CHAPTER NINETEEN

SOMEHOW, SHE WENT back to canning after that. When she walked into the room, Rose, Pansy and Iris all craned their necks. Iris and Pansy didn’t know yet. Rose hadn’t told them. She’d simply offered up the use of her truck, and Sammy had taken it.

And now she supposed was the time for the explanation. Especially when he had gone and proposed. Or made demands, as it were. But she couldn’t refuse him. And he had said...that they could be normal. Maybe nobody else would understand what that meant, but he did. And she did. A deep desire in her heart that warred in many ways with that fear of being trapped. But it meant they weren’t broken. And that was a miracle she hadn’t expected.

Of course, that meant explanations. It meant bringing other people into their secret thing. She didn’t like that. If only it could just be them. Their world. Their bubble. But then, she was back to the little fantasy she had spun out in the field. When she had asked him why they couldn’t just be without labels or papers or vows. But Ryder was a man of paperwork and vows. She knew that. And who he was mattered. What he wanted mattered.

“Well, I’m engaged now,” she said, making her way purposefully over to the canning things.

The reaction was deafening.

“I didn’t think that was the whole point of your...baby thing,” Iris said.

She sighed. “This is sort of separate from the baby thing. I mean, the initial endeavor. It’s just something that happened.” She looked at Rose, who was gazing at her with wide eyes. And she figured it was as good a time as any.

“So I’m marrying your brother.”

The response was, yet again, deafening, but this time there were expletives.

“Is he the father?” Pansy asked.

“Yes,” Sammy said.

Iris and Pansy were utterly agape. Rose was still.

“I don’t even know how to...approach that,” Iris said. “I thought that the two of you were...friends. But maybe that was a little bit naive of me. To assume that you weren’t...”

“We weren’t,” Sammy said. “I mean, not until the past couple of months.”

“I knew you were acting weird,” Iris said. “That night at the saloon I knew the two of you were being strange. And frankly, I knew you’ve been strange much of the time since.”

“Well. We were. And it wasn’t supposed to be this. But it is this. So we are... We care for each other. There’s no reason in the world we can’t make it work. And nothing much is really going to change. Except, I guess I’ll be your sister somewhat legally.”

It was Rose who closed the distance between them and wrapped her arms around Sammy. “You’re my sister already,” Rose said. “But I’m really glad that you’re going to be my sister-in-law. It just seems delightfully official.”

“Yes,” Sammy said. “It does seem official.”

“You don’t like official,” Pansy said.