What should I do about Daddy and his stubbornness, Momma?
What should I do about the homestead, Momma?
Her mother had always been there with wise words.Search your heart. Ask the Lord. Go talk to him.
Lenore’s eyes flew open.
She needed totalkto Brandon. Really talk about how she felt and what she wanted. She needed to find out if he still wanted to stay on the homestead, if he really wanted to be with her.
Surely it wasn’t too late.
He had another full week here, and then Monday and Tuesday next week before his contract would end.
He’d already been paid. It was a testament to his strong character that he’d stuck around for the past couple of weeks, because he could have packed up and left in the middle of the night and Lenore wouldn’t have had the means or resources to take him to court.
He hadn’t left, because Brandon wasn’t the kind of man who abandoned ship when things got hard.
A blip of hope accompanied her heartbeat as it moved through her body. Maybe if she could just explain a little more—and hear his side of things—they could go back to the way they’d been
She shook her head. Something her daddy had often told her rose to the front of her mind.
Things never go back to the way they were, Lenore. That time is over, but you can build something good from what’s left. And it’s usually better.
Yes, they could try again and have something better than they had before. She had to believe that, though she couldn’t control Brandon. She couldn’t use the chainsaw, or the skid steer, or the planing machine, and make him bend to her will.
She looked at the quote one more time. Could she be braver than she believed, stronger than she seemed, and smarter than she thought?
You can,a voice whispered through her mind.
She wasn’t sure if it was her mother, who left this quote in her photo album, or God, telling her not to give up something that could be amazing.
I will always be with you.
She knew that could go for both of her parents, as well as the Lord.
She once again found herself ruminating on Pastor Glover’s sermon about God’s timing. Brandon’s argument was that she needed waternowin order to support the growth and development of the homestead she wanted to build. The crops. The livestock. The online store. She’d seen and felt the wisdom in that.
But she did not have the finances in order to get the well. She’d thought perhaps she could do things in the opposite order—get the homestead producing so she could have the money for the well.
She still didn’t know which was right.
But as she sat there in her silent cabin alone on this piece of land she loved so much—with this quote streaming through her mind and Pastor Glover’s lecture interwoven through it—everything became clear in Lenore’s head.
Finally.
She closed her eyes and imagined herself on the homestead a year from now. She’d just finished watering a whole field of strawberries with a sprinkling system. And behind that, where she planned to grow pumpkins, the land had already been cleared it and a crop of winter wheat had been planted.
She had eggs and milk and vegetables and meat to sustain her on the homestead. She’d sold an entire crop of potatoes, pumpkins, hay grass already, and she had enough to buy new clothes and keep adding turkeys to her rotation. She’d sold so many at Thanksgiving, she’d nearly run out.
She watched herself put on a new dress—this one bright blue with a white floral pattern woven throughout. She finished curling her hair using the electricity in the cabin. She left the bathroom and walked down the hall into the living room.
“How do I look?” she asked, putting one hand on her hip.
There, sitting on her couch, was Brandon. He looked up, smiled, got to his feet, and approached her. “I think maybe we should stay home from church,” he whispered as he took her in his arms.
“Why’s that?” she whispered back, well-accustomed to this game and loving it.
“Because if I take you to church in that dress, every other cowboy in town is gonna know that I have the prettiest wife in the world.”
