by Amelia Rose
“What are you going on about? I don’t care what you do, so long as you leave my children to my keeping!” he ordered. Millie prepared to square off against him.
“No, I will not do that! If I’m to look after your children and care for them as if they were my own, then they’re to mind me as well! It must be nice to plant your children in your yard like a forgotten patch of weeds and expect them to be sitting there when you decide to return, but that’s not how children should be cared for!”
“What do you know of my children?” he demanded. “You’ve only been here a couple of weeks, how much do you think they know and mind you?”
“I know your children miss you! It’s not bad enough they had to lose their mother, now they’ve lost their father, too. And here you are, trying to keep them from me as well!”
“You’ll not tell me about my own children! You’re no one to them, and you’re no one to me!” he shouted before throwing the sledgehammer to the ground. Millie was unfazed, but the horse reared up on its hind legs and took off running in the direction from which it had come. They stared after it for a moment, Wyatt fuming on the brink of rage, Millie calm and collected.
“Now I’ll be needing a ride back to the cabin, thanks to you,” she said evenly, refusing to back down. His outburst seemed to leach all the fight out of him, and Wyatt let his arms rest against the nearest post, dropping his head onto his folded arms for a moment.
“Why are you here?” he asked rudely. “Tell me, what do you want?”
“I want you to be a good father to your children. Micah follows you from pivot to post and you send him away, Luke spends all day running to the window to see if you’re in from the fields yet or returned from checking your traps. I can’t even describe how little Rose reaches her arms toward you when you walk in the room, only to have you walk past her like she’s not even there. It’s enough to break the coldest of hearts. Your children adore you, but you won’t even look at them.”
“How I raise my children is none of your concern,” he countered, standing straighter and looking at her again.
“Oh really?” Millie asked, blinking in surprise at both his words and his harsh tone. “Because the day I sign our agreement will be the day they become my children, too. How you raise them will become every bit my concern.” She stood with her hands on her hips, her jaw squared, daring Wyatt to argue with her.
“You’re not their mother!” he shot back.
“Well, if that’s true, then Rose has a soiled nappy with your name on it, and Luke and Micah will be needing their supper. When you’ve finished, the lot of them could use a good washing.” She turned and reached for the bonnet and shawl she’d laid on the fence, tying the hat strings beneath her chin and wrapping the shawl around her shoulders.
“Where are you off to?” Wyatt demanded. “I’ve got a herd to bring in today and this stretch of fence line to build, and no one to tend the children.”
“As it would seem,” Millie agreed. She turned and started walking back in the direction of the cabins. Wyatt ran a few paces and called after her.
“Come back here! What about my children, Miss Carter? You have to help care for them!”
“They’re not my concern, Mr. Flynn, they’re yours.” She waved with her hand without even turning to look, leaving him standing, astounded and open-mouthed, at being ignored.
“I said get back here!” he roared before he realized what he was doing. He’d never once raised his voice to Anna Mae, and even though a small part of his brain felt that Millie brought it on herself, he knew he wasn’t the kind of man who would speak that way to a lady. Fortunately, Millie wasn’t the kind of lady to tolerate it. She turned and glared at him fiercely.
“I’ll not stay here another minute so long as you insist on punishing me!” she fired back.
“What are you talking about? How have I punished you?” he bellowed, his frustration at ever having laid eyes on Millie rising to the surface. “Do you mean by paying your passage across the territory then expecting you to sully your dainty little hands by helping with an honest day’s work? Or expecting you to be a kind and goodly woman to three small children who cannot even remember their own mother’s face? Is that how I’ve punished you?”
“You’re punishing me for the crime of not being Anna Mae!” she cried. For a moment, Wyatt looked as though he might be angry enough to strike her, but Millie didn’t care. She’d come out to the fields to have her say, the consequences be damned, and before she left this cursed place behind her, she was going to be heard.
Before she could speak again, the angry expression on his face crumpled. He let his shoulders slump as he silently thought about what she said, then finally dropped his head as violent sobs racked his body.
