Greta and Wyatt were devastated, and Ivy did her best to lend her comfort amidst their grieving. But the loss of the baby somehow felt like another rejection. The thought was irrational, she knew. But once again, she retreated to her bed and couldn’t find the energy to get out, even though her stab wound was mostly healed.

Astrid nagged her to stop lying around. Flynn and Brody pestered her, trying to convince her to resume life. Linnea and Savannah both came to visit multiple times, soothing and bribing. All the nieces and nephews attempted to cheer her up. But Ivy couldn’t shake the melancholy.

By mid-August, she guessed Jericho had long since made it to Chicago and completed his mission in delivering Otis to prison. He’d had plenty of time to write a letter to her if he’d chosen to. But with every passing day and no word from him, the finality of his leaving only added to her despair.

“It should’ve been me, God,” she whispered as she stared at the log wall. “You should’ve taken me and not Willa.” She didn’t need to live. Her life had always been aimless, useless, restless.

At a clearing of a throat from the doorway of the bedroom, Ivy closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep, as she’d taken to doing whenever anyone came up to talk to her.

A moment later, the clearing throat sounded again, this time louder.

Ivy remained motionless.

At the uneven boot thump crossing to the bed, she guessed Flynn had come to plead with her for the hundredth time. And she didn’t care. After his part in driving Jericho away, her brother could go drink pickle juice all day as far as she was concerned.

At a poke in her backside, she let out a yelp but lay motionless in her sagging mattress.

A beat of silence passed. Then the poke came again. This time harder and sharper. Enough that she cried out and shifted in a half-hearted effort to scoot beyond reach. “Cut it out and go away!”

Another jab was her only answer. And it was so painful that she growled out her frustration, tossed aside her cover, and sat up. As she turned, she found Judd—not Flynn—standing beside her bed, a cattle prod in his hand.

“What do you think you’re doin’? Trying to give me another injury?” Her voice was harsh and loud. She was being disrespectful, but suddenly she was plain mad, though she didn’t know exactly why.

Judd twirled the long stick that they sometimes used to round up cattle. “Reckon if you’re acting like a lazy cow, you need to be treated like one.” His bushy white eyebrows gathered in a scowl, and his lips pursed beneath his long, drooping white mustache.