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“About time someone’s doing something to remember this man.” Gilda Hathaway came forward. She’d looked unhappy when he first met her a dozen years before. She looked just as unhappy now. “I had my differences with Sean Fitzgerald, but then I’ve had my differences with most everyone. Where will this begin? Here?” She indicated the grassy slope. “In the house?” She swept the steps a fierce look, then brought it back to Heath. “In the barn?”
There was no time to reply because a somewhat hunched older gentleman offered his hearty hello as he came up beside her.
“I met Sean some thirty years back,” he said, after greeting Gilda and Heath. “That was when he first come to these parts, and while I’m sorry the men in the hills can’t be here, I wanted to come and pay my respects.” His voice rasped as if short on air, but his eyes gleamed with gentle wisdom. “Sean wanted this place to sit up and take notice, and we won’t ever forget that. Not all wanted to listen and he wasn’t a time waster.”
Heath understood the truth in that. Sean valued time and industry.
“He gave out his share of good advice, too,” the old fellow continued, “and I wasn’t afraid or too proud to take it.” He offered a gnarled, arthritic hand to Heath. Would it hurt the old-timer to shake his hand? Heath had no idea. Using a gentle touch, he accepted the hand with care.
“Name’s Boone Webster,” the aged man told him. Shocks of gray hair peeked out from beneath a cowboy hat that had seen better days two decades back. “I spent my share of time on a lot of farms and ranches in my day. When my hands worked.”
“Boone’s old but he makes a mean pot of venison stew,” Gilda announced to anyone who would listen, and by that time, there were a few dozen folks closing in on them. She didn’t break a smile, but she seemed almost approving, and Heath was pretty sure the old-timer blushed. “He’s got a heart for doin’ good, for all the good that’s done him.”
“Now, Gilda. You said you wouldn’t fuss today,” Boone reminded her in a gentler tone than she probably deserved. “Today we’re respecting the dead and rejoicing the living. Remember?” He nodded across the yard and the old woman followed his look to a group of locals. Ben, Jace, Aldo and a few other ranch hands rounded out the group.
“I remember, all right.”
“Well, good.”
“Glad to be here, Heath!” called one woman as Gilda and Boone moved on.
“Harve, good to see you! Congratulations on your new daughter!” Blake Melos’s younger sister had spotted Harve and Rosina coming their way.
Seven old men came in military uniform. Three of them unfurled flags, and three others carried long guns.
Folks were greeting one another all around him, like a potluck gathering, and when Eric Carrington and two of the other big landowners joined the group, Heath saw the brilliance in the moment. Lizzie’s brilliance.
He turned as she and Corrie approached the porch stairs. “You reached out to all these people to put this together.”
“Zeke and I informed people of the date and time, with a message about Sean’s service and his love for Idaho. Their hearts did the rest.”
“Theirs and yours.” Gazing down, he glimpsed what the future could be like with this woman. He’d known it a dozen years before, but he’d been too young to understand the full implications.
Now he did. Lizzie didn’t back down. She never gave up. She moved forward, saying what she meant, and meaning what she said.
“Are you the gal who put this in my mailbox?” A middle-aged woman came close.
Lizzie met her with a welcoming smile. “Guilty as charged.”
“Well, it was like old times, walkin’ out there and findin’ somethin’ to read again,” the woman declared. “Like when the weekly arrived in the old days. I’d grab that up and read it front to back to see what was going on, especially in the winter. During rough snows it was about the only way to stay in contact with people before the snow plows got commissioned. I forgot how much I missed that until I found that paper in my box. And so well written, too!”
Lizzie’s smile grew. “I do love writing,” she confessed to the woman. “And every little town could use its own paper, couldn’t it?”
“Just to see what’s what,” the woman agreed. “Nothin’ too big or fancy. Just enough.”
Lizzie moved to the top step. She raised a hand, and when folks noticed, they got quiet. Zeke had slipped out the side door. When he spotted Lizzie, he moved her way and tucked himself beneath her left arm, close to her heart…and she snugged that arm right around him in welcome, confirming what Heath had figured out.
