The Triplets' Cowboy Daddy

Her mother carried the stroller over and together they unfolded it and snapped it into its open position. It was an umbrella stroller with three seats lined up side by side. It was perfect. Not too big, not too heavy, and she could transport all three babies at once.

“I had an idea.” Dina shot Nora a smile. “Let’s load the babies into this and you can come pick the last of the strawberries with me.”

They used to pick strawberries together every summer when Nora was young. They’d eat as they picked, and even with all the eating, they’d fill bucket after bucket. Dina would make jam with some of them, freeze a bunch more and then there would be fresh strawberries for everything from waffles to ice cream. Nora used to love strawberry-picking. Then she became a teenager, and she and her mother stopped getting along quite so well.

Nora met her mother’s gaze, and she saw hope in Dina’s eyes—the flimsy, vulnerable kind of hope that wavered, ready to evaporate. Maybe her mother was thinking of those sweet days, too, when they used to laugh together and Dina would let Nora whip up some cream for the berries.

“Yeah, okay,” Nora said.

They transferred the babies to the stroller quickly enough, and the stroller rattled and jerked as Nora pushed it down the gravel road—the babies undisturbed. Maybe this was why Mack hadn’t used it much. The wheels were quite small, so every rock could be felt underneath them. But Nora had gotten them all outside, and that was a feat in itself.

“So what are you going to do about the babies?” her mother asked as they walked.

“Would it be crazy to raise them?” Nora asked.

“Three infants on your own?” her mother asked.

“Three infants, you and me.”

Her mother didn’t answer right away, and sadness welled up inside Nora. It was crazy. And it was too much to ask of her mom right now. Maybe ever. Her mother reached over and put a hand on top of Nora’s on the stroller handle.

“I’ve missed you,” Dina said quietly. “It’s nice to have you home.”

It wasn’t an answer—not directly, at least—but it was clear enough. They were still on opposite sides, it seemed, even with the babies. But Nora had always been stubborn, and she wasn’t willing to let this go gracefully.

“I came home because I thought you’d help me,” Nora pressed.

“And I will. As much as I can.”

They all had limits to what they could give, and Nora had taken on more than she could possibly handle on her own. The problem was that she was already falling in love with these little girls. With every bottle, every diaper change, every snuggle and coo and cry, her heart was becoming more and more entwined with theirs. But was keeping them the right choice?

The strawberry patch was on the far side of the main house, and Nora parked the stroller in the shade of an apple tree then moved into the sunshine where Dina had the buckets waiting. Dina came back over to the stroller and squatted down in front of it. Sadness welled in her eyes as she looked at the sleeping infants.

“I get it,” Dina said, glancing up at her daughter. “When I first held you, I fell in love, too. It couldn’t be helped.”

“They’re sweet,” Nora said, a catch in her voice.

“Adorable.” Her mother rose to her feet again and sighed. “Your dad would have—” Dina’s chin quivered and she turned away.

“Dad would probably have hidden them,” Nora said bitterly. Mia had told her enough to be clear that Cliff had known about her existence, even if they’d never met. “He hid his daughter, why should his granddaughters be any different?”

That secrecy—the whole other family—stabbed at a tender place in Nora’s heart. How was it possible for a man to have secrets that large and never let on? Didn’t he feel guilty about it? Didn’t something inside him jab just a little bit when he sat in church on Sunday? He had a reputation in this town, and this didn’t line up with the way people saw him. She hoped that he did feel guilt—the kind to keep him up at night—because this wasn’t just his private mistake; this had affected them all.

“Let’s pick berries,” her mother said.

But hidden or not, Nora’s father would have fallen in love with these baby girls, too. He’d probably cherished a secret love for the daughter he’d never met. And hidden that love. So many lies by omission...

“Mom, if Dad had lived,” Nora said, grabbing an ice cream pail and squatting at the start of a row, “what would you have done? I mean if Mia had suddenly dropped on our doorstep and announced herself, what then?”

“I’d have divorced him.” There was steel in Dina’s voice, and she grabbed a pail and crouched down next to Nora. They spread the leaves apart and began picking plump, red berries. “I had no idea he had someone else...”

“Mia said he wasn’t in her life at all, though,” Nora said. “Maybe the affair wasn’t long-term.”

Her mother shook her head. “I don’t care how long it was. When your husband sleeps with someone else, there is nothing casual about it. It’s no accident, either. He chose to do the one thing that would tear my heart in two. He chose it.”

“Do you hate him now?”

Her mother’s voice was quiet. “I do this morning.”

