8. Evie
Evie
By the time I get up the next morning, the sun’s up, and Maggie’s bustling around the kitchen.
I clock it the second I walk in. A mug of coffee is already poured, sitting at my place.
Maggie does not look up from her cast-iron skillet, which is currently producing enough scrambled eggs to feed an army.
“Sit,” she says. “Eat.”
I sit. Take a sip of my coffee. “You made decaf.”
“I made coffee. Yours happens to be decaf.” She slides a plate in front of me with an omelet, which has to be at least four eggs, plus a finely sliced tomato. “You’re too thin in the face. Sit.”
Her eyes drop to my stomach. “Both of you.”
I look down at my too-full plate so she can’t see my face. “You know,” I say quietly.
Maggie places a hand on my shoulder. “Honey, I saw my best friend through three pregnancies. You’re barely showing, but I know the signs. A woman gets a certain look when she’s carrying.”
Maggie tops up my coffee before sitting opposite me with her own mug. For a while, she just watches me over the rim.
“So,” she says eventually. “Did you tell him?”
I nod.
“How’d he take it?”
I smile before I can stop myself. “Better than I expected.” I trace a finger around the warm ceramic of my mug. “He told me about his mom.”
Maggie’s face softens in a way that makes her look older and younger all at once. “That tells me a lot about how he feels about you, Evie. He never talks about her. Not out loud.”
“He thinks...” I swallow. “He thinks he’s the reason she died.”
Maggie closes her eyes for a brief second. “I know.”
“He told me his father can’t look at him.”
The silence that follows feels heavy with years of unresolved grief.
“When Gabriel was born,” Maggie says eventually, “I held him before his daddy could bear to.” She smiles sadly into her coffee. “He was the prettiest baby I’d ever seen. Full head of dark hair. Loud little lungs.” She chuckles. “Mad about being hungry from the first breath he took.”
I can’t quite picture the enormous man sleeping upstairs as a furious newborn.
Maggie’s fingers tighten around her mug. “Then they found the hole in his heart. I used to sit beside his hospital crib and pray he’d get to come home. That’s what I remember most—not the machines or the doctors. Just praying I’d get to bring that baby back to this ranch.”
She smiles through the memory.
“And when we finally did, I promised him—though he was far too little to understand—that I wouldn’t let him face the hard things alone.”
“His daddy loved his wife something fierce,” Maggie says. “Losing her near broke him. Some people drown in grief by crying. Others drown by going quiet. Jacob went quiet.”
“And Gabriel blamed himself.”
“He was a boy. He took responsibility for things he shouldn’t have, and Jacob let him.” She sighs. “I’ve tried to help him put that burden back where it belongs, but there’s only one person who can help him do that.”
“His father?”
Maggie nods.
“Where is he?”
“Denver.” She takes a sip of coffee. “Annual Cattlemen’s Convention. He drove over a couple of days ago. He’ll be back day after tomorrow.”
I look toward the window without really seeing the ranch outside. “Does Gabriel see him much?”
“Every day.” Maggie’s smile is sad. “They work the same ranch. Eat at the same table. But there’s a world of difference between seeing someone and talking to them.”
I think about my own father.
Gabriel grew up with a father who couldn’t look at him.
I grew up with one who barely looked for me.
Different stories. Same empty place where a parent should have been.
Maybe we recognized it in each other that night in Bigfork. Not consciously. Just some battered part of us seeing the same thing and quietly thinking, there you are.
It’s a ridiculous thought.
People don’t fall into bed because their childhood wounds are compatible.
Attraction is attraction. Chemistry is chemistry. We were lonely, we wanted each other, and sometimes that’s all there is.
Still...
When he held me that night, it was with a gentleness that felt oddly familiar, like we’d both spent years learning exactly where people break.
I shake the thought away.
Too little sleep. Pregnancy hormones making me sentimental.
I’m not usually the kind of woman who believes the universe has a plan.
“I think Jacob’s carried his own guilt for thirty years,” Maggie says after a quiet moment. “Whether he finds the courage to lay it down before it’s too late... that's another question.”
