The Triplets' Cowboy Daddy

“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.