The Triplets' Cowboy Daddy. Patricia Johns

The gossip would be less congenial now, but it would have spiraled down into something nastier sooner or later anyway.

      “Let’s go eat some strawberries, Mom,” Nora said, turning toward her mother. “And I want to sit with you on the step and dip our strawberries in whipped cream. Like we used to.”

      She wanted that whipped cream so badly that she ached. She wanted to rewind those angst-filled teenage years and bring back the sunny, breezy days where she’d been oblivious to heartbreak—when both of them had been. She wanted her mom—that calming influence, the woman who always had an answer for everything, even if that answer was “Some things we don’t need to know.”

      “Okay.” Dina nodded, and tears came to her eyes.

      Everything had changed on them, spun and tipped. But they could drag some of it back, like whipped cream and strawberries on a warm August day.

      * * *

      THAT AFTERNOON EASTON came back to the house, his body aching from a day of hard work. He’d ridden Scarlet over to the southwest pasture to check up on the fence that was being rebuilt. Scarlet was his favorite horse; he’d bought her from the Mason ranch five years ago, and he and that horse had a bond stronger than most people shared. Scarlet was a good listener—recently, Easton had started talking. Not to people, but letting the thoughts form words and then spill out of him was cathartic. He could see why Nora had relied on him to just listen for all those years.

      Out at the southwest corner, one of the ranch hands had broken a finger, so Easton sent him back, called the medic and took his place for the afternoon with the pole driver. He’d have to fill out a pile of paperwork for the injury, but the fence was complete and all in all it had been a good day.

      Now, as he ambled up the drive toward the house, he was ready for a quiet evening. But he had to admit, he’d been thinking of Nora all day. He’d gotten used to her hurried trips back to the ranch, that wave across the yard. He’d made his peace with the fact that their friendship was something from long ago when she needed someone to listen to her problems. It had never been a terribly reciprocal friendship. He’d been quiet by nature, and she’d never asked too many questions. Maybe she’d assumed all was fine in his world because he didn’t feel the need to vent.

      As he came closer to the house he could hear the chorus of baby wails. Wow—it sounded like all three of them were crying. He picked up his pace, concerned that something might be wrong, and when he emerged from the mudroom, he was met by Nora’s frantic face.

      She stood in the middle of the kitchen—two babies crying from their little reclined bouncy chairs on the floor, and Bobbie in Nora’s arms, also wailing.

      “Everything okay?” Easton asked, dropping his hat onto a hook.

      “No!” Nora looked ready to cry herself. “They’ve been like this for an hour...more? What time is it?”

      “Almost five,” he said.

      “I’m so tired...” She patted Bobbie’s diapered bottom and looked helplessly at the other two.

      He couldn’t very well leave them like that, and seeing those little squished faces all wet with tears, tiny tongues quivering with the intensity of their sobs, made him want to do something. He didn’t know how to soothe an infant, but he could pick one up. He bent and scooped up the baby closest—Riley, he thought. But he could be wrong. He tipped her forward onto his chest and patted her back.

      “Hey, there...” he murmured, looking down at her. She didn’t look any happier, and he followed Nora’s example and bounced himself up and down a couple of times to see if that improved the situation.

      Nada.

      He hadn’t meant to start singing, but a tune came into his head in the same rhythm of his movement—a song he hadn’t heard in a long, long time. Brahms’s “Lullaby.” He hummed it at first, and Riley stopped her hiccoughy sobs and listened, so he started to sing softly.

      “Lullaby and good-night, hush my darling is sleeping.

      On his sheets, white as cream, and his head full of dreams.

      Lullaby and good-night...”

      The baby lay her face against his chest and heaved in some shaky breaths. It was working—she liked the song...

      He looked up to see Nora staring at him, an odd look on her face. She looked almost soothed, herself.

      “I have an idea,” she said, pointing to the couch in the living room. “Go sit there.”

      He did as she asked and sank into the couch. She deposited Bobbie next to her sister on his chest, and Bobbie had a similar reaction as Riley had, calming, blinking, listening as he sang. It was unexpectedly comfortable—the weight off his feet, two babies on his chest. Rosie still wailed from the kitchen, but when Nora scooped her up, she calmed down a little, and when Nora sank onto the cushion next to him, Rosie seemed to be lulled into quiet, too.

      He sang the only verse he knew of that song a few times and the babies’ eyes drooped heavier and heavier until they fell asleep, exhausted from their crying.

      “I didn’t know you could sing,” Nora said softly.

      “You never asked.” He shot her a smile. “You know that cowboys sing. It soothes the herd.”

      “But they don’t all sing well,” she countered.

      He chuckled softly. “I break it out when absolutely necessary.”

      There was an awful lot she didn’t know about him. He knew more about her—she’d opened up with him. He knew that she hated sappy songs but loved sappy books, that her first horse had been her best friend and that her dad had been her hero. She’d talked and talked... But as he sat here with her, the babies breathing in a gentle rhythm, he wished he’d said more back then. She’d taken more than she’d given, but that hadn’t been her fault. He’d given and given, and never asked for anything in return. Ever. Maybe he should have asked.

      “I heard that song on TV years ago,” he said. “I was maybe ten or eleven. I thought it was so beautiful that I nearly cried. So I tried to remember the words to it but could only remember the one verse. I imagined that one day my mother would come back and sing that song to me.”

      “Did you ever hear from her?” Nora asked quietly.

      He shook his head. “Nope.”

      His mother left when he was eight, and he didn’t have a solid memory of her. He knew what she looked like from the pictures, a woman with curly hair and glasses, one crooked tooth in the front that made her smile look impish. Those photos replaced his memories of her somehow—maybe because he’d spent more time with the pictures than the woman herself. His father had destroyed the other photos. “She left us,” he used to say. “Don’t even bother trying to remember her. She sure isn’t thinking about us.”

      Easton couldn’t trust his memories of her. He’d made up so many stories about her, so many situations that had never really happened, that he almost believed them. In his imagination, she was gentle and soft, and she stroked his hair away from his face. In his imagination, she loved him so devoutly that she’d never leave. When he lay in his bed at night, his dad drinking in front of the TV, he used to close his eyes and pretend that his mother was sitting on the edge of his bed, asking about his day. He’d imagined that well into his teen years...longer than he should have needed it.

      “Do you know why she left?” Nora asked.

      “She and Dad both drank a lot. They fought pretty viciously. I don’t know. She left a note that just said that she’d had enough. She was leaving, and we shouldn’t try to find her.”

      “But she didn’t take you with her,” Nora pointed out.

      Easton had questioned that over the years. If life was such hell here in Hope, why wouldn’t she take her little boy along? Why would she leave him like that? She’d walked out, and he’d been left with an alcoholic