Chapter 14 – Fridays Again

“Annie,” he said, the name in the room.

The baby made the small sound of someone who had recently arrived and was still deciding. Clara reached for his hand, and he gave it.

“Thank you,” he said.

She held his hand. Outside, the Wyoming March was beginning to suggest spring at the edges. The mountains to the east were catching the first light. And in the room where Annie Rose Hail had just arrived in the world, Thomas held his daughter, Clara held Thomas’s hand, and the morning came through the window. It was, without question, exactly right.

He still went on Fridays—not every Friday now. Life was different with a daughter who had opinions about schedules, a wife whose shop had grown since Denver, and a ranch that required the same attention it always had. But most Fridays in the afternoon, Thomas walked up the hill east of Millfield with wildflowers from Bennett’s.

Sometimes Clara came. Sometimes Annie Rose came—first carried, then walking, then asking questions the way small children ask questions: continuously and without regard for whether the previous answer had been received.

On one of her first real visits, Annie Rose patted the headstone with the confident affection of a child who has decided something belongs to her. “Hi,” she said to the stone. “I have your name.”

Thomas looked at his daughter, then at the mountains, then at Clara, who was standing a few feet away with the expression of someone watching something true happen and not wanting to interrupt it. He looked at the grave. He did not say anything out loud; some things did not require words.

Clara came and stood beside him. Annie Rose had already moved on to examining a wildflower with great intensity.

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“She would have liked this,” Thomas said.

“Yes,” Clara said. She looked at Annie Rose, who had picked the flower and was now offering it solemnly to the headstone. “I think she does.”