When the Mail-Order Groom Became a Father

Prologue

Bighorn Basin, Wyoming

Maeve just needed one good sip.

She’d even take a pitiful one, as long as her father managed to get some amount of nourishment into his body. If he could manage broth, that meant he still had life left in him. A desire to fight, to stay by her side. To last until winter gave way to spring, at the very least.

Snow continued to batter against their little cabin, with piles heaping past the windows and obscuring the night sky.

Cold seeped through the log-hewn walls, and Maeve couldn’t help but shiver.

Her free hand pulled at the fraying ends of her shawl, the other still supporting her father’s spoon of soup in hopes that the sight would, eventually, catch his interest.

He blinked slowly, his glassy eyes briefly focusing on something. A trembling hand reached up, filling Maeve with desperate hope. Frail fingers brushed against her long curls of amber hair, and a small smile emphasized the deep, aged lines across her father’s face.

“You really are yer mother’s reflection,” he crooned.

Maeve’s heart twisted. She was trapped between two reactions: a joy to learn of the woman she’d never met, and a dread that her father had no interest in food.

Whatever strength he had left he used to gently grasp Maeve’s hand.

She quickly took it, trying to commit the sensation to memory.

It had once been coarse and powerful, the callouses on his fingers a reminder of how much the world had failed to beat him down.

Now, her father’s hands felt paper thin, as if the slightest breeze could take him away.

“Aw, d-darling…” The words were clearly a strain on his throat, but Maeve’s father persisted. “I…I wish I could be here fer yer birthday.”

‘He’s giving up.’

The thought soured in Maeve’s stomach, threatening to build past the growing lump in her throat.

‘No…he gave up long ago.’

She swallowed roughly, setting the soup and bowl aside at last to fully grasp her father’s hand. “Don’t be talking like that,” she scolded lightly. “I–I ain’t ever heard such nonsense.”

A tired wheeze of laughter escaped her father’s chest.

The snow continued to pile up. '

“Yer ma…” Maeve’s father closed his eyes, as if trying to capture the image in his mind. “You...you even sound like ‘er.”

Maeve couldn’t stop the tears from escaping anymore.

“Sh-she’s the one who wanted to settle here. Said…said it’d be good grass fer the cows. Fer yer li’l feet to run across, once you got here.”

Maeve blinked furiously, but the tears kept coming. “Pa, p-please,”

“I got so much to tell her. ‘Bout you, ‘bout th-this place we built together…” A wry smile crossed her father’s face. “She’s gonna give me an earful, missing yer twenty-fourth.”

Maeve could only manage to keep her grip around her father’s hand. He let out another long, tired sigh.

“You make sure sh-she got nothin’ to worry ‘bout. Alright, buttercup?”

How long had it been since Maeve had last heard that nickname? The man who raised her would never have used it, not since she was old enough to begin helping with the herd. But the man before Maeve wasn’t her taskmaster, nor her partner in the family’s business.

It was truly, sincerely–and for the last time–her father.

The weight of his words slowly crushed against Maeve’s chest, made worse by an awful realization: it was all going to be up to her.

Mother’s cows, Father’s business, it all would depend on her now.

For the first time ever, the future showed itself clearly, no longer obscured by her father’s well-worked hands.

It was all up to her. It was only going to be her.

“B-Buttercup?”

Maeve blinked furiously. She squeezed her father’s hand, putting on whatever smile she could manage. “‘Course, Pa. Y-You an’ Ma won’t have nothing to worry ‘bout. Just…”

Her breath caught in her throat. Maeve forced her words past it.

“Just-don’t forget to enjoy yer time together up there. I’ll be fine.”

Another breath.

“I promise, Pa.”

The strength of her father’s grasp vanished completely. Warmth slowly drained from his palm, but Maeve found herself unable to let go. As long as she held his hand, her father was alive. As long as the snow continued to fall outside, the world was still trapped in this moment in time.

But, just as the heat slowly escaped her father’s body, so too came the acute sense of being alone.

Of sitting in a cabin far too big for one person.

Of the crackling fireplace with a shrunken pile of chopped wood.

Of the snow itself, its howling wind dropping to a silent whisper as if a blanket had settled over everything outside.

Time would continue on, whether Maeve was ready or not.

And Maeve knew she was entirely unprepared.