“You’re right. It’s true. Because no one could ever be Anna Mae.” He released the pain he’d carried all these months, letting the hurt at losing her and the anger he’d felt at her leaving him alone to raise three motherless children pour out.
Millie stood idly by, unsure of what to do next. She knew how to respond to a man who was mean and spiteful and downright aggravating, but this was a man who was broken and clinging desperately to the pieces of his former self. The sight of him sobbing while standing in the middle of the wide open land he’d bought with his wife was enough to tear away all the insult she’d endured since arriving in Montana, but she was angry all the same. It wasn’t her fault he was hurting, and it wasn’t her fault that he’d brought her here to marry him, knowing his heart still ached for a woman he would never see again.
Millie closed her eyes and took a deep breath, then came around to stand beside Wyatt. She reached a tentative hand out and placed it on his shoulder, relieved when he didn’t pull away like an unbroken horse.
“Mr. Flynn… Wyatt, I mean… I am ever so sorry about your wife. Of course I never knew her, but I can see the way her spirit still torments you. You must have loved her very, very much.” His sobs quieted for a moment, and he nodded his head without lifting it to look at her. “This pain you carry, though…it’s not what she wanted.”
Wyatt looked up slowly, turning his gaze toward Millie with a questioning look that begged her to make it alright. He waited for her to continue, his eyes so filled with agony that she almost had to look away. She forced herself to stare directly in his eyes, as there was no turning away from what she had to tell him.
“What do you want from me?” he asked in a muffled whisper, his voice barely carrying past where his arms encircled him.
“I should think it is I who should be asking you that question,” she answered kindly, dropping down near the post to look up at him. “Why did you bring me here?”
“Because… because it was the right thing to do, Pryor said so…” he stammered, unsure of his answer.
“But everywhere I go, someone talks about how wonderful Anna Mae was, what a great wife and mother she was, what a caring person she was and how she had a kind word for everyone she met. All I’ve heard about is how she was such a blessing to you and to those children of hers. No one in the history of the Montana territory has ever set a finer table or sewed a finer shirt than Anna Mae Flynn.” Millie struggled to keep the bitterness out of her voice, because her words were truly not driven by jealousy, but by concern.
“But how could a woman so wonderful as Anna Mae have wanted this for you?” she asked, gesturing to Wyatt and his tears. “The woman who I’ve heard all about would be beside herself if she knew that you were still hurting this way. She’s given you a sweet home and a pack of adorable children—well, they’re adorable once you get to know them—and she left you with a heart that has known the kind of joy that only happens with true love. How could she not want that kind of happiness for you again?”
Wyatt looked away, finally embarrassed by his emotions. Millie reached for him, and turned his cheek with the palm of her hand back to face her.
“Don’t look away. Don’t you ever, ever be ashamed of missing her, o
r of having loved her,” she said through her own quiet tears. “I did not come to Montana to take your wife’s place by making you forget her, but I did come to try to bring back some of the happiness that used to fill this house. I’ll stay if you’ll have me, but only if you promise to try.”
“Try what?” he asked, forcing back a hiccupping shudder.
“Try to be happy. For your sake, for your children’s sake, for my sake… even for Anna Mae’s sake.” She looked deep into his eyes and smiled weakly. “She wants you to be happy, and you know it. I cannot be the wife she was, but I can be the wife I set out to be, and I can try to make you happy in my own way. But first, you have to be willing to try, or you’ll never be happy for as long as you live.”
“I don’t know how…” he mumbled, looking down at his feet.
“How to do what?”
“How to be happy without her. I’ve known her for as long as I can remember, before I had children to love, before I had this land. I’ve never done anything important without her by my side, right there next to me as I did it.”
“So you have to find a new way to move forward, to do more. It’s frightening, I’m sure. Remember, I left my whole family behind to come to Montana, all those brothers and sisters, my parents, the girls I’d worked with in the shirt factory all this time… but I did it. It was scary, of course, but I’m proof that it’s possible. And I won’t let you be scared, because I’ll be there, too.”
