Chapter Ten
Caleb paused outside the children’s bedroom, one hand resting against the doorframe as he listened to the muffled sounds of them playing inside before bed time.
The past couple of weeks since the wedding had slipped by in a blur of dawn chores, broken fences, restless cattle, and ranch accounts that never seemed to shrink.
Most evenings, he crossed the porch long after the supper bell, tired enough he could only think about the next job waiting at sunrise.
Somewhere during those long days, Amy had quietly become the center of the house.
Noah still argued with her often enough and Maggie still cried for reasons Caleb couldn't always understand, yet both children drifted toward Amy before anyone else, and he'd begun relying on her more than he'd ever intended.
That realization brought as much relief as guilt, because while she'd been building a home for the children, he'd been trying to save the ranch, leaving supper and bedtime as the only parts of the day that truly belonged to all four of them.
The ranch was still the one part of his life he understood. Every problem had an answer if a man was willing to work long enough to find it. A lame horse needed care. A broken fence needed repairing. A sick calf needed medicine and a steady hand.
Children were different.
He knocked lightly against the doorframe. “Time to get washed up for bed.”
Noah sat cross-legged beside the window, surrounded by curls of wood shavings from a scrap he was whittling with his pocketknife.
Maggie was stretched across the bed with her rag doll tucked beneath her chin, carefully wrapping strips of cloth around the toy as if she was preparing to put it to sleep like a baby. Neither child moved.
Caleb waited a few seconds before clearing his throat. “You heard me.”
Noah continued carving. “I ain’t dirty.”
Caleb gritted his teeth and took a deep breath. “You spent the whole day outside.”
“So did you.”
Caleb opened his mouth, ready to explain that working with cattle and crawling through dirt for the sake of entertainment were two very different things, though it sounded pointless as soon as Caleb thought of it.
Arguing with Noah reminded him far too much of doing the same with Jonah.
The boy had inherited his father’s ability to find the weakest point in a man’s argument and lean against it until the whole thing collapsed.
Caleb turned toward Maggie, deciding to try his luck with her since she was usually the easier of the two. “Time to put Eloise to bed.”
Maggie hugged the doll closer. “She isn’t tired.”
“She’s a doll.”
The little girl looked up at him with complete seriousness, even looking slightly insulted by Caleb’s doubt. “She still gets tired.”
Caleb dragged a hand over his face tiredly. "Then I'd better let her get some sleep."
Maggie shook her head, her curls bouncing around her face. “She said she wants a story.”
Caleb glanced at the rag doll. He had spent years working to understand horses, coaxing the ones that refused to be caught, and puzzling out men who refused to speak plainly, yet a child’s toy had somehow become his greatest challenge of the evening. “Eloise can hear one tomorrow.”
Maggie frowned. "She can't wait till tomorrow."
Caleb stared at her. He had no idea how Jonah had managed this without getting endlessly frustrated. He stepped farther into the room, trying to remember not to appear too menacing, despite his shortening patience. "I've asked nicely already. Wash up. It’s time to sleep."
Noah kept shaving thin curls of wood from the scrap in his hands without lifting his face. "I ain't tired."
Caleb watched another curl fall to the floor. "You weren't tired yesterday either, yet you fell asleep once you laid down."
"Didn't mean I was tired."
A tired smile tugged at Caleb's mouth before fading again. "You've got an answer for everything, don't you? Just like your father."
Noah shrugged, though a flicker of pride crossed his face. "Papa said stubborn's only a problem if you're wrong."
"He also wanted you to learn more than ranch work." Caleb folded his arms. "School starts again next week, and you need to be getting good sleep."
The knife stopped moving.
Caleb had raised the subject every few days since the wedding, hoping Noah might come around if he gave him time.
Instead, the boy always found another reason to refuse.
One day he claimed the lessons were dull.
The next he insisted the older boys treated him like a baby.
Yesterday he'd argued the ranch needed him more, and that it could teach him more than any schoolhouse ever could.
Caleb understood the grief hiding beneath every excuse, but he couldn't let a child work against his own future.
Noah laid the piece of wood beside him and looked up at last. “I already told you. I ain't going."
Caleb met his gaze without raising his voice. "You can keep telling me that, and I'll keep telling you it's time."
