I know you still miss Rose, and my boys have a daddy, even if he's the crooked kind of daddy Travis is. But there's one thing I do know. She drew a breath. I don't want you leaving just because the kitchen door finally shuts. For a few seconds, Isaac didn't say anything.
Then he answered her. I don't want to leave just because the job's done either. Isaac didn't rush to hold her. He didn't try to hurry the moment along. The two of them just stood there on the gravel for a few seconds, and it was enough for both of them to understand that neither one wanted this story to end on that road.
Behind them on the porch, Sam was holding his little brother as tight as he'd been told, grinning so wide it looked like it hurt. But Isaac didn't carry his things back inside and move into Maggie's house. The two of them decided not to rush. Sometime later, he rented a small workshop just off Main Street in Laurel Fork and opened his own woodworking business. He stayed close to Maggie and the boys, but each of them still had a home of their own.
Travis went on being Sam and Jesse's father. Sometimes he showed up. A lot of the time he didn't. Maggie learned not to build her son's lives on his promises and to let her boy love his daddy without depending on him. Sam kept calling Travis daddy.
He kept calling Isaac Isaac. But over time, he stopped asking when Isaac was going to leave. A year went by. Maggie and Isaac got married at a small wedding right there at Hope Hollow under the apple trees with the neighbors, Mr. Hollis in his Sunday suit, Rose's parents driving down from Kentucky one more time, and kids running around underfoot. Sam stood next to Isaac the whole ceremony, holding the ring box like it was the most important job in the world.
One afternoon, not long after the wedding, a hard rain came down over the farm. Maggie walked into the kitchen, and out of sheer habit, after so many years, she went to look for one of the old buckets in the cabinet. There was no water on the floor. The roof was dry. The kitchen door, shut tight, didn't let in so much as a breeze.
She found one of the old buckets tucked up high on the top shelf, dusty. She stood there looking at it. Isaac came in and found his wife standing there holding that old dented bucket. "You still keep that thing," he asked, smiling. "You don't need it anymore.
Throw it out if you want." Maggie held the bucket against her chest and shook her head. Not this one. It had caught every drop of every hard year.
It had been there on the nights she almost gave up. And on the night a stranger showed up at her gate with a baby in his arms. She wasn't ready to forget any of that. She didn't have to forget it to start over.
From outside, Sam called for them, all excited because Rose and Jesse, both walking now, were playing together on the porch. The two babies from that rainy night groan and laughing out loud. Maggie put the bucket back on the top shelf and took Isaac's hand. The rain kept pounding on the roof all afternoon, but this time not a single drop got inside the house.