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She examined the other envelopes without breaking their seals. Each carried a different name. Different handwriting. Women who had put hopes and questions on paper and waited for an answer that might never have come.

“How did they get in the bag?” she asked.

Aunt Cleo shook her head. “Couldn’t say. But I wasn’t going to throw them in the stove just because nobody remembered them.”

“No,” Eden said. “Of course not.”

Jesse returned the envelope to its place. “We’d better ask around before we open anything.”

“After Christmas,” Aunt Cleo said firmly. “Tonight’s for celebrating what’s here, not fretting over what was lost.”

Eden folded the flap shut. “We’ll keep them safe.”

“Good.” Aunt Cleo took back her shawl. “Now go enjoy your anniversary. I’ve had enough of young married people looking at clocks.”

Eden laughed, and Jesse picked up the bag to place it on the shelf in the front room. He did not open it again.

Later, when the last wagon had gone and the ranch house had quieted, Eden found Jesse near the front door pulling on his coat.

“Where are you going?”

“Out to the porch. Come with me?”

She fetched her shawl. Snow started falling, small flakes drifting through the lantern light. The yard lay still, the barn a dark shape beyond the fence. Buck shifted in his stall, and another horse answered with a soft snort.

Jesse stood beside her beneath the porch roof. In the light from the doorway, she could see the fine scar near his temple and the familiar crooked grin she was thankful for every day. His right hand rested against the railing. It worked well enough now to handle reins, buttons, and the dozens of small tasks he’d fought so hard to reclaim. Sometimes it still trembled. He never pretended otherwise.

“Cold?” he asked.

“A little.”

He moved closer, wrapping his good arm around her. They watched the snow settle along the fence rails.

“Remember when you promised to teach me to ride?” she asked.

“Remember when you told me Buck liked you better?”

“He did like me better.”

“He likes apples.”

“So do I.”

They had ridden together many times since spring. He began with a quiet mare and a patient explanation of the reins, and Eden had learned both faster than he expected. On their last ride before the cold set in, she had even outrun him to the cottonwoods. He maintained Buck had let her win.

“I’ve got something for you,” she said.

She drew the small package from her apron pocket. Inside was a slim booklet of folded pages bound with blue ribbon—the same ribbon she’d brought from Missouri. On the first page, she’d copied a line from the letter Emily sent, the one that had started her journey. After it came pieces of the letters Jesse had written to her during the weeks when he was still too weak to ride far, small notes passed across the supper table, and one sheet on which he’d practiced writing with his recovering hand.

Jesse opened it carefully. His thumb rested over the unsteady letters on that last page.

“You kept this?”

“Every word.”

His gaze lifted to hers. “I was making a fine mess of my handwriting.”

“You were writing to me.”