Clara’s fingers clawed at the rope around her wrists until her nails tore and bled. The hemp cut deeper with every jolt of the wagon wheels, grinding dust and pain into her skin. They were dragging her toward the lake in her wedding dress, and her own father stood watching with his hat in his hands, saying nothing.
The preacher had called her a witch.
The town believed him.
And the water was waiting.
Clara tasted blood. Her lip had split when they threw her onto the wagon, and now the copper tang mixed with dust each time she tried to breathe. Her hands were bound behind her back, and every bump in the road tightened the rope further.
“Please,” she whispered to the woman sitting across from her. “Mrs. Patterson, you know me. You know I ain’t what they say.”
Mrs. Patterson had taught Clara her letters when she was seven years old. Now the older woman turned her face away.
“Don’t speak to me, witch.”
The word struck harder than any fist. Clara closed her eyes.
Three days earlier she had been Clara Hollister, the quiet girl who helped at the schoolhouse and grew tomatoes behind her father’s falling-down cabin. Three days earlier she had been engaged to Thaddeus Pike—not because she loved him, and certainly not because she liked him, but because her father owed Pike six hundred dollars in gambling debts.
“You’ll marry him,” Tobias Hollister had said without looking at her. “It’s the only way.”
Clara had not argued. Women like her did not get choices. They got transactions.
But during the rehearsal at the church, Thaddeus Pike had suddenly clutched his chest. He made a strangled sound like a stepped-on cat and collapsed face-first onto the wooden floorboards.
And everything changed.
The wagon stopped.
Clara heard voices—dozens of them—rising and falling like waves. When she forced her eyes open, she saw the crowd gathered at the edge of Dead Man’s Lake.
Fifty people, perhaps more.
Farmers she had known her whole life. Women who had bounced her on their knees when she was a baby. Children she had taught to read.
They stared at her as if she were something less than human.
“Bring her out,” a voice commanded.
Reverend Ezekiel Crane stepped forward from the crowd. He was tall and thin, dressed in black from hat to boots. His eyes were the color of coal.
He had arrived in Serenity Springs two months earlier, just as the wells began running dry. His sermons spoke of sin and curses, of judgment and devils hiding among the righteous.
And eventually he had begun preaching about Clara.
“The Lord has revealed the truth to me,” Crane declared, spreading his arms wide. “This woman carries a curse in her womb. Her barrenness has infected the land itself. The wells run dry because her sin cries out from the earth.”
“I ain’t barren!” Clara shouted as hands dragged her from the wagon. “I ain’t never even— I was supposed to get married. How would anyone know if I was barren?”
Crane smiled.
“The Lord knows, child. The Lord always knows.”
They pulled her through the crowd. Hands struck her, tore at her hair, clawed at the ruined white satin of her dress. Dirt, sweat, and blood stained the fabric she had been wearing when they came for her. She had not even been allowed time to change.
“Father!” she screamed.
She found Tobias Hollister standing near the back beside the general store. His shoulders were hunched. His hat hung in his hands. His eyes stayed fixed on the ground.
He did not move.
He did not speak.
Something inside Clara finally broke.
“You coward,” she whispered.
Then louder.
“You coward! You sold me to pay your debts, and now you’re letting them kill me. I’m your daughter!”
Tobias flinched but did not raise his head.
“She is no man’s daughter,” Reverend Crane said. “She is a child of the devil. The water will judge her.”
They reached the dock. Dead Man’s Lake stretched before them, its surface dark and still.
Clara’s legs buckled.
Two men hauled her upright.
“Tie the stones,” Crane ordered.
A young man knelt at her feet with a sack of rocks. His hands trembled.
“Tommy,” Clara said softly. “Tommy, I taught you to read. Remember? You couldn’t say the letter R.”
Tears filled the boy’s eyes.
“I’m sorry, Miss Clara.”
“Then don’t do this.”
“He has to,” Crane said coldly. “Or his family will be next.”
Tommy tied the sack around her ankles.
The weight dragged downward immediately.
Clara looked at the crowd one final time. Fear, hatred, shame. Mothers clutching their children. Men refusing to meet her eyes.
And her father, still silent.
“I forgive you,” she said.
She did not know if it was true.
“I forgive all of you. But God won’t.”
Crane struck her across the face.
“You dare speak of God? You murdered your betrothed.”
“He had a weak heart,” Clara cried. “The doctor said—”
“The doctor has been corrupted by you.”
He raised his hand.
“Cast her in.”
