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The passengers climbed out and stretched their cramped legs.
Pruitt walked a few paces away and breathed like a man who had escaped drowning.
The old man blinked awake, looked around like he had forgotten where he was, then yawned so wide it cracked.
Owen stayed close to the coach, the baby pressed to his chest.
The child had worn himself down into a shaky quiet, hiccuping like he had swallowed the last of his anger.
“You’re fine,” Owen whispered, bouncing in what he hoped was a gentle rhythm. “You’re alive. That should count for something.”
The baby whimpered and turned his face into Owen’s coat.
Owen’s coat was dark wool, too heavy for the day. It carried the smell of horse, leather, and something faintly clean underneath—soap, maybe, or the ghost of Caroline’s perfume that Owen refused to wash out.
Vera stood in the shade of the station house, watching Owen pace.
He moved like a man who knew how to work cattle, but not how to soothe a child. Every step was too firm. Every bounce was slightly off.
Because effort didn’t always save you.
Vera’s chest tightened again, and she looked away before anyone could read her face.
She had learned, long ago, that people could read grief and turn it into a weapon.
When Vera’s husband had died—Eli Buckley, killed in a sudden accident that left his boots by the door and his hands forever unfinished—neighbors had arrived with casseroles and pity.
At first.
Then, as weeks passed, they began to look at her differently.
A widow in her twenties was a thing people watched.
Some women watched for mistakes.
When Martha died, the pity had turned into something else—an uncomfortable distance, as if tragedy might be catching.
Vera had decided she needed to leave before her grief became the only story people told about her.
Her cousin had written from Fort Collins, offering work at a boarding house, promising a roof and a chance to start again.
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