Felipe heard his wife before he saw her, speaking soothing words from a stall. The lantern hanging inside it sent only the faintest illumination into the rest of the barn, forcing Felipe to stumble through the darkness on the way that beacon.
“Franny?” he called into that sphere of light where she must be.
There was no answer. But she was there, sitting with her legs tucked beside her, her back to him with that familiar braid running down it.
Some small part of his heart stuttered at the sight of her being up and out of bed, but he told it to quit.
“Franny?” he tried again.
She still wouldn’t turn, just kept her gaze on the mare lying in the straw. Her mare, who was soon to foal.
The straw was needle sharp against his knees as he knelt and set a hand on her shoulder. The muscles under his palm weren’t near as prickly as the straw, but the tension in them hurt him.
She finally turned at his touch, and the look she sent him was so defiant, so angry, her eyes two bright flashes of fury, that his heart lightened.
His rash act hadn’t completely killed her feelings for him—not if she could look that mad.
“What?” It was more challenge than question. “I won’t go back to that room. If you try, I’ll…” Her fist clenched convulsively in her skirt.
“I won’t lock you in again. I promise.” As softly fervent as she was brittly defiant.
She turned her face away again, pulling her shoulder from his hand. “You don’t keep your promises.” The words had a serrated edge.
He didn’t answer, because she was right. But he meant to keep his promises to her from now on. How to tell her that, tell her so that she believed him, eluded him. So he pointed to the mare. “Is it time?”
She nodded, but didn’t speak. Her shoulders relaxed just a hair.
“Do you think she’ll need help?”
Franny shook her head. “Her water’s already broken, and this isn’t her first foal.” The edge of her tone had blunted. And she hadn’t told him to leave.
The two of them sat side by side, in the prickly, sweet-smelling straw, watching and waiting. Just being together once more.
Soon the mare’s flanks began to heave. After several weighty minutes, the mare delivered a new foal into the world, easy as could be.
Felipe’s spirits rose. A new foal in the barn was always a reason to be happy. He looked to his wife, thinking to share a smile with her. But her attention was all on the mare, a small smile tipping her mouth.
He simply watched her as he had all those years, her face more familiar to him than his own. He knew how the curve of her cheek would feel against his hand, how her lips would taste against his. How those penny-bright eyes would laugh into his.
But he held himself still next to her, uncertain of his reception.
No, that wasn’t true—he knew she wouldn’t receive him at all at this moment, and he deserved it.
He only hoped that he had the words to convince her of his newfound resolutions when the time came to break this silence between them.
Franny rose as the mare did, watching the new mother lick her baby clean. The foal itself looked stunned, all long legs and dishy face as it lay there in the straw. Franny kept her distance, slowly, slowly inching forward, until she was certain the mare would let her come close.
“Good, mama,” his wife murmured to the mare. “Such a good mama you are.”
The mare made no protest as Franny set her hand on the mare’s neck. She peered at the foal and announced, “A colt, and he looks good. Just a touch of white on his muzzle, as if his mama gave him a kiss there. Oh, he’ll be a looker.” She gave the newborn a smile Felipe wished she’d given him.
For all that she was speaking to him, his heart felt queer. The mare looked fine, the colt would stand soon enough, yet sadness remained, hanging there in the dark of the barn just beyond the boundary of the lamplight.
Franny gave the mare a rub along her neck. “Good mama. You did such a good job, mama.”
It came to Felipe then: no one would ever say such things to Franny. She would never be a mother.
He didn’t regret that—there was no sudden desire for offspring in his mourning. Rather, he hated the price they’d had to pay to reach that surety, especially the price she’d almost paid.
He’d almost lost her, first through her illness and then through his own sick fear.
She must have realized the same, because she began to rub at her eyes, her head drooping.
When a sob reached his ears, his heart nearly split. He pulled her away from the mare and gathered her close, kneeling in the straw with her, her head fitting just under his chin. Her sniffs grew louder, more powerful, her whole frame rocking with the force she was using to suppress her sobs.
“Franny.” His voice twisted with agony.
“Are you sorry?” She gulped between breaths. “Sorry that we can’t have a baby?”
He pressed his lips into her hair, which smelled sweeter than the straw, and shook his head fiercely. “No. All I want is you. Are you sorry?”
She shook her head, her body shuddering. “No, but… but I was so scared.” Her lungs hitched as she pulled in air. “I was so, so scared. For me, for you… And then I woke up in that place and they had cut me open…” He squeezed her tighter to him—half trying to assuage her hurt and half his own. “I was so scared and I tried to be so brave and you left me there.”
She sat up then, not exactly pulling away from him. Her breathing went jerky as she tried to suppress her sobs.
He tucked her head more firmly under his chin, ignoring the tension in her. “Sweetheart,” he whispered into her hair, “you can cry with me. It’s all right, you can cry. There’s no one to see but me.” He rocked with her, but she held herself rigid in his embrace. He tried again. “You know you can cry with me, because I love you. You know that, don’t you?”
Her head lowered. “Love doesn’t lock someone in their room like a misbehaving child.”
“It does if it’s scared,” he corrected, his heart straining at the truth in her words. “It does if it’s known loss before. And love says it’s sorry when it’s in the wrong. I was in the wrong. I’m sorry. So, so sorry.”
The words were simple, perhaps too much so to bind up the wounds between them. But simple were the only kinds of words he had.
He could practically hear the gears of her mind whirring as she processed that, but she didn’t move away.