“No!”
Hands shoved her forward.
For one endless moment she hung in the air, her torn wedding dress billowing like wings.
Then the lake swallowed her.
The cold hit like a fist. The stones dragged her down into darkness. She fought against the ropes, kicking, clawing, but the weight was too much.
Light faded.
Her lungs burned.
This is how I die, she thought.
Alone in the dark. Wearing a wedding dress meant for a man I never wanted. Killed by people I’ve known my whole life.
Then through the water she heard something.
Hoofbeats.
Shouting.
A gunshot.
Samuel Blackwood had been watching Serenity Springs for three days.
He disliked the town. He disliked the people even more. And he particularly disliked the greasy preacher who had arrived from nowhere and started stirring fear.
But Samuel had business with Thaddeus Pike.
And business did not care about personal feelings.
“Pike’s dead,” his foreman Elijah Moss had said that morning. “Heart gave out three days ago.”
Samuel had cursed. Pike owed him a considerable sum of money.
Dead men were notoriously unreliable debtors.
“There’s more,” Elijah added. “They’re saying his bride killed him. Witchcraft, they’re calling it. Word is they’re taking her to the lake today.”
Samuel felt something cold settle in his stomach.
Now he sat astride his black stallion on a ridge overlooking Dead Man’s Lake.
Below him, the town gathered like vultures around carrion.
Samuel Blackwood was thirty-four years old. He owned fifteen thousand acres of grazing land known as Blackwood Ranch, built from nothing after his parents died in a fire when he was twelve.
He had wealth, land, power, and a reputation that made other men cross the street.
And he had no one.
No wife.
No children.
No one who would mourn him when he died.
“Boss,” Elijah said quietly. “They’re going to do it.”
Samuel saw them push the girl.
The white dress vanished beneath the water.
Something inside him snapped.
“Let’s go.”
He spurred his horse.
The stallion thundered down the ridge, Samuel’s men close behind. The crowd scattered as he rode straight through them and stopped at the dock.
Reverend Crane stood there in shock.
“What is the meaning of this?” the preacher demanded.
Samuel drew his Colt and fired.
The bullet struck the dock six inches from Crane’s ear.
“Where is she?”
“She is being judged by God—”
Samuel cocked the hammer again.
“I said, where is she?”
Crane pointed toward the lake.
Samuel dropped his gun belt and dove.
The water was thick with algae and mud. He could barely see an arm’s length ahead. He kicked downward, sweeping his hands through darkness.
His lungs burned.
Then his hand touched fabric.
He grabbed it.
The girl’s body drifted limp beneath the surface, the rope still tied around her ankles. Samuel slashed the rope with his knife and kicked for the surface.
They broke through together.
He dragged her onto the bank.
Her lips were blue. Her chest was still.
“Breathe,” he muttered, pressing her ribs.
Nothing.
He tilted her head back and forced air into her lungs.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
She convulsed violently and coughed lake water onto the dirt.
Samuel exhaled.
She was alive.
When she opened her eyes, they were green—bright, terrified.
“You’re safe,” he said.
She gave a broken laugh.
“Mister, look around you.”
Samuel turned.
The crowd had regrouped.
Reverend Crane stepped forward.
“Mr. Blackwood, I presume. Your reputation precedes you.”
“And yours is becoming clearer by the minute,” Samuel said.
“This woman is a witch.”
“She’s a woman whose fiancé died of a weak heart.”
“She has no protector, no husband, no father willing to claim her,” Crane said. “Under the moral law of this community, she belongs to us.”
Samuel looked down at the trembling woman in the ruined wedding dress.
Then he took her hand.
“What’s your name?”
“Clara,” she whispered. “Clara Hollister.”
He nodded.
“Clara Hollister, marry me.”
The crowd erupted.
“You don’t even know me,” she said.
“I know if you say no, they’ll throw you back in that lake.”
He squeezed her cold fingers.
“Marry me.”
Clara looked at the mob.
At Reverend Crane.
At her silent father.
Then back at Samuel Blackwood.
“Yes.”
Samuel turned toward the preacher.
“You heard the lady.”
Crane spat.
“I will not—”
“You will,” Samuel said, resting his hand on his revolver. “Or I’ll drag you to the sheriff in Laramie and explain how you tried to murder a woman.”
The ceremony lasted less than two minutes.
When Crane finished, Samuel scooped Clara into his arms.
“Now we’re leaving.”
And with that, he carried his new wife to his horse and rode away from Serenity Springs.