The berries were plentiful, and they picked in silence for a few minutes. Nora’s mind was moving over her plans. If she kept these babies, she’d need help. She’d taken her twelve weeks of parental leave from her bookkeeping job, but when she went back to work again, she’d be paying for three children in day care. She couldn’t afford that...not on her middling salary, and certainly not as a single mom. Staying in Hope to raise the girls would be the smart choice, but she hadn’t taken her mother’s emotional state into the equation. She didn’t have her mother’s support in keeping the babies, and she didn’t have that little homestead where she could have set up house. She didn’t have a job here, either, besides the family ranch. So she’d come home, unsure what the next step should be, but certain that this was the place where she could make her decisions.

They were halfway down the second row, six buckets filled with ripe, plump berries, when a neighbor’s truck pulled into the drive.

“It’s Jennifer,” Dina said, glancing up. Then she added with a dry tone, “Great.”

The neighbor woman hopped out of her truck and waved, then headed across the lawn toward them. She wore a pair of jeans and a loose tank top, a pair of gardening gloves shoved into her back pocket. She was also Dina’s second cousin twice removed or something to that effect.

“Morning!” Jennifer called. She was in her early fifties, and her hair was iron gray, pulled back with a couple of barrettes.

“Morning.” Dina looked less enthusiastic, but she met Jennifer’s gaze evenly. “What brings you by?”

“Curiosity.” Jennifer peered behind them at the stroller. “I heard about the triplets.”

Nora watched as her mother pushed herself to her feet. It was already out there—their deepest pain being bandied about by the local gossips.

“Well...” Dina seemed at a loss for words.

“They’re sleeping right now,” Nora said, and she led Jennifer toward the stroller.

The older woman looked down at them then glanced at Dina.

“I had no idea Cliff was that kind of man. To live with a man for what—thirty-five years?—and you’d think you knew him.”

“You’d think,” Dina replied drily.

“So what happened?” Jennifer asked, plucking a berry from one of the filled buckets and tugging off the stem. “Did you see the signs?” She popped the strawberry into her mouth.

“Of my husband fathering another child?” Dina asked, anger sparking under the sadness. “What would that look like exactly, Jen?”

Jennifer’s ex-husband was a known philanderer, while Nora’s parents had always appeared to be the most devoted couple. Nora had never seen her parents fight—not once. Her father was a tough, unbending man, but somehow he and Dina could look at each other and come to a decision without saying a word. People commented on the strength of that marriage. Jennifer and Paul, however—everyone knew what Paul did on the side. And Jennifer and Paul had very public arguments about it on a regular basis.

“Paul was obvious,” Jennifer retorted. “Cliff wasn’t. I can normally point out a cheating man a mile away—I mean, I’m kind enough not to tell the wife, but I can spot it. Cliff didn’t seem like the type.”

Jennifer was enjoying this—there was a glimmer of gaiety under the external show of concern, the cheeriness of not being the one in the crosshairs for a change. But this was Nora’s father being torn apart...and Nora couldn’t help feeling a strange combination of anger at her dad and protectiveness toward him at the same time. He deserved to be raked across the coals—by Dina and Nora, not the town. He was theirs to resent, to hate, to love, to be furious with. The town of Hope, for all its good intentions, could bloody well back off.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Dina replied shortly.

“Oh, I get it, I get it...” Jennifer hunched down next to a row of strawberry plants and beckoned toward the pile of empty buckets. “Pass me one, would you? I’ll give you a hand.”

They wouldn’t get rid of her easily, it seemed, and Nora exchanged a look with her mother. This wasn’t just her mother’s shame, it was Nora’s, too. Cliff had left them in this strange position of being pitied, watched, gossiped over. And in spite of it all, he was still her dad. Besides, she couldn’t help but feel a little bit responsible for bringing this gossip down onto her mother’s head, because she’d been the one to bring the babies here. Without the babies, no one would have been the wiser.

“It’s scary,” Jennifer prattled on, accepting a bucket and starting to pick. “I mean, will it affect the will? Do you remember the exact wording? Because if the wording is about ‘children’ in general, it includes any children he’s had outside of wedlock, too. But if he names Nora specifically...”

There wasn’t much choice but to keep picking, and Nora realized with a rush that keeping these babies in the family wouldn’t be as simple as winning her mother over. Dina wasn’t the only one who would be thinking about Cliff’s infidelity when she looked at those girls—the entire town would.

Those babies represented a man’s fall from grace, a besmirched reputation and hearts mangled in collateral damage. It wasn’t that this town was cruel, it was that a sordid scandal was interesting, and people couldn’t help but enjoy it a little. Gossip fueled Hope, Montana, and these three innocent babies had just brought enough fuel to last for years.

“You know what, Jennifer?” Nora rose to her feet and wiped the dirt off her knees. “I think Mom and I have it from here. Thanks, though.”

The older woman looked startled then mildly embarrassed.

“Oh...yes, of course.”

Jennifer wiped her own knees off and took some long steps over the rows of strawberry plants until she was on the grass again. They had an awkward goodbye, and then Jennifer headed back toward her vehicle. 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 father who could barely function. It was selfish. If she hadn’t loved Dad, he could understand that. But why hadn’t she loved him?

