The morning rain had not yet reached Cedar Hollow when Emily Bennett opened her eyes.
Outside the small farmhouse, the western sky was a soft gray, and the distant mountains stood like sleeping giants beyond the valley.
A cold wind moved through the yellow grass.
Somewhere near the barn, an old horse stamped its hoof against the hard earth.
Emily lay still beneath her patchwork quilt, listening to the familiar sounds of home.
The wooden walls creaked.
A kettle rattled in the kitchen.
Her mother coughed twice, then tried to hide the sound behind the scrape of a chair.
Emily closed her eyes for another moment.
She was seventeen years old, but there were mornings when she felt much older.
Beside her bed stood a pair of worn brown boots.
One had a small tear near the heel, carefully stitched with thick black thread.
Her work dress hung from a nail beside the window, washed the previous evening and still slightly damp along the collar.
She had only two dresses suitable for working at the café.
One was faded blue.
The other, which she wore on Sundays, had once belonged to her mother.
Neither was especially pretty.
Emily did not mind.
There were more important things to worry about than pretty dresses.
She sat up, brushed her long brown hair away from her face, and reached for her boots.
Her hands were rough from washing dishes and carrying heavy trays, and a small burn marked the inside of her left wrist.
She had earned that burn three weeks earlier when a pot slipped on the kitchen stove.
Her manager had told her to be more careful.
Emily had apologized, although the pot had been missing a handle for months.
From the kitchen came her mother’s voice.
“Emily?
Are you awake, sweetheart?”
“Coming, Mama.”
She quickly braided her hair, tied it with a piece of blue ribbon, and stepped into the narrow kitchen.
Sarah Bennett sat at the table with a cup of weak coffee between her hands.
At thirty-nine, she still had the gentle brown eyes Emily remembered from childhood, but hardship had put silver threads into her dark hair.
Her back had troubled her ever since she had fallen from a wagon the previous winter.
On cold mornings, she moved slowly, trying not to let her daughter notice the pain.
Emily noticed anyway.
“You’re up early,” Emily said.
“So are you.”
“I have to open the café.”
Sarah smiled faintly.
“And I have to make sure my daughter eats before she walks halfway across the valley.”
On the table lay two slices of bread, a little butter, and a small dish of apple preserves.
Emily looked at the food.
“Where’s yours?”
“I ate already.”
“Mama.”
Sarah gave her a patient look.
“Don’t start.”
Emily knew that look.
It was the same look her mother had given her when she was six and refused to go to bed, when she was eleven and wanted to ride her father’s horse alone, and when she was fifteen and announced that she could take over the heavier chores after her father’s death.
It meant that Sarah had made up her mind.
But Emily also knew there had been only half a loaf of bread left the night before.
She picked up one slice, broke it in half, and placed a piece beside her mother’s cup.
“I can’t eat all of this.”
“Emily—”
“Then you’ll have to help me.”
Sarah stared at her daughter for a moment.
Then she laughed softly.
“You are the most stubborn girl your father ever brought into this world.”
Emily sat opposite her.
“He always said I learned it from you.”
For a little while, the kitchen felt warm despite the cold morning.
They ate slowly.
Neither mentioned the empty flour sack hanging behind the door.
Neither mentioned the tax notice folded beneath the sugar tin.
And neither mentioned that the farm had produced barely enough hay to carry their animals through the coming winter.
These things were always present, even when nobody spoke of them.
Three years earlier, the Bennett home had been a different place.
Emily’s father, Daniel, had been a quiet ranch hand with broad shoulders, a gentle smile, and a habit of singing badly while repairing fences.
He had worked cattle on neighboring ranches and kept a few animals of his own.
He had taught Emily how to saddle a horse, mend a gate, and tell whether rain was coming by watching the clouds above the western ridge.
Their farm had never made them wealthy.
But there had been laughter.
There had been evenings when her father played an old fiddle beside the fire while Sarah hummed along.
There had been summer suppers outdoors, when the last sunlight turned the mountains gold.