The ride from Serenity Springs lasted three hours.
Clara did not speak for most of it.
Every breath still carried the taste of lake water. Each time she closed her eyes she saw the crowd gathered on the shore, the faces of neighbors twisted with fear and hatred. When the wind brushed her ankles she felt the phantom pull of stones dragging her toward darkness.
Samuel Blackwood said nothing either.
He rode behind her on the saddle, one arm wrapped around her waist to keep her steady. His grip was firm but not possessive, warm despite the dust and heat. When her shivering became violent, he pulled a flask from his saddlebag.
“Drink.”
Clara took it with numb fingers. The whiskey burned down her throat, but warmth spread through her chest like a small fire.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“Don’t thank me yet.”
She turned slightly.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you don’t know me, Clara. You don’t know what kind of man I am or what kind of life you’re walking into.”
“I know you pulled me out of that lake when everyone else watched me drown.”
Samuel made a quiet sound that might have been a laugh.
“You set the bar real low, Mrs. Blackwood.”
The name struck her like a physical blow.
Mrs. Blackwood.
She was married. Married to a stranger she had known less than an hour.
“This is real,” she said quietly. “Ain’t it?”
“It’s real.”
“And you really married me?”
“I did.”
“Why?”
Samuel did not answer immediately. For a moment Clara thought he would remain silent.
Then he said, “Your father’s land sits on top of the biggest underground water source in the territory.”
Clara went rigid.
“What?”
“Thaddeus Pike knew about it. That’s why he agreed to pay off your father’s debts if you married him.”
“The drought,” Clara murmured. “The wells…”
“The water table shifted,” Samuel said. “The water’s still there. Just trapped underground. Under your father’s land.”
The realization hit her like a blow.
“The witch hunt,” she whispered. “It wasn’t about curses.”
“No,” Samuel said. “It was about control.”
“And you married me for the land.”
“I married you to keep you alive. The land’s a bonus.”
Clara swallowed the bitter taste rising in her throat.
“You’re no different than Pike.”
Samuel’s arm tightened around her waist.
“I’m very different. Pike was going to use you and discard you. I’m offering you a partnership.”
“A partnership.”
“You get my name, my protection, and my resources. I get the water rights.”
“And the other parts of marriage?”
Samuel’s breath brushed her ear.
“I won’t touch you unless you want me to. You’ll have your own rooms, your own life.”
“Then what do you want?”
“Someone who will stand beside me. Someone who won’t run when things get hard.”
He paused.
“Someone who can fight.”
Clara thought of the lake.
“I can fight,” she said quietly.
“I know,” Samuel replied. “I saw.”
They reached Blackwood Ranch at sunset.
Clara gasped.
The valley spread wide beneath them, green pastures stretching to the horizon. A river wound through the land like silver thread. Thousands of cattle dotted the fields.
At the center of it all stood a massive house on a gentle hill.
“Welcome to Blackwood Ranch,” Samuel said.
Clara stared in disbelief.
She had grown up in a two-room cabin with a leaking roof and a drunken father.
This felt like another world.
“How?” she whispered.
“Twenty-two years of work,” Samuel said.
They rode into the yard.
Ranch hands stopped their work to stare. Clara could feel their eyes on her ruined wedding dress and soaked hair.
“They’re looking,” she murmured.
“You’re wearing a wedding dress and dripping lake water,” Samuel said. “They’re going to look.”
The front door burst open.
A gray-haired woman stormed down the steps.
“Samuel James Blackwood!” she shouted. “What in God’s name have you done?”
“Martha,” Samuel said calmly. “This is Clara. My wife.”
The woman froze.
“Your wife?”
“Yes.”
“The girl they were drowning in Serenity Springs?”
“Yes.”
“The one they’re calling a witch?”
“Yes.”
Martha’s sharp eyes swept over Clara—the rope burns, the bruised cheek, the ruined dress.
“Lord have mercy,” she muttered. “You poor child.”
Clara felt tears sting her eyes.
It was the first kindness she had received in days.
“Get her inside,” Martha ordered. “She needs a bath, clean clothes, and food. And you”—she pointed at Samuel—“owe me an explanation.”
“Later,” Samuel said.
“Now.”
“Later.”
Something in his voice made Martha pause.
She studied Clara again, then nodded.
“Fine. Come on, child.”
The house was enormous inside.
Polished floors gleamed under the lamplight. A sweeping staircase rose toward the second floor.
Clara stumbled on the first step.