“Yeah...” He didn’t have anything else to say to that. It was a fact—she’d left him behind.

“Do you remember her?” she asked.

“Not much,” he admitted. “My dad dumped her stuff out into a pile and burned it. I guess that was cathartic for him. I managed to sneak off with one of her shirts—some discarded thing she didn’t feel like bringing with her, I guess. I kept it under my mattress. It smelled like her cigarettes. I have that still.”

“Why didn’t I know about this?” Nora murmured.

A better question was, why had he told her now? Nora came from a loving home with parents who both adored her. Her family ran the ranch very successfully, and she’d had a bright future. He’d had none of those things, and yet he was still willing to be there for her, give her whatever support she needed. Why? Because he’d been in love with her, and maybe deep down he was afraid that if she knew the mess inside him, it would turn her off him.

“That’s not how we worked, you and I,” he said after a moment.

“Meaning I was self-involved.” She winced. “I’m sorry. I must have been.”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. You were used to happier days than I was. You were more easily disappointed.”

“I wish I’d been a better friend,” she said.

But it wasn’t friendship that would have soothed his teenage soul. If she’d been a more attentive friend, it might have made it harder. He might have actually held out hope that she’d see more in him. But being six inches shorter with a face full of acne had taken care of that.

“It’s okay,” he said. “It was a long time ago.”

Easton needed to be careful, though, because not much had changed. She was still the heir to the ranch he worked, she was still the much loved daughter of the owner and she still needed his emotional support right now...except he wasn’t so naive this time around. He knew how this ended. Nora would pull things together and she’d step out into that bright future of hers, leaving him right where he’d always been—on the ranch. She’d walk away again, and she wouldn’t think to look back.

“You have the magic touch with the babies,” she said, easing herself forward to stand up. “Thank you.”

“No problem.” What else was he supposed to do when three tiny girls had taken over his home? She walked toward the stairs with Bobbie in her arms.

“Why didn’t you call your mom when the babies wouldn’t stop crying?” he asked, and she looked back.

“Because she isn’t really on board with this. Getting my mom’s help isn’t as great a solution as I thought. If I’m going to raise these girls, I’ll have to figure out a way to do it on my own.”

He’d suspected as much. While she’d probably pitch in, it was a bit much to expect Dina to joyfully embrace raising her late husband’s other family.

“I’ll get them back up to the crib,” she said. “I’ll be back.”

And she disappeared from the room. He wasn’t a long-term solution, either. He never had been, not in her eyes, and he wasn’t about to make the same mistake he’d made as a teen. He didn’t cross oceans for someone who wouldn’t jump a puddle for him. Not anymore.

Chapter Four

That night Nora had managed to feed the babies without waking Easton, and when she got up again for their 6 a.m. feeding, Easton was gone, leaving behind percolated coffee cooling on the stove while he did his chores. She’d gone back to bed—her theory had been right and exhaustion made sleep possible—and when she opened her eyes at eight and got dressed, she’d found another pot of coffee freshly percolated on the stove. He’d been back, it seemed. And he’d be back for this pot, too, but she took a cup of coffee anyway—she desperately needed the caffeine kick.

The house felt more familiar without Easton around, and she stood in the kitchen, soaking in the rays of sunlight that slanted through the kitchen window, warming her toes. She sipped the coffee from a mug that said Save a Cow, Eat a Vegetarian. That was a sample of Easton’s humor, apparently. She let her gaze flow over the details of this kitchen that she’d always loved...like the curtains that she’d sewn as a kid with the flying bluebird–patterned fabric. She’d made them in home ec, and she’d been so proud of them, despite the wandering hemline and the fact that one side was shorter than the other.

He kept those.

It was strange, because Easton hadn’t kept much else of the original decor—not that she could blame him. The furniture and kitchenware had all been castoffs from the main house. Anything of value—sentimental or otherwise—had been distributed amongst the extended family when Great-Granny passed away. Easton’s furniture was all new, and the kitchen had gleaming pots and pans. The dishes in the cupboard were a simple set of four of each dish, but they had obviously been recently purchased except for a few well-worn mugs like the one she was using now. There had been some renovations, too—fresh paint, some added built-in benches in the mudroom. He’d taken pride in this place.

And yet the floor was the same—patches worn in the linoleum by the fridge and stove. Though freshly painted, the windowsills still had that worn dip in the centers from decades of elbows and scrubbing. Nora used to stand by those windows while her elderly great-grandmother baked in the sweltering kitchen. She used to scoot past the fridge, wondering if Granny would catch her if she snagged another creamsicle. This old place held so many childhood memories, so many family stories that started with “When Great-Granny and Great-Grandpa lived in the old house...”