Prologue
Redflower, Arizona
The storm raging outside was a far departure from only hours prior, just after Mary’s parents had left.
The water fell in sheets, the wind tearing up everything that it could, and the thunder… Lord, the thunder. Mary tried to focus on the hours before as she sat on her hay bale waiting.
Just one hour before, things had been different.
Music clung to the air, dancing on the breeze as it had carried over from the festivities that night. Mary had just barely been able to hear it. She’d closed her eyes and imagined that, in another life, she had been daring enough to go to the party with everyone.
Her parents had told her that she should, that this might be her one chance to meet a nice young man. Like after years and years of them living there, a stranger would suddenly arrive, take one look at Mary, and decide that she was the one.
No. Mary knew better. She knew that dowdy young things like her spelled too much work for anyone to bother with.
A glimpse of her reflection in her mother’s curio cabinet, with brown hair and wide shoulders and only her narrowed green eyes to attest to the idea of beauty, reminded Mary of that.
Mary had long given up on the idea of marriage, more than content to simply stay at the ranch that she had called home since her birth and watch over her parents as they got older.
Someone had to do it, after all. The pair of them were just as wild as they had been when they first met each other and were prone to shenanigans like cow tipping or leading the old sheriff’s mare away from the stocks.
It had been no surprise when they had turned to Mary that night and told her that they were planning to go to the party that everyone in town had been kicking up the dry clay ground waiting for.
Meanwhile, the darkening skies left Mary prickling like a cactus at the mere idea.
“You should come,” Mary’s mother, a tall and slender woman with frizzy dark hair, going grey, begged.
She held Mary’s shoulder as she did so, leveling Mary with the look she was prone to pulling.
The one that begged Mary to be something more—more adventurous, more confident, more willing to get into trouble in all of the ways that she wasn’t.
“There’s a storm rolling in,” Mary had told her mother, shaking her head.
“It’ll begin long after the party is over,” her mother urged.
“I’m not sure about that,” Mary said, wrinkling her nose.
Everyone in Redflower knew that these town gatherings lasted longer than they should have, and besides, she added, “I have to feed the horses, look in on the chickens, finish collecting eggs, refill the oil lamps—” Life on the farm was a never ending to-do list.
Mary’s mother only sighed, shaking her head in response. “You gonna miss life if you carry on like this,” she said, but she made no moves to argue further. She had been through this conversation more than enough times with Mary to know better.
Instead, her mother had simply let it be, taking one last longing look back at Mary before loading up in the wagon with Mary’s father.
“We’ll be back shortly after sunset,” her father promised, looking at Mary with the same cheeky smile that had apparently won over her mother.
“There’s still horses, on the off chance that you change your mind,” he said, but Mary only waved him off.
She’d watched them drive off, red dust rising as they tore across the desert. Mary watched those clouds rise on the air, dancing as they tore like a gash across the blackening skies.
“Mama would tease you for fussing,” Mary reminded herself, trying to force the dull ache that had begun to rise under her scalp far from the forefront of her mind.
Another migraine. It prickled behind her eyes, a strange taste filling her mouth as suddenly her face felt too tight and the light of the oil lamps too bright.
A shame she had only managed to do half of what she wanted to before the feeling set in, that same numbing sensation in her neck that preceded the mind-numbing pain that had seemed to be almost a part of her day to day life.
She’d sighed and laid down for the evening, telling herself that she would be up by the time that her parents returned.
Mary woke up and looked out the window just in time to catch the first few raindrops.
“And I bet the two of you are nowhere near home,” she sighed to herself, heading straight for the stairs as she tsked at her parents.
She looked at the cross that hung on the side of the staircase once she reached the landing, giving a prayer to the Lord to reward her someday with more mindful parents.
“Dear Lord, please shelter those who bear me company from the evils of fire and all calamity,” Mary whispered, touching the cross that hung around her neck as she tried to steady her nerves.
As the rain began to grow heavier, Mary grabbed a book from the shelf and sat herself in front of the fire. She read and she waited, pacing the floor and reaching time and time again for her cloak before she couldn’t stand it.
The first few crashes of thunder began to hit the air, and Mary wasn’t capable of simply sitting and seeing anymore. She pried herself from the pages, gluing herself to the window as she took in the quickly worsening weather.
“They’re messing with me,” Mary concluded, shaking her head as she grabbed her cloak, toed on her work boots, and set out for the barn. All the while, the pain in the back of her head kept pinging.
She grabbed an oil lamp to light her way, kicking the door shut behind her as she walked to the barn nearby, the one with its metal weathervane turning every which direction.
The barn sat empty, save for the animals. There was no hint of her parents or their wagon.
Mary squinted in the darkness. “Ma?” she called. “Pa?”
She strained her eyes, almost swearing that she could hear a wagon in the distance, only to realize it was nothing more than the stomping hooves of the cattle in the barn.
No sign.
She stepped outside into the rain, pulled the sealed cloak that she wore a little lower on her head, and looked through the rain, straining her eyes for the slightest sign of anyone.
She couldn’t hear the music anymore; the lights of the party in the distance were gone. Her parents still weren’t home.
Mary looked to the bales outside of the barn.
She backed into them, her chest growing tighter as she sat on top of the hay where she and her father would wait for her mother to return when she went out to town.
“They’re on their way,” she said decisively, and sat there wishing the time would move faster.
Eventually, Mary couldn’t wait any longer. She bowed her head and said a little prayer, “Dear Lord, please watch over my parents’ comings and goings, now and forevermore.”
She stayed there later than she should have. Until the storm broke and the moon was high in the sky.
The sound of loud, frantic hoofbeats served as her alarm.
Mary knew what had happened when she first saw the sheriff arrive, but she still had the nerve to doubt. All that doubt went away when Sheriff Whitman slipped off his horse. He held his hat to his breastbone with an apologetic look and stepped slowly toward her.
Everything else seemed to blur together.
Wind. A bridge, the storm. The horses slipping and the wagon skidding.
The wagon tipping off the side of the bridge, falling into the gorge beneath it.
The sheriff tried to spare her as many details as he could, murmuring a few of his responses and failing to meet Mary’s eyes as he told her about the accident, but Mary hardly heard him either way.
She just kept on looking past him, waiting for the moment that he would be proven wrong. The moment when her parents would appear despite it all, perfect and whole. Maybe a little wet for having not listened to her, but still there and still ready to take care of her and their farm.
But they didn’t.
Mary still stood there watching once the sheriff turned on his heel, loading back on his horse once the deed was done. She kept on waiting, didn’t give up until he and his horse had disappeared over the horizon.
Until the first of their farmhands had arrived the next morning, looking all apologetic-like.
Until Sophie had arrived and swept her into her arms. Until, finally, the young man who had found the overturned wagon arrived with her father’s hat, handing it to her with an apology and a few soft words before leaving Mary to stand there with her father’s soaked hat in her hands.
It was only then, once the hat was in her hands and her father was no closer, that Mary turned and opened the front door, latching it shut behind her.
“Mama, Daddy,” Mary said, clutching the hat, “I swear I’m gonna make you proud.”