“When’s the last time you ate?” Martha asked.
“I don’t remember.”
“Last time you slept?”
“I don’t remember that either.”
“Men,” Martha muttered. “Never thinking about practical things.”
She led Clara to a bedroom larger than Clara’s entire childhood cabin.
Hot water was brought.
Clara sank into the bath, watching dirt, blood, and lake water swirl away.
But the memory would not wash off.
When she finished dressing in clean clothes, shouting erupted downstairs.
Martha rushed to the door and listened.
“Riders,” she said quietly.
Clara’s stomach tightened.
“Crane.”
“Stay here,” Martha said. “No matter what.”
Clara waited only until Martha’s footsteps faded.
Then she followed.
Samuel stood in the hallway below.
A man faced him near the door.
“You got no right to keep her, Blackwood,” the stranger said.
“She’s wanted for murder.”
“She’s wanted for nothing,” Samuel replied coldly.
“Crane’s got fifty guns ready to ride on this place.”
“Tell him I’m counting on it.”
The man left.
Clara stepped forward.
Samuel turned immediately.
“You can come out now.”
“How did you know?”
“I could hear you breathing.”
His eyes swept over her borrowed clothes and bare feet.
“I told Martha to keep you upstairs.”
“I don’t take orders.”
“I’m noticing that.”
“Fifty guns?” she asked.
“More like twenty.”
“That’s still twenty.”
“I’ve got forty.”
She wrapped her arms around herself.
“This is my fault.”
“No.”
“If you hadn’t saved me—”
“Stop.”
Samuel stepped closer.
“You didn’t cause this. Greedy men did.”
“My father—”
“Your father sold you,” Samuel said bluntly. “Then watched them drown you.”
Clara flinched.
Tears finally broke free.
Samuel did not try to comfort her.
He simply stood there.
Solid.
When the sobbing stopped, he handed her a handkerchief.
“Feel better?”
“No.”
“You will.”
He turned toward the stairs.
“Tomorrow we plan.”
“For what?”
Samuel paused.
“For war.”
Morning came too quickly.
Clara woke in the large bed, her body aching, her wrists bandaged.
Martha brought breakfast.
“Eat,” she said. “Samuel called a meeting.”
Clara dressed and went downstairs.
The study was filled with men.
Samuel sat behind a heavy desk. Beside him stood Elijah Moss, his foreman, a weathered man with gray in his beard.
On the other side stood a younger man with an easy smile.
“This is Jedediah Cole,” Samuel said. “He handles the books.”
Jed took Clara’s hand and kissed her knuckles.
“A pleasure.”
Something in his smile unsettled her.
Samuel began explaining.
“Crane wants the water under your land. Killing you was the easiest way to get it.”
“How?”
“If you died unmarried, the land would revert to the bank. Crane could buy it cheap.”
Clara’s jaw tightened.
“My father won’t fight him.”
“He doesn’t have to,” Samuel said. “You’re married now.”
The room fell quiet.
“Is that all I am?” Clara asked. “A deed?”
Samuel met her eyes calmly.
“No. But right now the deed keeps you alive.”
Clara looked at the men surrounding her.
Then she said quietly:
“I want to see Crane lose.”
Samuel’s smile was cold.
“Then we understand each other.”
At that moment the door burst open.
“Riders!” a ranch hand shouted.
“The sheriff from Laram!”
Clara stood.
“I’m coming outside.”
“No,” Samuel said.
“I’m done hiding.”
He studied her.
Then nodded.
“Stay behind me.”
Sheriff Rawlings arrived with twelve deputies.
After hearing Clara’s story, he folded the arrest paper and tucked it away.
“Seems to me there’s two sides to every story,” he said.
Then he rode away.
That night the north hay barn burned.
Clara joined the bucket line beside the ranch hands until the fire was contained.
Samuel stood staring at the smoking ruin.
“This is war now,” he said.
Clara nodded.
“I know.”
Three days later Samuel began teaching her to shoot.
Her hands blistered. Her shoulders ached.
“Stop flinching,” he said.
“I’m not flinching.”
“You are.”
She lowered the revolver.
“The last time someone pointed a gun at me, they were trying to kill me.”
Samuel didn’t argue.
Later that night Martha found Clara practicing with the unloaded gun.
“What do you think of Samuel?” Martha asked.
Clara considered.
“He’s the most dangerous man I’ve ever met.”
“And?”
“And the only reason I’m alive.”
Martha smiled faintly.
“He looks at you different.”
Clara laughed.