Wyatt searched her eyes, still uncertain that this wasn’t all some cruel trick the universe was playing on him. As if losing his wife so brutally wasn’t already cruel enough.
He finally nodded, a look of pain crossing his face as he felt the sting of betrayal, knowing he had been disloyal to his dear wife’s memory. He shook it off as he wrestled with the two halves of what he knew to be true. Yes, he was turning his back on Anna Mae even by talking to Millie, but he also knew that Millie was right.
Consciously knowing that suffering alone would never bring back his wife didn’t do enough to help Wyatt face the facts. Anna Mae was gone, and Millie was here, here at his request no less. His children seemed to adore her, but more than that, they needed her. He needed her. He just couldn’t force himself to face that truth yet.
“But what about you?” he asked, presenting the facts as they’d just been laid out to him inside his head. “Is it fair to ask you to stay when you know how I feel? When a housekeeper could do the same thing I’m asking of you? No, I can’t ask you to be someone that I’m not ready to let you be.”
“Then we wait ‘til you’re ready, I suppose,” Millie answered supportively. “I’m not gonna lie to you, this hasn’t turned out the way I’d hoped. I came here hoping to meet the man I knew from his letters, a man with a vision of the frontier and the backbone to see it through. Instead, I’ve found you. You’re a hollowed out man, and I do believe there’s nothing and no one who will ever be able to fill you up again and make you whole.
“But I promised to come here and try, and more important, there’s nowhere I’d rather be right now. I may not be the wife you wanted, but I’ll stay on and look after your house and family. I came out here for the adventure of it all, only I forgot to tell God exactly how strange an adventure I was up for, that’s all!” She stood up straighter and brightened, but even Wyatt could see through her expression. It was only for their benefit, and it didn’t reach any deeper than her outside countenance. He shook his head sadly.
“This isn’t an adventure, Miss Carter. This is a mistake,” he answered in a sad, empty voice.
“You might think so now, and I wouldn’t blame you for it one bit. But let’s give it time. I’m here in the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen, surrounded by children who are adoring and wonderful. I’m willing to see how it works out. We’ll give it a month. If the train comes round again and you don’t want me to stay on, I’ll pack my things and head back to where I came from. That’s all I’m asking for… one month.”
Wyatt looked off in the distance, unsure of how to answer. He knew he had to say something to this untoward woman who’d showed up out of nowhere and upended his misery.
“Well, it’s settled for now. I’ll return to my duties, and leave you to return to yours.” Millie patted Wyatt’s arm supportively and walked around him, intent on beginning the long walk back to the cabin. She had the children to check up on, and needed to see if the horse had returned to the barn. If the horse had come up in the yard, the poor children must be terrified to see it without its rider. She picked up the pace, but fought with herself all the way back to the house.
What are you doing, Millie Carter? You didn’t come out here to be someone’s unpaid help! You left a loving family and a paying job back in Boston, and for what? To sit around and wait for a lunatic to decide to keep you? Have you lost your worth? Your pride?
Mille shrugged off the negative thoughts that weighed more and more heavily on her with each step toward the tiny house she’d have to call home for the foreseeable future. It wasn’t what she wanted, not by a long shot, and it wasn’t what she’d prepared herself for as she planned this arrangement all those weeks ago. But the fact of the matter was it became the arrangement she was offered, no matter how she felt about it. And now she’d have to make do or refuse.
Chapter Thirteen
“I’m afeared for Miss Carter,” Moira admitted as Pryor tucked the blankets around her before handing her the baby. She kissed the top of Bridget’s head and nestled the baby against her arm while Pryor beamed at both of them.
“Oh, are you now? I’m more afraid for Wyatt, if you want the honest truth!” he answered with a laugh. Moira wasn’t to be dissuaded with humor, though.
“I’m serious, Pry. She’s working herself into a tizzy, and for what? For Mr. Flynn to dismiss her at the end of her labors? What if those two can naw work through their differences?” she asked, looking up in dismay.
