Chapter 34
Oscar had chosen to keep both.
One showed who his father had been.
The other showed who he was trying to become.
I kept Adrien's original employment agreement there as well.
He had laughed when he discovered that.
"You kept that?"
"Of course."
"Why?"
"Because that was the first decent bargain you ever offered me."
"The first?"
"You tried to buy Clover."
"That was before I knew better."
I looked at him now.
He felt my gaze.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"You're staring."
"Yes."
"Why?"
I smiled.
"Because you were wrong."
"About?"
"What you were buying."
He gave me that rare, slow smile.
"I told you that the first day."
"No."
I rested my head against his shoulder.
"You thought you were buying a cow."
He kissed my hair.
"And what did I get?"
I watched Oscar kneel beside Hope while Clover stood protectively over them both.
I thought of the woman I had been the morning Adrien arrived.
Hands clenched in an apron.
Terrified of losing one more thing.
Certain survival meant letting go before anything could be taken.
I thought of everything that had happened since.
Curtis riding back from the dead of our memories.
The forty dollars on my table.
The first day at the Brandt kitchen.
Burned hands.
Quiet wagon rides.
Anger.
Forgiveness.
Choice.
The rope around Clover's neck.
Oscar's arms around her.
I slipped my hand into Adrien's.
"A family," I said.
He was quiet for a moment.
Then he squeezed my fingers.
"No."
I looked up.
He was smiling.
"We built that."
I felt tears sting my eyes.
He was right.
Of course he was.
Nobody had bought us.
Nobody had saved us.
Nobody had claimed us.
We had built what came after.
Piece by piece.
Choice by choice.
And perhaps that was the thing Curtis had finally learned.
Perhaps it was the thing I had learned too.
The strongest love was not the love that held tight enough to prevent leaving.
It was the love that could open its hands and still be chosen.
Oscar called to us from the grass.
"Mama! Adrien! She's walking!"
We went to him.
Hope took three uncertain steps beneath her mother's watchful eyes.
Then four.
Then five.
The Montana wind moved softly through the spring grass.
Clover lifted her white-blazed face.
There was no rope around her neck anymore.
There had not been one for months.
She did not need it.