Chapter Twenty-Nine
Jonah leaned against the porch rail with his arms crossed and that grin he got when he wanted credit for something he hadn’t done yet.
“Go on, then. I got it handled.”
“You got what handled? You can’t even keep Gerald from chasin’ you across the yard.”
“Gerald and I reached an understanding.”
“Since when?”
“Since I started throwin’ corn at him before he sees me. Preemptive diplomacy.” He waved her off. “Go win your little vegetable prize. I’ll mind the ranch, feed the stock, and keep the gates locked. Scout’s honor.”
“You ain’t never been a scout.”
“It’s the honor part that counts.” He stepped forward and straightened the collar of her good dress, the blue one she’d mended three times and pressed with Logan’s flatiron that morning, which still smelled faintly of whatever starch Logan used on his Sunday shirts. “You look real nice, Gracie.”
She smiled. “Just don’t burn the house down.”
“No promises.”
She punched his arm. He pulled her into a hug, the kind he’d given her since they’d shared that cold little room off the Hudson with newspaper stuffed in the window cracks. Same arms. Same ribs she could count through his shirt. But steadier now, somehow. Less sharp.
She climbed onto the wagon bench next to Logan, who held the reins in one hand and Miriam in the other, because Miriam had decided five minutes ago that she needed to grab the horse’s tail and nobody could convince her otherwise.
“Ready?” Logan glanced at her.
“Born ready.”
“You got your entry crate?”
“In the back.”
“The squash too?”
“Logan, if you ask me one more time about the squash, I’m gonna shove a zucchini so far up your—”
“Just checkin’.”
He clicked his tongue, and the wagon lurched forward, and Rafe hollered something from the back bench about young people and their lack of patience that Grace pretended not to hear.
***
The whole of Pitkin County had crammed itself into one dirt lot and a half-acre of trampled grass behind the church.
Grace had pictured something small. A few tables, maybe a tent. What spread in front of her instead knocked the breath clean out of her chest.
A fiddler and a banjo player sawed away on a makeshift stage built from shipping pallets, cranking out something fast and loose that half the crowd clapped along to.
Kids tore between the stalls, shrieking at a pitch that made Miriam’s teething screams sound like a lullaby.
Somebody had set up a high striker near the livestock pens—one of those big wooden contraptions with the mallet and the bell at the top—and a line of men waited in front of it.
Stalls ran in two uneven rows down the center of the lot.
A leather goods man hawked belts and holsters from a table that sagged in the middle.
Next to him, a woman sold jars of honey with handwritten labels, and next to her, a man with a beard down to his belt buckle displayed what looked like fourteen different kinds of jerky.
A tinker had laid out knives, pots, and a hand-cranked coffee grinder that caught the sun and flashed white.
Two girls in matching calico dresses sold ribbon candy from a basket.
And the smell. Roasting corn and hot grease, sugar, and something smoky and sweet from a pit somewhere behind the church where someone had a whole pig turning on a spit.
Back in New York, the closest thing to a fair had been the Fourth-of-July crowds along the river, where you kept your hands in your pockets and your eyes on the ground and hoped nobody stuck a knife in you for your shoes. This—
This had bunting.
Red, white, and blue bunting strung between the stalls, snapping in the breeze like it had opinions about freedom.
Logan lifted Miriam from the wagon and settled her into the sling on Grace’s chest. His hand lingered on the small of her back.
“You okay?”
“I’m perfect.” She grinned up at him. “You gonna win me somethin’ at the games, Cowboy?”
“Depends on what they got.”
“I want the biggest, ugliest prize they offer.”
“That narrows it down.”
She elbowed him.
Thomas had already vanished. Just… gone, like smoke, the second the wagon stopped, off toward a cluster of girls near the lemonade stand with that walk he did when he thought someone might be watching. Mason dragged Rafe to the livestock competition, having entered one of their heifers.
Which left Grace, Logan, and Miriam standing at the edge of a county fair in the Colorado sun with nowhere to be and nobody to answer to for the first time in—
Miriam grabbed a fistful of bunting from a passing stall and shoved it halfway into her mouth.
