Chapter 9: Door, Not a Home

Willa's POV

I lost most of that night, and what I kept was in pieces.

Cade's arm under my knees. The stairs. Hanna's voice saying "cold cloth, not that one, the blue one."

Mabel crying down the hall and someone shushing her in a low gravelly voice I didn't know could be soft.

"She needs me," I said, and I tried to sit up.

"She's got three ranch hands and a bottle," Hanna said. "She needs you not to die."

"I'm not going to die."

"Of course you're not. You're too stubborn. Open."

A pill, and water, and the cold cloth on my neck.

When I woke it was morning.

The window was grey, and my head was clear, and the fever had broken in the night and left me weak and wet and wrung out.

Hanna was asleep in the chair by the bed with her boots on.

Cade sat on the floor against the wall with his knees drawn up and Mabel on his chest.

He wasn't holding her.

He had one hand flat against the blanket under her, careful, not touching her at all.

She was asleep with her mouth open.

He looked up and saw me looking.

"I didn't pick her up," he said, very low. "She slid down the blanket. I was just keeping her from the edge."

"You're allowed."

"Hanna said to wait for you."

I let that sit.

Three years ago, in this valley, I had told a man I'd think about leaving my husband, and then I had gone back.

This man hadn't asked me for a single thing since.

"Hand her over," I said.

He leaned forward and put her in my arms, and she settled against my collarbone and sighed.

Hanna opened one eye. "Fever's gone. You'll be in bed two more days."

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