Epilogue April
LUKE
The south pasture has forty-six spring pairs on it and every one of them made it.
April in the valley remembering what it can do. The calves are strong and on the ground, the creek is running high with snowmelt, and the grass is coming back green between the fence lines where the sun hits first.
She comes on a Tuesday, the way everything important in this valley does, early, without adequate warning, and on her own terms.
Four-seventeen in the morning. Seven pounds, four ounces. Red hair.
They put her on Mags's chest and the room changes temperature.
She has my mother's chin and her mother's mouth and when she opens her eyes for the first time they are McAllister blue, deep and clear and already, I swear, taking stock.
Mags looks at her and goes completely still.
Not the field stillness, the one she uses at collar sites when the data is resolving.
A different kind. The kind I saw once, on a ridge in July, when the wolves howled under the Buck Moon and she stopped breathing because something was exactly where it was supposed to be.
"Ember," Mags says. She looks up at me. "Ember Claire McAllister."
I didn't know about the middle name.
I open my mouth. Nothing comes out. I press my forehead to Mags's temple and Ember makes a sound between us that is not a cry, just a small announcement of arrival, and it is the best sound I have ever heard.
Claire arrives at six-twelve with a thermos and a look on her face that I will not be able to describe to anyone for as long as I live.
She takes her granddaughter from Mags's arms with the practiced ease of a woman who has done this before and the trembling hands of one who wasn't sure she'd get to do it for me.
Ember opens her eyes. McAllister blue, the same blue as every child Claire has held in this position. She looks at me.
"Your father," she says, and has to stop.
MAGS
She is two weeks old when I take her to the south pasture.
Luke watches from the porch. He doesn't say be careful and he doesn't follow. He stands with his coffee and lets me go, which is the thing he does that costs the most and the thing I love him for the hardest.
Ember is bundled against my chest. Her fist is curled around the zipper pull of my jacket, holding on with the grip of a person who has decided where she belongs and sees no reason to discuss it further.
She gets that from her father.
I walk the fence line the way I've walked it since June, reading the ground, reading the sky, the grass just starting to come back green after the long winter.
"This is the south pasture," I tell her quietly. "Your grandfather walked it every fall. Your dad held it alone for five years. Someday he'll tell you about a gate in June."
I walk back toward the cabin. Luke is on the porch steps before I reach them. He doesn't take Ember from me. He puts his arm around us both, pulling me into his chest with the baby between us, and his mouth presses against my hair and stays there.
I lean into him. All the way. The full weight of me against the full weight of him, Ember warm and still between us, and his arm tightens and I let it.
Nora comes around the side of the cabin at a dead run with Hank tottering behind her, seventeen months old and determined to go wherever she goes. She stops at Luke's knee and looks up at the bundle against my chest with the grave focus of a three-year-old conducting an inspection.
"Is she sleeping?" Nora whispers.
"She's sleeping," I say.
Nora considers this. Then she reaches up and pats Ember's foot once through the blanket, gentle and certain, and says, "Hi, baby," and takes Hank's hand and leads him back toward the yard like the matter is settled.
I came to this valley alone with a field truck and a federal permit.
I am standing on a porch surrounded by McAllisters: Claire already calling from the kitchen, Mason's truck pulling up the drive, Colt's voice carrying across the yard, Lucy’s laugh reminding me of their unmistakable love, and I am held.
Not by one man. By all of them. By a family that decided I was theirs before I knew I was looking for one.