“Miriam, no.” Logan chuckled and took the bunting from her. “That’s patriotism, not food.”
Miriam screamed. Grace bounced her. Miriam screamed louder.
Logan dragged his hand down his face. “Give her the horse.”
“The horse is at home.”
“Then give her somethin’ else to chew.”
“Like what, Logan? My finger? She’s got teeth now. Real ones. That bite.”
He dug in his coat pocket and produced a strip of leather, the kind he kept for mending tack. Miriam grabbed it and jammed it into her gums and went quiet.
“You just carry spare leather around?”
“Always.”
“Of course you do.” She shook her head. “You’re the most prepared man alive and the least fun at parties.”
“I’m plenty fun.”
“Name one fun thing you’ve done today.”
“I let you threaten me with a zucchini and didn’t say a word.”
She laughed.
They walked through the stalls, past the games.
Logan’s hand found the small of her back again and stayed there, guiding her through the crowd like he’d done it a thousand times.
Miriam kicked her feet and babbled at every passing face.
A woman selling preserves leaned over the table and called her the prettiest baby in Pitkin County, and Grace said, “I know” without a shred of modesty, because it happened to be the truth.
The shooting gallery pulled Logan in like a magnet. A row of tin cans and clay pipes sat on a rail at the back of a canvas booth, and a man with a waxed mustache handed out battered single-shot rifles for a nickel a round.
What was the appeal in stationary targets, though?
Would’ve been way better if they could get them to move somehow, maybe then it would be interesting. As if anyone would miss these. Still, Logan grinned as he paid his nickel, so it couldn’t be all bad.
His hands settled on the stock, and his shoulders dropped. His breathing went even, and his whole body just... organized itself. Like every scattered piece of him clicked into a grid. Same thing he did, saddling a horse.
Five rounds. Five cans. The mustache man blinked. The kid next to Logan dropped his rifle and stared.
“Pick your prize, mister.”
Logan pointed at a stuffed calico horse about the size of Miriam’s head, a lumpy and cross-eyed one that somebody who had clearly never seen an actual horse had stitched.
He handed it to Grace. “Biggest and ugliest.”
“It’s perfect.”
She kissed his cheek. Right there, in front of God and the shooting-gallery man and the kid and everybody. His ears turned red. She loved that. Loved that she could put color on Logan Foster’s face in public with one kiss and a stuffed horse.
Miriam got the calico horse. She shoved its face directly into her mouth.
They circled back past the high striker, where Thomas had rolled up his sleeves and swung the mallet so hard he missed the pad entirely, drove it into the dirt, and jarred his elbow bad enough to shake his whole arm loose.
The bottle toss cost a penny. Grace paid it herself and hurled three balls at a pyramid of old whiskey bottles stacked on a barrel. The first went wide. The second clipped the top bottle and sent it spinning into the dirt. The third sailed a clean two feet over the whole setup.
“You throw like a girl.” Thomas appeared out of nowhere with his arm slung around a redhead.
“I am a girl.”
“That ain’t an excuse.”
“It ain’t an excuse because it ain’t a problem. The bottles are crooked.”
“The bottles are fine.”
“The bottles are crooked, Thomas, and you can tell your little friend there that I said so.”
The redhead smirked. Thomas steered her away. Grace threw one more penny at the bottle toss out of spite, missed everything, and decided the game had been rigged from the start.
The milk bottle knockdown next door ran on better odds.
Three tin cans stacked on a post, one good throw with a beanbag.
Logan handed her a beanbag without comment.
She wound up, threw it hard and flat the way Jonah had taught her to throw rocks at the rats back home, and all three cans went flying.
The booth man handed her a tin star badge that said PITKIN COUNTY SHARPSHOOTER in stamped letters.
She pinned it to Miriam’s sling.
“Deputy Miriam,” she said. “First day on the job.”
Logan snorted. Grace filed that sound away in the part of her chest where she kept everything good.
The dancing had started near the stage. The fiddler played something slower now, and couples turned in the beaten-down grass with the kind of loose, easy movement that came from knowing each other’s weight. Logan looked at the dancers.
Then at Grace. “Can you dance with a baby strapped to your chest?”