“Dearest, they’ll have to. It’s as simple as that. They have no choice but to come to an understanding. Besides, I can’t picture Wyatt not doing all that he can for those little ones. He loves them more than anything, and was the proudest papa ever who breathed when they were born.”
“I find that hard to believe!” Moira answered with a laugh. “No one in the territory was prouder than you over our Matthew and Bridget! You stopped people coming off the train to tell them you’d had another child born!”
“That is just an ugly rumor you heard, and no one can prove it,” he replied with a haughty look. Moira had to laugh.
“Only because the poor souls got right back on the train and high-tailed it out of New Hope, just to get away from the mad man and his babes!”
“You don’t know that. Perhaps that one man was already planning to continue west, and had simply gotten off at the wrong station.” Pryor laughed good-naturedly before sliding into the bed beside Moira. He looked over her to the floor where Matthew slept in a trundle bed pulled out for this purpose. A winter storm has passed through, bringing another round of frigid air, frozen rain, and unbearably bitter air with it, and he kept his family close together for warmth on nights like this.
“I just hope they all come to their senses,” Moira said mournfully. She closed her eyes in a quick prayer for the Flynns’ health and happiness, then slid her body back against the length of Pryor’s tall frame for warmth. She’d just closed her eyes when his voice broke the silence.
“They’ll have to. Their lives depend on it.”
“What do you mean?” Moira cried in a whisper, her eyes flying open as she craned her neck to look back at her husband.
“They can’t keep going this way,” Pryor answered with a defeated sigh. “If Flynn doesn’t snap out of it, he’s as good as dead. Miss Carter will head back east to her people, but he’s got nowhere to go and those children of his don’t have a single soul in the territory to look after them. He’s a ghost of a man walking the earth, and I don’t know how else to make him alive again.”
&
nbsp; “That’s because you can naw, my husband,” Moira said, her Irish ways coming through clear as bell in her heartache. “He has to decide for himself that life is worth living, that his farm and his family are worth fighting for. If he will naw, then there’s naught to be done for him. We’ll take in his children, of course, should something happen to him, but I can only pray that ‘twill naw come to that.”
She kissed Pryor, pressed her lips to tiny Bridget’s head, then blew a kiss to her son, Matthew, where he slept soundly, completely unaware of the pain that the real world could dish out to grown-ups. The wind howled outside the cabin, which only served to make Moira aware yet again that her husband had provided for his family in a secure home with sound walls, and that somewhere out there on the territory, three motherless children were tucked in their beds, probably having cried themselves to sleep once again.
*****
Millie slipped out from under her quilts, careful not to let the scant heat of the bed escape more than she had to, and took a hesitant step across the ice cold floor. She only had to lean forward to reach the fireplace, and she was glad of its proximity to her bed, even if it was only because Wyatt had built no more of a home than he’d had to. She grabbed another piece of wood about as big around as her arm and pitched it onto the low fire, blowing on it to bank the flames and try to squeeze another flicker of warmth out of it.
She threw herself back under the covers and shivered so hard, her teeth nearly rattled. Winters in Boston had been brutally cold, too, but at least there she’d always had the heat from the business below them and the love of her family in their two small rooms to keep her from ever really feeling its grasp. Here, under the giant, lonely open sky of Montana, it felt as though there was nothing to even keep her pinned to the ground, to keep her from floating off into the blue sky, let alone to keep the heat of her body close to her on a night such as this.
Millie didn’t know which was worse at the moment—the feeling that she was all alone and isolated in this great territory, or the feelings of pity that radiated off of everyone who’d come to call. So far, she’d had that first visit from Moira and her children, a visit from Kieran and Gretchen O’Conner, and, of course, the recent visit from Nathaniel Russell and his wife, Katya. Mrs. Russell had even come back the following day and brought her mother and two sisters to meet the newcomer, which was odd because Katya spoke a fair amount of heavily accented English but her family members spoke almost none. It had been delightful to hear the foreign sounds rolling off their tongues, but all too soon, Millie had realized they were speaking mournfully of her and her current plight as an outsider to Mr. Flynn.