“Okay.” I regarded her, letting out a long breath. “I hope she’ll have your eyes. Like the Texas sky.”
“She?”
“Mmhm. Just have a feeling.”
She smiled at that.
"A girl," she said softly. "With your hair."
"Lord help us."
"What's wrong with your hair?"
"Nothing's wrong with it. It's just a lot of hair to manage on a toddler."
She laughed. "I'll learn."
"You'll be great at it."
She settled back down, quiet for a moment. Her hand moved in a slow absent circle on my chest.
“Forrest?”
“Mm.”
"What do you think Sophie would think? About all of this."
I considered that seriously—because she’d asked, and because I knew she needed the truth.
"I think she'd like you," I said. "She had no patience for people who weren't honest. You're the most honest person I'veever met." I paused. "And I think she'd tell me it was about time."
Willa was quiet.
"Is it okay that I asked that?" she said.
"Yeah," I said. "You can always ask."
She nodded. “We should name her that,” she said. “Sophie. I mean—our little girl. Would that be okay?”
It made my heart twist in my chest, but I let out a long breath…nodded slow.
“That would be more than okay.”
We talked like that for a little while longer…and I don’t know when we fell asleep, but by the time we woke, it was dark. My body hurt. Everything ached.
But my heart was so damn full it superseded all the rest.
NINETEEN
Willa
The bloodwork proved what we already knew in our hearts—that this baby was real…and that she was ours.
Six weeks old, no bigger than a pinto bean…and the whole damn world. I didn’t know anything about this baby, not even if it was a girl or a boy, not really. But to me, she was already Sophie. Already ours.
A future, even when it felt like the whole world was set to tear us apart.
The night of the attack on me and Forrest, local police joined forces with a SWAT team from San Antonio and ended up arresting Shepherd Daley—Gerald Atchison—and taking him to prison. They set bail too high for anyone to get him out. The women and children on the homestead were left all alone.