“He said he’s scared,” I confess. “Gabriel, I mean. About being a father.”
Maggie nods as though she expected nothing else. “What exactly did he say?”
“He said he doesn’t have a map for this. That he knows what not to do better than he knows what to do.” I smile despite myself. “Then he looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘I’m here. I’m staying. I’m in this with you.’”
Maggie’s eyes shine. “Well,” she says softly. “There it is.”
“What do you mean?”
“Daniel would’ve made you a plan.” She ticks off a finger. “Ethan would’ve made you laugh, so you forgot to be scared for five minutes. Gabriel...” She smiles to herself. “Gabriel plants his feet.”
I think about him sitting beside me on the porch, hands clasped so tightly together they almost shook.
“He looked terrified.”
“Oh, honey.” Maggie reaches across the table and squeezes my hand. “Of course he did.”
“I am too.”
“I know.”
“I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Nobody does.” Maggie laughs warmly. “Every first-time parent in history has looked around wondering who on earth thought they were qualified.”
I laugh a little.
“But fear’s got a bad reputation,” she continues. “People think courage means not being afraid. It doesn’t. Courage is deciding what’s more important than your fear.”
She pats my hand. “You know what Gabriel’s more afraid of than being a father?”
I shake my head.
“Becoming his father.”
That answer doesn't surprise me, but it breaks my heart anyway.
“And that’s exactly why he won’t,” Maggie finishes firmly.
I bite my lip. “How can you be so sure?”
“Because that boy has spent thirty years paying attention.” She smiles, remembering.
“He watched every place his daddy got it wrong. Every silence. Every missed birthday conversation. Every time he looked through Gabriel instead of at him.” She shakes her head.
“Children learn from good parents, Evie. They also learn from broken ones.”
She squeezes my fingers again.
“Gabriel has been learning what kind of father he wants to be since he was old enough to notice what he wasn’t getting.”
My throat tightens.
“He doesn’t know it yet,” Maggie says softly, “but loving that baby won’t be the hard part for him.”
“What will?”
She smiles wistfully. “Believing that baby will love him back.”
I close my eyes, my heart aching for Gabriel.
Somewhere inside him, a little boy is still waiting for his father to tell him the day his mother died isn’t his fault.
I can’t give him that.
But maybe I can help him believe the rest.
After breakfast, I help Maggie clear the dishes. Through the kitchen window, I catch a glimpse of Gabriel crossing the yard toward the barn, broad shoulders flexing beneath his T-shirt.
Once Maggie has disappeared to feed the chickens, I sit at the kitchen table and pull my phone from my pocket.
I’ve been putting this off for weeks.
Every time I went to make the appointment, I found a reason not to. Work. Travel. Bad timing. As though pretending the pregnancy wasn’t happening would somehow buy me more time to figure out what came next.
It didn’t.
I find the number Gabriel gave me last night, scribbled on the back of a feed receipt, before we finally went to bed.
Havenstone Family Clinic.
The receptionist is kind. “How far along did you say you are?”
“About twenty-one weeks.”
There’s a pause.
“We’d really like to see you as soon as possible.”
“I know.” Heat creeps into my cheeks, even though she can’t see me. “I should’ve made an appointment sooner.”
“No judgment,” she says gently. “Let me see what I can do.”
A few moments later, she comes back.
“We’ve had a cancellation this afternoon. Two o’clock, if you can make it.”
“I’ll be there.”
I end the call and let out a shaky breath.
The screen goes dark in my hand.
Two o’clock.
No more hiding.
The back door opens behind me.
I turn to find Gabriel stepping into the kitchen, hat pushed back, a smear of dust across one forearm. He looks at my face first, then at the phone in my hand.
“Well?”
“They can see me this afternoon.”
His shoulders loosen almost imperceptibly. “Good.”
A small silence settles between us.
I hold his gaze for a moment.
Last night he said, I’m here. I’m staying. I’m in this with you.
That wasn’t him taking over.
It was him being present, standing by my side.
“Okay,” I say.
His smile is small, almost shy. “Okay.”
For some reason, that single word makes me feel steadier than I have in weeks.