“He looks at me like I’m a problem.”
“No,” Martha said. “He looks at you like he’s scared.”
That night Samuel came to Clara’s door.
Neither of them could sleep.
They spoke quietly in the moonlight.
About loneliness.
About survival.
About the future.
And when he kissed her, the careful distance between them finally broke.
At dawn the next morning, everything changed.
A wounded rider arrived.
“Ambush,” he gasped.
“They got the boss.”
Clara felt the world tilt.
“Where is he?”
“Serenity Springs. Crane’s holding him.”
“When?”
“Dawn tomorrow. Public hanging.”
Clara turned to Elijah.
“Gather the men.”
The foreman hesitated.
“Mrs. Blackwood—”
“My husband is about to be hanged.”
Elijah nodded slowly.
“Yes ma’am.”
Forty ranch hands gathered in the study.
“What do you think you’re going to do?” one asked.
Clara met his gaze.
“I’m going to get my husband back.”
Silence filled the room.
Then Elijah said quietly:
“The lady asked you a question.”
One by one the men straightened.
“What do you need, Mrs. Blackwood?”
Clara answered.
“A plan.”
And war began.
They rode out an hour before dawn.
Twelve riders moved through the darkness, hooves muffled against the dry earth as they followed the narrow mining trail that wound through the hills north of Serenity Springs. The path was treacherous—little more than a scar along the ridge—but it offered what Clara needed most.
Surprise.
Elijah rode on her right, silent and watchful. Jedediah Cole rode on her left, guiding them through the terrain he claimed to know better than anyone alive. Behind them followed nine ranch hands from Blackwood Ranch, men who had agreed without hesitation to ride into danger for the man who had built their livelihoods.
Clara led them.
The responsibility pressed heavily on her shoulders, but she did not falter.
At the crest of the ridge overlooking Serenity Springs, the first gray light of morning crept across the valley. From above, the town looked peaceful—rows of buildings arranged around the church steeple, smoke curling lazily from chimneys.
It looked exactly as it had before they tried to drown her.
Jed pointed toward the church.
“The cellar’s down there. That’s where Crane keeps prisoners.”
Clara studied the town below, forcing herself to think clearly.
“Elijah,” she said quietly, “take six men to the east road. Make noise. Draw their attention.”
Elijah nodded.
“And you?”
“I go through the back with Jed.”
Elijah hesitated for only a moment before clasping her shoulder.
“Bring him home.”
He and the others rode off toward the eastern road. Clara counted silently as the sound of hooves faded.
Five minutes passed.
Then gunfire erupted from the far side of town.
Shouting followed.
“Now,” Clara said.
They rode down the slope toward the church.
Two guards stood near the cellar entrance.
Clara drew the Colt revolver Samuel had given her and fired before either man could raise his rifle. The first guard spun backward with a cry as the bullet tore through his shoulder. Jed fired a second shot that dropped the other man instantly.
Clara leapt from her horse and kicked open the cellar door.
The air inside smelled of damp stone and stale blood.
“Samuel!” she called.
A voice answered from the darkness.
“Clara?”
She found him chained to the wall. His face was bruised, his shirt torn, but his eyes were sharp.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he rasped.
“Too late for that.”
Her hands shook as she fumbled with the lock, but the chains finally fell away.
Samuel flexed his wrists and looked at her with disbelief.
“You rode back for me.”
“Don’t sound so surprised.”
He smiled faintly.
“Yes ma’am.”
They climbed the stairs together.
Outside, chaos filled the streets. Gunfire echoed through the town as Elijah’s distraction pulled Crane’s men away.
“We need to go,” Clara said.
“Wait.”
Samuel grabbed her arm.
“There’s something you need to know.”
“It can wait.”
“It can’t.”
His eyes were urgent.
“Crane isn’t the one behind this. He’s got a partner. Someone powerful in Laram.”
Clara frowned.
“Who?”
“I don’t know yet. But whoever it is wanted me dead before I could find out.”
A shot rang out.
Pain exploded in Clara’s side.
She staggered, looking down at the spreading blood on her shirt.
Samuel caught her before she fell.
Twenty feet away, Reverend Ezekiel Crane stood with a smoking pistol.
“The witch dies today,” he said calmly.
Samuel reached for a weapon that was no longer there.
Clara still held her revolver.
Her arm trembled as she raised it.
Crane smiled.
“You cannot—”
She fired.
The bullet struck him in the chest.
Crane staggered backward, disbelief written across his face.
