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She brought her car to a stop far enough back that someone who’d parked in the garages would be able to get out, and she reached for her phone. A fresh wave of emotion threatened to pull her under as she looked through her photos and videos. For the first few years of Missy’s life, she’d invested in cloud storage—password and authenticator protected—so she had lots of baby pictures.
But it had gotten expensive, and she’d found herself combing through the pictures and videos far too often, her heart cracking a little more with every photo she flipped through. She’d cancelled the subscription, but she could get to her photos and reactivate at any time.
“Maybe it’s time,” she whispered to herself. Then she could add the pictures and videos she’d taken that weekend.
She tapped on her gallery and the first picture that came up made her breath catch between her lungs and her throbbing heart. It was her and Missy, looking right into the camera, laughter in their eyes and sitting in the lines around their mouths.
She looked so much like Emma, with her dark hair, her smattering of freckles, the shape of her nose. Rob had manifested himself in the slope of her chin and the width of her forehead. They both had dark eyes, which had given Missy a stunning pair of eyes that lit up from within whenever she laughed.
Fran had taken this picture of the two of them on the couch only a few minutes before Emma had left. Missy said she needed a photo of someone important to her for a school project, and she wanted that to be of her mother.
I have to do an interview too, Missy had said.Can I call you this week?
Emma couldn’t say no to that, and she’d simply make sure she was alone when the call came in. She didn’t have Missy’s name in her phone, but she’d labeled the contact as Fran2.
Suddenly unwilling to delete this weekend from her phone, Emma quickly made a folder in her gallery, labeled itmy babies, and moved all the items into it. If anyone saw it, they’d think it was full of baby horse pictures. In fact, Emma would take a bunch tomorrow morning and put them in the folder too, covering up the other items.
Done with that, and ready to be in her room so she could cry some more if she needed to, Emma pocketed her phone, grabbed her bag from the passenger seat, and went inside. She didn’t see Nate’s truck, which meant Ted wasn’t back from his weekend visit with his friend still in prison.
Good, Emma thought. The last thing she needed was to have to explain to him where she’d been all weekend, and what she’d been doing. At the same time, she had the very powerful thought that she’d like to have someone she could trust enough to tell—and that that person would be Ted.
She thought about showing Ginger the pictures of her daughter as she went inside, but in the end, Emma was so used to keeping her secret that she just went down the hall to her room without saying anything.
* * *
She didn’t seeTed the next morning in the stables, and he didn’t come to her office in the afternoon either.
By then, Emma knew something was wrong. Ted was a creature of habit, she’d learned that. He liked to do the same things, in the same order, each day. He thrived on it, he’d told her. He felt accomplished when he did, because he knew what had to get done, and he got it done.
Unable to focus, she finally picked up her phone and texted him.Where are you right now? I usually see you in my office by now.
Algae bloom in one of the ponds, he said.Ginger called us all out to help. Lots of dead animals and stuff.
Oh no, Emma typed, her stomach churning. She realized she hadn’t eaten lunch, and she got up to get a granola bar and an apple.Maybe I’ll see you in the stables tonight.
He’d kissed her passionately while he pressed her against the wall beside the sink where she washed out the bottles. Several times. She wanted that connection again, and she could admit she missed Ted.
She was best friends with Ginger, but Emma had purposely kept some distance between them. Ginger had let her, because Ginger wasn’t a super touchy-feely kind of woman to begin with. Emma loved her fiercely, though, and she wondered how she could start to let some of the most important people into her life and keep her daughter safe.
She’d never thought that was possible before, but in the two weeks since Ted had come to Hope Eternal Ranch, he’d started to make her think differently.
I’ll try, Ted texted, and Emma supposed that was all she could ask for.
That evening, she lingered with the horses after she’d finished feeding them, hoping and praying Ted would walk through the doors. She hadn’t seen him in far too long, and she didn’t like the dark cloud that had been following her around for a few hours now.
He didn’t come, and Emma left the stables alone, the dusky night around her deeper than normal. She didn’t like being out here alone, and she hastened to return to the brightly lit homestead. Instead of going into the garage and up the steps to the West Wing, she went to the Annex’s back door and knocked.
Her heartbeat knocked through her veins while she stood there waiting. No one came. Helplessness filled her, and she turned around to leave. But she couldn’t make herself do it.
Ted was avoiding her, and she wanted to know why. With her breathing hitching in her throat, she turned back to the door and knocked again, this time trying the doorknob. It gave under her grip, and she opened the door. “Hello?” she called. “It’s Emma.” She took a tentative step into the back of the kitchen, sweeping it quickly.
There was no one there, and only a light on above the stove. “Hello?” she called again, a little louder this time. “Teddy?”
Footsteps came down the hall, and Nate appeared, wearing a pair of gym shorts and nothing else. “Emma,” he said, pure surprise in his voice. He reached up and ran his hand through his hair. “Let me get Ted.”
She nodded as he turned around and went back the way he’d come, closed the door behind her, and pressed her back into it. That was as far from the men who lived here as she could get and still be in the house. The house was far too quiet for the number of men who lived here, and Emma heard voices coming from the direction of the hall where Nate had disappeared.
They didn’t sound like happy voices, and Emma’s flight instinct kicked into gear. Her fingers scrambled to find the doorknob, but when they did, she froze.
She literally had to stop running from every difficult situation in her life.
Help me, she prayed, and she felt sure the Lord did, because she didn’t run. Even when Ted appeared at the mouth of the hallway, his eyebrows drawn down. He too was dressed down, and Emma liked this softer version of him, a man who wore silly T-shirts and casual shorts and bare feet.
His hair looked tousled, as if he’d been about to fall asleep and she’d interrupted him. A stinging sensation buzzed in her chest, because he hadn’t been busy tonight. He could’ve come to the stable to see her. He’d chosen not to.
“What are you doing here, Emma?” he asked, not taking one single step toward her. With him looking at her with those hooded, displeased eyes, her voice stuttered in her throat, and she couldn’t say anything.
