Epilogue

 

 

Yvonne’s appearance didn’t change overnight. She talked to Heather about it a lot, fearing she’d become an old hag in no time at all. Heather didn’t believe it.

“You’re too beautiful ever to be an old hag. Shoot, Yvonne, you’ll be beautiful when you’re ninety.”

Yvonne, whipping egg whites into froth for the soufflé she was preparing for breakfast—she was as accomplished a French chef as D.A. Bologh, although it took her longer to do things since she didn’t have any unearthly help—frowned. “No woman is beautiful when she’s ninety.”

“Fiddlesticks. You will be.” Heather, who was no slouch in the kitchen herself—wonder of wonders—opened the oven door to check on the Potatoes Lyonnaise.

Heather was right. Eventually, Yvonne began to show her years, but she never, ever, once, looked anything but beautiful—even when she got to be ninety. By that time, she was universally acknowledged to be the most beautiful grandmother in the territory.

Philippe and Heather’s first son was born in May of 1897. That spring had been kind to the territory. The winds, which always blew in the springtime, didn’t rip any roofs away or tear any fences down, and the town of Fort Summers, situated next to the fort that had protected that end of the territory for decades, prospered.

Philippe’s ranch prospered, too, much to the town’s delight. The entire population accepted Yvonne St. Pierre as Philippe’s long-lost and much-admired mother. Not even Mrs. Van der Linden’s dark tales of mysterious doings at the ranch on a certain night dampened the town’s enthusiasm for the St. Pierre family.

Yvonne discovered she didn’t mind looking her age. She also discovered that grandchildren were perhaps the greatest blessing in a woman’s life.

It was a good thing, too, since she eventually had a whole flock of them.

Heather, who’d had her doubts earlier in life, forever after that blustery spring of 1895, adored the wind.