“Impossible,” he whispered.
Clara fired again.
This time he fell.
The fighting around them began to fade as Crane’s followers fled.
Samuel pressed his hands against Clara’s wound.
“Stay with me,” he said desperately.
“Did I get him?” she whispered.
“You got him.”
She smiled faintly.
“Good.”
The world went dark.
Clara dreamed of water.
She was sinking again, the cold pressing against her chest as darkness closed around her. No one came this time. No hoofbeats, no splash.
Only silence.
Then a voice reached through the darkness.
“Don’t you dare.”
The voice was rough and desperate.
“Don’t you dare leave me like this.”
Samuel.
Clara opened her eyes.
The ceiling above her was unfamiliar. Wooden beams, white plaster. Sunlight filtered through a window.
Samuel sat beside the bed, his head in his hands.
“Samuel,” she whispered.
He jerked upright.
Relief flooded his face.
“Clara.”
He gripped her hand as though afraid she might disappear.
“You’re awake.”
“How long?”
“Three days.”
The bullet had passed clean through her side, but she had lost too much blood. The doctor had not been certain she would survive.
Crane was dead.
His followers had scattered.
But the fight was not finished.
Samuel showed her the letters they had found in Crane’s office.
All signed with the same initials.
WH.
“Whitmore,” Samuel said grimly.
Judge Harold Whitmore.
One of the most powerful men in the Wyoming Territory.
The man who had funded Crane.
The man who had wanted Clara dead.
Three months later the valley looked different.
Judge Whitmore had been arrested after the federal marshal uncovered a network of corruption stretching across the territory. Ranches had been seized through fraud, landowners driven away through intimidation, and water rights stolen through carefully engineered disasters.
The evidence Clara and Samuel gathered destroyed him.
Whitmore would spend the rest of his life in prison.
Serenity Springs sent a delegation to apologize.
Clara listened quietly.
Then she told them she never wanted to see any of them again.
Some wounds never healed.
Her father was buried on a hill overlooking the ranch.
He had died saving them during the final confrontation with Whitmore’s men.
Every Sunday Clara walked to the grave with wildflowers in her hand. She sat beside the stone in silence, still uncertain whether forgiveness would ever come.
But she had made peace.
The aquifer beneath her father’s land had been developed carefully, providing water to every ranch and farm in the valley.
“No more empires,” Clara had told Samuel.
“No more Whitmores.”
He had agreed without hesitation.
Jedediah Cole remained at the ranch, working honestly for the first time in his life.
Elijah Moss continued running the ranch with the quiet authority that held everything together.
Martha still ruled the house.
And Samuel—
Samuel stood beside Clara on the porch of the rebuilt ranch house, watching the sunset spill gold across the valley.
“So,” he said softly, handing her a glass of whiskey, “any regrets?”
Clara thought about the lake.
The stones tied to her ankles.
The moment she had believed she would die alone.
“No,” she said at last.
Samuel reached into his pocket and produced a small velvet box.
“The ring I gave you before was rushed.”
Inside lay a delicate gold band set with a green stone that matched her eyes.
Clara’s breath caught.
“Samuel—”
“I know you don’t need it,” he said quietly. “But I want you to have it.”
He slid the ring onto her finger beside the simple band she already wore.
“I love you, Clara Blackwood.”
She laughed softly.
“You’re becoming romantic.”
“Don’t tell anyone.”
She kissed him.
A month later Clara began waking sick each morning.
Martha watched her closely for several days before finally smiling.
“I thought so.”
The doctor confirmed it two days later.
Clara was pregnant.
Samuel looked terrified when she told him.
“A baby?” he repeated faintly.
“We’re having a baby.”
“I don’t know anything about babies.”
“You’ll learn.”
“What if I’m terrible at it?”
Clara took his hands.
“You won’t be.”
“Why are you so sure?”
“Because when you love someone,” she said, “you love them with everything you have.”
Samuel held her tightly.
Spring arrived.
The snow melted.
The river ran strong again through the valley.
And in the big house on the hill, Clara Blackwood gave birth to a daughter.
Samuel held the tiny bundle with trembling hands.
“She’s perfect,” he whispered.
They named her Hope.
Clara watched her husband and their child, feeling something settle deep in her heart.
Once she had been Clara Hollister, the woman thrown into a lake to die.
Now she was Clara Blackwood.
Wife.
Mother.
The woman who had faced death and risen from it.
The drowned bride had become the queen of the valley.
And this time, she would never stand alone again.
