They Sold All Daughters at Auction—Only One Was Left…Until a Widower Offered His Name

Chapter 6

Declan placed his hand over hers, marveling at the miracle growing beneath their joined fingers. “Catherine would have loved this,” he said softly. “She would have loved seeing this house full of family and happiness.” “Tell me about her again,” Rose said, as she often did, and she meant it — she had never been jealous of Catherine, understanding that the human heart has room for many kinds of love, and that honoring the past doesn’t diminish the present.

Declan smiled, his eyes distant with memory. “She used to say that love wasn’t like a pie, where giving someone a piece meant there was less for everyone else. She said love was like a flame. The more you share it, the brighter it grows.” He was quiet a moment. “I used to think that was just a pretty thing to say. Now I know she was right.”

The pregnancy was not easy. There were days when the sickness kept Rose in bed until noon, and weeks when the heat lay over the prairie like a hand, and a bad spell in the sixth month that sent Declan racing for the doctor at full gallop, his face the color of chalk. But every time, the baby held on. Every time, Rose got up again, stubborn as ever, that Walsh chin set against the world. And every time, Whitfield pronounced her strong and the child healthy, and the fear loosened its grip on Declan’s heart by a fraction more.

What Rose did not tell Declan — what she could not tell him — was that she was afraid too. Not for the baby. For herself. Her mother had died of the fever, but Colleen, who had helped nurse their mother, had told Rose once that the fever had come on hard right after a stillbirth, and Rose had never been able to put the two things together in her mind since. She confessed it one afternoon to Maggie, who had ridden over for the day, and Maggie had looked at her with that steady oldest-sister look and said, “You’re not Ma, Rose. You’re stronger than Ma ever was. And you’ve got something Ma never had.” “What’s that?” “A man who’d walk through fire to keep you alive, and three sisters who’d drag you back out of it.” Rose had laughed and cried at once, and the fear had not gone away, but it had been put in its place, where she could carry it instead of being carried away by it.

One night in the eighth month, when the baby kicked and turned and would not let her sleep, she found Declan awake too, sitting at the kitchen table in the dark, his hands wrapped around a cold cup of coffee. She sat down across from him. “You’re scared,” she said. It was not a question. He did not deny it. “I’m scared too,” she said. “But listen to me, Declan Byrne. I did not survive being sold on those courthouse steps to die in your bed. I’m going to put this baby in your arms, and then I’m going to get old and bossy with you, and you’re going to love every minute of it.” He had laughed — actually laughed, the first real laugh she had heard from him — and she had reached across the table and taken his hand, and they had sat in the dark kitchen with their coffee going cold, waiting for morning.

Summer brought weddings. Colleen and Elias were married in the garden behind the house, with Reverend Albright officiating and half of Mesquite Bend in attendance, the tables sagging under the weight of food the sisters had cooked together. Rose watched Colleen walk down the aisle on Declan’s arm — because Colleen had insisted on it, and Declan had been too moved to argue — and she wept the whole way through, and so did everyone else. A month later, Cara and Erin married the Hendricks brothers in a double ceremony, the twins inseparable as ever, standing side by side in dresses Erin had sewn herself. Rose, now visibly pregnant and radiant with it, stood as matron of honor for all of them, her happiness so plain on her face that old women in the congregation wept to see it.

Maggie and Ned moved their operation closer to Mesquite Bend so the sisters could stay near each other, and soon the Byrne ranch was the heart of a network of family that stretched across the county. The scared, defiant girl who had stood on the courthouse steps barely a year ago had become a confident, radiant woman, surrounded by the people she loved, holding court at her own table. Nobody who saw her now could have recognized the girl with the patched dress and the blazing green eyes — and yet, if you looked close, you could still see her. The same defiance. The same chin. Only now it was aimed at a different kind of thing — at fear itself.

In late October, when the leaves were turning gold and the air carried the crisp promise of winter, Rose went into labor.

The labor was long and difficult, and it tested every ounce of the courage Rose had been storing up her whole life. Dr. Whitfield attended. Maggie and Colleen and the twins waited in the parlor, wearing paths in the floorboards, praying in a murmur that Rose could hear through the wall like a river. And Declan — Declan never left her side. He held her hand through every hour, let her squeeze until his knuckles went white, wiped the sweat from her forehead, and behind the calm of his face Rose could see a terror so raw he couldn’t hide it and she pretended not to see it. She could see it anyway: he was remembering another birth, another room, another three days. She could see him bracing himself to lose this too.

But the baby had other plans. At the last, when Rose thought she had nothing left, when the world had narrowed to pain and breath and Declan’s voice telling her she was brave, she was so brave, she was the bravest woman he’d ever known — there was a final, furious push, and then a cry.

A small, furious, indignant cry, the most beautiful sound Rose had ever heard.

“A boy,” Dr. Whitfield said, and he was smiling, actually smiling, his hands steady as he passed the squalling bundle to Rose. “A fine, healthy boy.”

Rose held him against her chest, shaking, weeping, laughing, and looked at his tiny red face, the crumpled fists, the fierce little mouth. He had his father’s gray eyes — squinted shut against the world right now, but she could see the shape of them. He had her chin, that determined Walsh chin, already set as if he had opinions about the world. “Declan,” she whispered. “Look. Look at him.”

Declan Byrne, who had not cried in years, who had buried a wife and a son and had taught himself that the world gave and took and there was no use in asking it for mercy — Declan Byrne was crying. Tears ran down his weathered face and dropped onto the blanket, and his hands, those steady scarred hands, shook as he reached for his son. “Hello, Patrick,” he whispered. “Hello, little man. I’ve been waiting for you a long, long time.”

They had named him before he was born, both of them, without discussing it, the way you agree on something you both already know: Patrick Michael Byrne. A name to honor the first Patrick — the son who had lived three days, the wound that had never quite closed — and to celebrate the second. Not a replacement. A continuation. Proof that the heart that had been broken could also be made whole.

“He’s perfect,” Declan said, his voice choked, holding his son against his chest with the tenderness of a man who had spent years afraid to hold anything this precious. “Absolutely perfect.”

Rose, exhausted but radiant, reached up and touched his face, felt the wetness of his tears on her fingertips. “We’re all perfect,” she said. “All of us together.” And she looked around the room — at her sisters crowded in the doorway, crying and laughing, at the man who had saved her life and won her heart, at the baby who was their future — and she knew, with a certainty that went down to her bones, that she was right.