole said, pointedly.

He waited for Lily to work out what he was saying. It took next to no time at all. He could see the thoughts flying through her mind behind her eyes. She understood.

“Right,” she said, nodding a little sadly. “You think I took it too far with Mrs. Dernell.”

“I know you did,” Cole said. “Explosions are hard to control. One bad calculation and someone could die, Pumpkin. You don’t want that.”

Lily shook her head. “Of course not. I’m sorry Papa. I didn’t mean to get carried away.”

Cole smiled and drew his daughter into a hug. “It’s okay, Lily. I understand that your imagination takes you places, but I think you need to start controlling it a bit more. You know, maybe write things down before you build them. Make sure they’re safe.”

Lily smiled. “I can do that.”

“I know you can,” he said. “Now come on, we have to go see Mrs. Agnes at the orphanage.”

“Why?” Lily asked, shock in her eyes. “I wasn’t that bad.”

Cole chuckled. “No, you weren’t. Mrs. Agnes runs an agency from the orphanage, helping women find jobs. It’s the only way we might get a new housekeeper and minder for you.” He pressed his index finger to her button nose.

“Isn’t that the place where Mama used to volunteer?” Lily asked.

“It was, that’s right,” Cole said. “Mrs. Agnes has a soft spot for you, just like she had for Mama. Now, we need to get going. I don’t want to be out late.”

She giggled. “Okay. What about the mess in the kitchen?”

Cole sighed. “I guess we’re cleaning that up first.” He’d forgotten it still had to be cleaned up.

It took over an hour to put the kitchen back to rights. Luckily, Lily had confined the worst of the mess to the scullery. Cole forced his daughter to help with the clean up, making her scrub the counters and the cupboard doors while he mopped the floor and washed the windows.

When the kitchen and scullery were clean, they hitched the brown and white horse that Lily had named Leaf to the buckboard and set off for town.

Still Creek was two hours’ ride from the house, but Cole didn’t want to wait to speak to Mrs. Agnes. He was afraid that Mrs. Dernell would tell everyone in town about Lily’s little prank, and he would never get another housekeeper. And Cole really needed someone to do the housework.

After Alison died, he and Jimmy had tried to do it all, look after the cattle and look after Lily and the house. For months they tried and failed. Then came the procession of housekeepers—all of whom couldn’t seem to get around Lily’s eccentricities. It was simply too much for them to manage.

Cole and Jimmy couldn’t manage, either. They didn’t have enough hours in the day or energy in their bodies to do it all.

Perhaps that was why Lily was so untamed. When she wasn’t at school, she had no one looking after her. She’d been left to her own devices most of the time, and clearly that had been a bad thing. Especially since Alison had taught her to read from the age of four. She was a better reader than even Cole was.

The journey to town was undertaken with Cole lost in thought while Lily prattled on, not caring that her father didn’t respond much.

It might be time to find someone who is not only good at housework. Maybe there’s someone who is strict, but kind and fair too? Maybe someone smart enough to be able to keep Lily entertained…and not with mindless chores, but with something she might even enjoy.

Cole wondered if there was a person like that on the planet, never mind in Still Creek. That person would be as rare as a unicorn.

Most of the folks around town were stolid, dependable folks who did things the way their folks had. It was one of the reasons Alison had fascinated him so. She wasn’t like that. She kept trying to find new ways to do things. Better ways, she said.

And she had passed on that flare for the unusual to their daughter. It was a shame that she had died when Lily was still so young. Had she not, he was certain things would be better.

Oh well, there’s no way to change the past. The present is an open book.

Cole meant to make the most of it and find the right housekeeper this time. Hopefully Mrs. Agnes would know of someone who was looking for a job, and had a good sense of humor and decent cooking skills. A strong personality and a fair amount of determination wouldn’t hurt.

Cole swallowed hard. Finding a unicorn would be difficult but he figured that between them, fate and luck both owed him something and it was time for them to pay up.