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humorless chuckled rolled up from his
chest. It was probably just as well that he’d been unable to
imagine anything else. But if a fortuneteller had told him what the
future held, he wouldn’t have believed it anyway.
    The years that followed hadn’t been as
golden as he’d envisioned on his wedding day. They’d struggled, he
and Belinda, to make a go of the farm, to overcome their
differences. If only there had been more private time to work
things out—but in the midst of it all, even though she’d lived at
her own place then, Cora had always been around, like a burr under
a saddle, always meddling—
    “ Luke! This ham is blame
near ready to hop back on the hog it came from! We’re setting down
to eat. Now .” Her
voice carried easily across the yard.
    Sighing, he pushed himself up from the
bale and grabbed his coat from the nail, feeling as if he were many
years older than his thirty-one.
    Just as he emerged into the cool April
drizzle, it occurred to him that Cora had baked a ham for his last
wedding dinner, too.
    ~~*~*~*~~
    “ It was only a little prank,
Luke. Leave the girl be.” Cora turned to her granddaughter as she
bustled between the table and the stove. “You’re sorry, aren’t you,
Rose?”
    “ Yes.” Rose’s mumbled reply
was unconvincing.
    “ There, you see?
    Emily had heard the back door slam,
announcing Luke’s return from the barn, and hurried downstairs. Now
she hovered in the hall just outside the kitchen, unnoticed and
unsure if she should interrupt the heated discussion taking place
in there. After all, she wasn’t really a member of the family. She
could see Rose already seated at the table, while Cora, red-faced
from the heat of the stove, served the food. Luke paced the length
of the big room, around the table and back again. Once, as if from
a farmer’s instinct, he glanced at the heavy sky looming beyond the
window in the back door.
    He raked a hand through his
dark hair, his very posture revealing his frustration. “Stealing
isn’t what I think of as a ‘little prank.’ ” He realized that he’d
done the same thing in his own youth, but this was his daughter . His own child.
He didn’t want her to grow up the way he had. “I can’t figure out
why you did it—I gave you money to buy the candy.”
    “ Land sakes, Luke, you make
her sound like a bank robber or a horse thief.” With short,
impatient strokes of a knife, Cora sliced a loaf of bread and piled
it on a plate. “Leave it be and let’s have supper!”
    Luke frowned at his mother-in-law,
then returned his gaze to his daughter and asked again, “Why did
you take that candy, Rose?”
    But the girl only shrugged and kept
her eyes on the boiled potato that Cora spooned onto her plate with
a neat flip.
    In the hall, Emily shook her
head.
    “ Go ahead and start, honey,”
Cora urged Rose, who already had her fork in her hand. She added
with a hint of derision, “I don’t know when Mrs. Becker will find
her way down here. Etiquette—hah!”
    “ We should wait for Miss
Can—I mean, Emily,” Luke said.
    “ I’m hungry,” Rose
complained.
    “ I’ve waited long enough.”
Cora settled in her chair like a hen on a nest box and put a slice
of ham on her plate.
    “ Aw, hell, Cora—” Luke said,
and sat heavily in his place at the head of the table, his elbows
bracketing his dish. “It’s her wedding dinner.”
    Emily felt her face grow warm and she
wondered again if she would be able to overcome her blunder in
deciding to come here. She’d had such hope. And after Alyssa’s
death and the closing of Miss Wheaton’s, it had seemed as if she’d
had no choice but to leave Chicago. But she sensed that she’d be
doing battle with Cora Hayward every single day. Battling to be a
wife, such as she was, and to be Rose’s mother and teacher. Well,
she’d faced worse events in her life and seen them through. Today
she’d made a commitment in town and she must stand by it. Lifting
her chin, she stepped into