Noah climbed to his feet, his small shoulders squaring as though he meant to face a grown man head-on. "Papa taught me everything I needed." The boy swallowed once, and the defiance drained from his face, leaving only the grief no child should have to carry. "I know he's gone."
Caleb swallowed hard, saying nothing. He didn’t want to make things even worse.
Noah stepped closer, holding his father’s stubbornness in every line of his face. “But you ain’t him.”
Caleb had spent every day since Jonah’s death trying to honor a promise. He had told himself the children needed someone to take care of them, someone willing to shoulder the responsibility Jonah had left behind. But the grief was hard to deal with.
Caleb held Noah's gaze. "No. I’m not."
Noah and Maggie weren't looking for a man to take their father's place. They wanted the father they'd lost. Before Caleb could find a reply, Maggie slipped off the bed with Eloise tucked under one arm. "I need my blue ribbon for my school dress."
He seized the change of subject like a drowning man reaching for shore. "You do?" he asked.
She nodded. "The pretty one."
Caleb crossed to the dresser and pulled open the top drawer. Sarah had always kept the children's things neatly arranged inside, each ribbon folded, every pair of stockings matched, handkerchiefs stacked into careful little piles. It looked orderly enough, yet he had no idea where to begin.
He picked up the first blue ribbon he saw. "This one?"
Maggie barely glanced at it before shaking her head. "No."
Caleb took a deep breath before the heat of anger could rise up in him. "Then maybe this one."
Another shake of her head.
Caleb searched through the drawer until he found a third ribbon. "I didn't even realize you owned this many."
"There are four." Maggie sounded wonderfully patient as she told him this, as if she was a teacher explaining simple arithmetic to a grown man who ought to know better.
Caleb looked again. Sure enough, a fourth ribbon peeked out from beneath a folded pinafore.
"I stand corrected."
Maggie waited expectantly.
"Do we need to do this now?"
She frowned. "I want to be ready. I want the right one.”
He looked from one ribbon to the next. "They all look the same to me."
"They ain't." Her voice wavered enough to make him glance up. Maggie stood clutching Eloise against her chest, her brow pinched with worry and her eyes already shining. "It has to be Mama's."
Caleb swallowed around the knot in his throat before crouching in front of her. "Then we'll find Mama's."
Maggie's eyes searched his face, looking for confidence he didn't have. "You don't know which one it is."
She hadn't meant to make him feel like a stranger, even if that was the result of her words. She simply wanted the ribbon her mother always wore, and Caleb hated that he couldn't tell one from another.
Noah crossed the room and slipped between Caleb and Maggie. He took his sister's hand without taking his eyes off Caleb. "I’ll help," he told her quietly.
Caleb let the ribbons fall back into the drawer.
Until now, he'd treated every setback with the same stubborn determination that kept a ranch alive.
Work harder. Keep looking. Find the answer.
Standing in front of Maggie, he saw the flaw in that thinking.
Some losses didn't have answers, and some tears couldn't be stopped by actions.
He rested a hand on her shoulder. "We'll figure this out."
She clung tighter to Eloise. "I want Mama's ribbon."
His gaze drifted back to the open drawer.
"I know.” He wanted the ribbon because finding it would erase the tears, smooth away the grief for now, and convince Caleb he'd kept one small promise, but he could only see four pieces of blue satin, and had no idea how to mend a little girl's broken heart.
Soft footsteps reached the doorway. Caleb looked up as Amy appeared with a neatly folded nightdress resting over one arm. Her eyes moved around the room, taking in Maggie's tear-stained cheeks, the ribbons hanging out of the drawer, Noah holding her hand, and Caleb kneeling beside the open dresser.
Caleb looked up as Amy appeared, and heat crept into his face. Of all the times for her to find him, it had to be while he stood defeated by four blue ribbons and a little girl's tears.
"What happened?" she asked gently.
Caleb looked over at the ribbons. "I can't tell which one belonged to Sarah."
Understanding flickered across Amy's face. She crossed the room without another question and lowered herself beside Maggie, leaving the ribbons where they were. "Will you tell me why this ribbon's so important?"
Maggie hugged Eloise against her stomach and sniffed. "It's Mama's. I need it for school."
Noah stood close enough to brush Maggie's shoulder if she reached for him, his carving forgotten on the bed. "Papa said Mama wore it all the time," he said, his eyes staying on Maggie instead of Caleb. "He kept it so Maggie could have it when she got bigger."