Not because we have to, but because if I'm investing everything I have in this ranch, I want the legal protection that comes with being your wife. No more separate beds. No more pretending we're just testing things out. We commit fully and figure the rest out as we go. Silas felt his heart hammering.
This was it. The moment when possibility became promise. When the careful dance ended and the real work began. He could say no. Could insist they needed more time, more certainty, more proof that two broken people could build something whole.
Or he could take the leap that Norah was offering. Trust that maybe love didn't require perfection, only willingness. Tomorrow, he agreed. We'll go to town and get married. Then we'll pay off the bank and start fresh.
Partners in everything. Norah's smile was like sunrise after a long night. Partners in everything, she echoed. They married the next afternoon in the Great Falls courthouse with a justice of the piece who'd seen stranger matches and Marcus Webb from the feed store standing as their witness because he happened to be there filing a claim. It wasn't romantic or ceremonial.
Norah wore her best gray dress. Silas wore his funeral suit. And the whole proceeding took less than 10 minutes. But when the justice said, "You may kiss your bride." And Silas had to stand on his toes while Norah bent down to meet him.
When their lips touched for the first time, and he tasted possibility, something fundamental shifted in both of them. This was real now, legal and binding and absolutely terrifying in the best possible way. Afterward, they walked to the bank together, Norah's money pouch in Silas's pocket feeling heavier than gold. The bank manager, a thin man named Hutchinson, who'd been growing increasingly insistent about missed payments, looked surprised to see them together. "Mr. Boon," he said, his tone carefully neutral.
"And this must be the Mrs. Boon everyone's been talking about." "It is," Silas replied. "We've come to settle my account." He counted out $300 in coins and small bills, each one representing hours of Norah's labor, her sacrifice, her faith in their future. Hutchinson counted it twice, made notations in his ledger, and finally stamped a receipt with paid in full across the top.
"Congratulations," Hutchinson said, and he seemed to mean it. "Clean slate, Mr. Boon. Don't waste it." "I don't intend to," Silas replied, taking Norah's hand. "We don't intend to.
Walking out of that bank into the bright afternoon sunshine, both of them lighter by $300, but heavier with commitment, Silas felt something he hadn't felt since before James died. Hope. Not the desperate, clawing hope that things might somehow get better, but the solid foundational hope that came from having a partner, a plan, and a clean slate to write their future on. "What do we do now?" Norah asked as they climbed into the wagon.