“I can’t live like that,” she said finally, “as a prisoner of your fear. You say you love me, but love like that will kill me.”
He took a shaky breath. “I know. It will kill me too. It will be a struggle, but I’ll fight to get free of this fear. For you.”
“You can cry with me too, you know.” Her hand found the spot over his heart, waited there. “Because I love you.”
The tears did come then, for both of them, in that dusty barn, with a newborn colt trying his legs next to them.
Felipe cried for the years he’d spent locked in his fear, for the hurt he’d caused her, and most of all for his family. That they wouldn’t be there to witness the new life he and Franny would build together.
As his tears slowed, he felt… not healed or relieved, nor content.
No, he felt hollow. As if the man he was ready to become was waiting to fill that empty space. After all, that many years of fear and grief left a lot of emptiness behind. It wouldn’t be filled in a day or even a year. But he’d take whatever time he was given with her and hope it would be enough.
Her own tears had stopped—he knew not when. She was curled in the hollow of his shoulder, right where he liked her. Felipe wiped at his eyes and felt along her belly, the linen of her shirt ruching under his fingers as he searched the flat, smooth expanse beneath.
His fingertips collided with the ridge of her scar. He ran them all along the raised bit of it, from right to left and back again.
Her death and resurrection, permanently etched there.
“Does it hurt?” It didn’t feel wrong, that bump running along her stomach. Rather, it was only an interesting new bit of her to explore, no different from the long muscles that played in her thighs or the bows of her collarbones, set there just under the column of her neck.
“No,” she said. “It pinches and pulls at times, though. I suppose I’m not completely healed.”
The Felipe of old would have been sent into a panic at such an admission—not that the Franny of old would ever have admitted such a thing, at least not to him. It was a rare gift for Franny to entrust him with her aches and weaknesses.
He wouldn’t take such a gift lightly.
They sat in silence for a few moments longer, watching the new arrival. The colt watched them back with curious eyes, his legs splayed and his little tail already swishing. Franny was right; he would be a looker.
“What should we name him?” he asked, his voice husky.
“I don’t know.”
The newborn began to nudge under the mare, obviously looking to nurse.
“You know,” Felipe said slowly, “we have our baby right here.”
Her head tilted. “We do, don’t we?” Bright hope gilded the words.
Their dogs, their horses, this rancho—they would nurture all of it, together.
“This baby will never wake us in the middle of the night,” he teased. Because while he could cry with her, he wanted to laugh with her too. “And I’m going to need all my rest with you.”
“Do you really wish I were quieter, less excitable?” Subdued and solemn.
“No,” he said, back to solemnity himself. “I like you just as you are. Love you, just as you are.”
He wouldn’t have her as anything other than herself.
“Well, you’re stuck with me, so I suppose that’s good.” And now she was teasing.
But he wasn’t quite finished with his seriousness. “You know, I will be a bear sometimes. I just can’t help it.”
“And I’ll be a pest sometimes. We’ll muddle through.”
They would. And it would be a muddle at times, make no mistake. But they would come out at the end. How could they not, after all they’d been through? He breathed into her hair for a moment. “You, know, you’ve saved my life twice now.”
She shifted a bit, but only to cuddle closer. “I did? Oh, yes, there was that time that bull was about to gore you and I ran him off.”
He blinked. “I forgot all about that. No, I meant something else—”
“Oh, that time you fell off your horse and I caught him up before he could trample you.”
He’d forgotten that too. “No, not that either—”
“Oh, there was that other time—”
He put a finger to her lips. “Can I tell you the two times I’m thinking of, and then you can remind me of every other time I’ve forgotten?” Perhaps her being a touch less voluble wouldn’t be so bad.
Her lips twitched, but she kept them shut.
An obedient Franny—wonder of wonders. Perhaps they were already muddling through.
“The first time I was thinking of,” he said, “was when that lion jumped for me.” He’d been so certain death had come for him in that moment. But she’d saved him.
She was silent for a moment. “That was a one-in-a-million shot,” she admitted. “I didn’t even know I could make a shot like that.”
Thank God she had. “How did you?”
“You were in danger.” She shrugged. “I had to. So I did.” As if she’d had no choice but to do just that.
He absorbed that, remembering the sight of that cat leaping for him. Her rolling the animal off him. Her standing tall after, his father’s rifle in her hand.
She’d never looked so powerful. So divine.
And she’d done it to save him.
“What was the other time you were thinking of?” she prompted.
“Just now.” This last time. This most important time.
Her arms tightened around him. “They wouldn’t have wanted you to mourn forever, you know.”
“I know that. Now.”
“We’ll be there someday,” she said. “With them. Right next to each other for always.”
The ache that brought forth was soft round the edges. His fingers would sink into that ache, rather than being sliced on it. Likely because all he’d ever wanted from this life was to be by her side, even when he’d insisted he didn’t. And someday they’d all be together again, side by side forever.
They watched the little colt roam around the box on his absurd legs. With his arms around his love, Felipe gave thanks again she had been spared. And gave thanks she was the one woman stubborn enough to love a man like him.
“The colt looks fine,” she said finally. “And I’m tired. We can come back in the morning.”
He let her go, rising to his own feet. He held out his hand and she took it for the walk to the house, holding the lantern in her other hand.
“You know,” she said as their joined hands swung between them, as if he’d never been so foolish as to put any kind of distance between them, “I’ve been thinking, and I’ve come up with a brilliant plan… ”
He suppressed a groan. After all, her last brilliant plan had been this marriage. And look at how that had turned out.