"Maybe, but holding on to anger against a dead man seems like a waste of energy I need for other things." Kelly stood, brushing dust from her worn skirt. "I should get back. Just wanted to say thank you again and to let you know I'll be up before dawn to start on the fieldwork." "If you're serious about helping, I could use strong arms for the scything."
"I'll be there." "Mr. Callahan?" Kelly paused, her face half in shadow. "Why did you really change your mind? Back there, when you agreed to give me seven days, what made you do it?"
Bo was quiet for a long moment, staring into the darkness. Finally, he said, "Your daughter. The little one. Martha, you said her name was?" "Yes. Martha Rose. She's my middle child, sweet as honey and twice as sticky."
"She asked if I was the bad man." Bo's voice was rough. "I didn't like the answer I saw in my own head." Kelly was silent for so long that Bo thought she'd left. Then her voice came soft through the darkness.
"Good night, Mr. Callahan. And thank you for being the kind of man who can hear that question and care about the answer." Then she was gone, moving silently back toward the house, and Bo was left alone with the stars and the creek and thoughts that wouldn't leave him in peace. He lay back on his bedroll and stared up at the endless Wyoming sky. The constellations he'd known since childhood.
The Big Dipper, Cassiopeia, Orion rising in the east. His father had taught him those stars on cold Missouri nights, back before the war, back when the world had seemed simpler. "The stars are God's promise," his father used to say. "No matter how dark things get, they're always there, shining steady."
"Remember that, Bo. When life gets hard, and it will get hard, look up at those stars and remember there's something bigger than your troubles, something constant and true." Bo had forgotten that lesson somewhere along the way. Forgotten about constants and truth.
Forgotten about anything except protecting himself from being hurt again. But lying here in Kelly May Bishop's wheat field, with the taste of her cornbread still in his mouth and her daughter's question echoing in his mind, Bo wondered if maybe, just maybe, he'd been protecting himself right into a prison of his own making. "Seven days," he reminded himself again. Seven days, and then things would go back to normal.
But deep in his heart, Bo suspected that nothing would ever be quite normal again. As he drifted off to sleep, his last conscious thought was of hazel eyes flecked with gold, blazing with a fire that no hardship could extinguish. And for the first time in seven years, Bo Callahan felt something stir in his chest that he'd thought Catherine had killed forever. Hope.
Dawn came to Dry Creek Valley the way it always did, slowly at first, painting the eastern sky in shades of rose and amber, then all at once, as if someone had thrown open a curtain on the world. Bo woke to the sound of an axe biting into wood. A rhythmic thunk, thunk, thunk that pulled him from dreams he couldn't quite remember but that left him with an odd sense of yearning. He sat up, muscles protesting slightly.
Sleeping on the ground wasn't as easy as it had been 20 years ago. Through the morning mist rising from the creek, Bo could make out a figure working by the woodpile behind the house. Kelly, her dark braid swinging as she brought the axe down again and again, splitting firewood with practiced efficiency. Bo checked his pocket watch. Quarter past five.
The woman had been up for at least an hour, maybe more, judging by the neat stack of split wood already accumulated. He rolled up his bedroll, splashed cold creek water on his face, and walked toward the house, his boots crunching on the frost-touched grass. Kelly didn't hear him approach over the sound of her own labor. Bo watched for a moment as she set another log on the chopping block and raised the axe.
Too high, wrong angle, he noted automatically, and brought it down. The blade bit into the wood but didn't split it clean through. She had to wiggle it free and strike again. "You're going to hurt yourself swinging like that," Bo said. Kelly spun around, axe still in hand, and for a moment they faced each other across the woodpile.