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the potted bush your mother has in that fancy hallway of hers.”
    “It’s called a foyer .” Kathryn playfully corrected him using the French pronunciation.
    Larson hauled the tree back to the spot he’d measured and used his shirtsleeve to wipe the sweat from his brow. With a shovel, he traced a circle roughly two times the circumference of the balled root and began digging. Kathryn had stood to the side, enjoying the time with her new husband and amazed at the intensity of love filling her heart.
    She blinked as the memory faded. A sudden gust of wind blew flecks of snow and ice free from the spruce’s branches and onto her face, but she didn’t move. The pungent scent of pine settled around her, and she breathed its perfume. Larson had been right that day. He’d planted the tree in just the right spot. Far enough from the cabin to allow room for it to spread its roots and grow—where she could lean forward in her kitchen window and enjoy the magnitude of its towering beauty—yet close enough where she could still enjoy the birds flitting among its branches.
    She closed her eyes against renewed tears. Where are you, Larson? She’d gone over the events of their last day together countless times, each time hoping to uncover a sliver of a reason as to why he would leave and not return. Had he been displeased with her? She’d grown more discontent in their marriage in recent months. Had he as well, and she’d simply mistaken his reticence as worry over the ranch?
    Shaking her head, Kathryn forced herself to focus on what she knew for certain about Larson’s absence—not these imaginings born of fatigue and loneliness. She turned back for one last load of wood and, with each step, sifted possible reasons through the filter of truth.
    If he truly had planned to leave her, he wouldn’t have penned a note. Nor would he have replenished the wood supply that morning. Tracing her steps back to the cabin, she remembered their last night together.
    Intimate relations between them had been . . . well, better than she could remember in a long time. Larson’s tenderness had reminded her of their early years together. But even after sharing such physical intimacy with her husband, she had awakened during the night with a loneliness so vast that it pressed around her until she could hardly breathe. She’d turned her head into her pillow so Larson wouldn’t hear her cries. How would she have explained her tears to him when she scarcely understood them herself?
    As she stacked the logs on the woodpile, one last certainty cut through the blur of her thoughts, and its undeniable truth brought simultaneous hope and pain.
    Larson would never willingly give up this ranch, much less desert it.
    This ranch was his lifeblood. His dreams were wrapped up in its success or failure.
    The truth pricked a tender spot inside her, but Kathryn knew it to be true. Deep down, she’d always known that Larson’s making a success of the ranch came before her. However, in recent days, to her surprise, that understanding had nurtured a growing sense of ownership she’d not experienced before. A dogged determination on her part to see the ranch succeed.
    When Larson returned—and he would return, she told herself as her gloved hand touched the door latch—he would find the ranch holding its own or, by God’s grace, maybe even prospering. She would keep her husband’s dream alive, no matter the cost.
    Muffled pounding on the snow-packed trail leading up to the cabin brought Kathryn’s head around. She recognized Matthew Taylor astride his bay mare, but none of the four riders behind him. She swiped any trace of tears from her cheeks and took a step toward them.
    “Mrs. Jennings.” Matthew reined in and tipped his hat. The other men followed suit.
    Kathryn nodded, including the group in her gesture. She easily guessed the reason for their visit. “I gave you my word, Mr. Taylor, and I intend to keep it.” Though she didn’t know exactly