“Only one way to find out.”
He took her hand and pulled her in, careful around Miriam, one palm flat between her shoulder blades.
They turned in a slow circle that didn’t match the music at all and didn’t need to.
Miriam grabbed Logan’s collar with one fist and Grace’s with the other.
The three of them turned together in the dust while the fiddle played and the sun dropped low enough to turn the mountains copper.
Logan’s chin brushed her temple. “Havin’ a good time?”
“The best time.” She pressed closer. “You?”
“Top five.”
“Only five?”
“I got high standards.”
“Liar. You married a girl from the slums who broke your well pump.”
“And I’d do it again.” His voice dropped. “Every damn time.”
She tipped her chin up. He leaned down. Miriam shoved the calico horse into both their faces.
“This kid,” Grace muttered against soggy calico fur, “has the worst timin’ in the history of timin’.”
Logan laughed into the horse’s head.
***
The produce competition ran out of a long table behind the church, judged by three women Grace had never met and one old man who looked like he’d been tasting vegetables since before Colorado got a name.
Grace carried her crate to the entry table and unloaded the summer squash, the pole beans, and the three best tomatoes she’d coaxed out of that rocky soil through sheer stubbornness and a willingness to talk to plants like they had feelings.
The woman next to her had zucchini the size of a man’s forearm. Another entry included a pumpkin so orange it hurt to look at.
The judges moved down the line. Squeezed things. Sniffed things. The old man bit directly into somebody’s cucumber without asking, which struck her as either a power move or a man who’d stopped caring about manners around the same time he’d stopped caring about his haircut.
Grace stood behind her entry with Miriam on her hip and her heart going hard against her collarbone.
The old man picked up one of her tomatoes. Turned it. Sniffed it. Bit into it like the cucumber.
Juice ran down his chin.
“Who grew this?”
“I did.” Her voice came out higher than she wanted.
“Where?”
“At the Foster ranch.”
“At altitude?”
“Yes, sir.”
He looked at her over the tomato. Took another bite. Set it down.
The judges huddled. Grace bounced Miriam, counted her heartbeats, and tried to remember the last time she’d wanted something this badly that didn’t involve Logan or the baby or—
“First place in the Pitkin County Harvest Produce Competition goes to Mrs. Grace Foster, for her tomatoes.”
The crowd clapped. Mason whooped from somewhere near the livestock pens. Thomas whistled through his teeth. Rafe nodded once, like he’d expected nothing less.
Fifty dollars.
The judge pressed the bills into Grace’s hand, and Grace stared at them. Last time she’d held this much money at once—
Never.
As disappointing as it was, she’d never, not once in twenty-one years of breathing, had this much money in her hands.
She found Logan by the wagon, loading their things.
“Here.” She held the money out. “For the ranch.”
He looked at her hand, then at her face. “Put that away.”
“Logan, the ranch needs fenceposts and feed and—”
“The ranch’ll manage.”
“Fifty dollars buys a lot of—”
“Grace.” He took her wrist and closed her fingers back around the bills. “That’s yours. You grew it, you won it, you keep it. Every cent.”
“But—”
“No buts. You earned that money with your own two hands in a garden you built from rocks and gopher holes. Ain’t a man on this ranch gonna take that from you.”
“I ain’t askin’ you to take it, I’m givin’ it.”
“And I ain’t acceptin’. Buy yourself somethin’. Buy the baby somethin’. Bury it in a jar in the yard for all I care.” He pulled her closer by the wrist. “But you’re keepin’ it.”
“You’re impossible.”
“You married me anyway.”
“Yeah, well.” She shoved the money into her dress pocket and grabbed his shirt collar with her free hand. “Biggest mistake of my life.”
She kissed him. Full and sure, right there by the wagon, with the fiddle still playing and the sun almost gone and Miriam babbling between them. Logan’s hand came up to her jaw, tracing the line of her cheekbone, and he kissed her back.
She pulled back. “We should get home.”
“Probably.”
“Miriam’s fallin’ asleep.”
“I can see that.”
“So let’s go.”
“In a minute.” He kissed her forehead. “Just… give me a minute.”