The Mail Order Midwife's Secret (Wanted: Wives In The West 2) Read Online Free PDF Page A

“I’ll go fix us a mess of peas and cornbread for supper. I hope you’re hungry!”
    After she closed the door, Millie began looking through the clothes. As she held each one up, she pictured herself in her new life—no longer afraid, no longer having to cry herself to sleep each night. She washed up and went to the kitchen to help Clara with supper.  “Doc wanted you to get settled in for a night,” she told Millie. “He’s already on call, but he’ll need you on duty tomorrow night. The Acre is overflowing with the wounded right now with the trail at its peak season.” Millie assumed she’d be doing some sort of nursing, with her background, and it looked like she was right.
    The two women sat down to eat              as Millie listened to Clara tell her all about Hell’s Half Acre. “We’d like to get rid of it,” Clara said, “but the money it brings in helps the town, so we can’t be hasty. Just too many drunk, boisterous cowboys and buffalo hunters with hot tempers, if you ask me. That’s why Doc’s out at all hours of the night, tending to the wounded.”  It wasn’t quite what Millie was used to, but she would take it. They sat up talking late into the night. Clara didn’t ask about Millie’s past, or why she had bruises on her wrists and neck, when her husband was supposedly deceased. The look between the two women made it clear that it would be an unspoken secret between them.
    When she retired to her room, Millie snuggled under the quilt into the soft sheets and smiled, looking out her window at the beautiful, starry Texas sky. She was free. She wouldn’t have to worry about waking up to Henry crawling into her bed anymore. Once her bruises healed, she would never have to go to bed grimacing in pain. She wondered what he was doing now—how his face looked the moment it dawned on him that she wasn’t at a baby’s birth, but gone for good—gone from him . For the first time in years, since she no longer had to be on alert, Millie fell asleep instantly.

 
    Chapter Six
     
    Sheriff Lockhart rode home just as the sun was rising over the plains. It was these early morning hours, when the mischievous cowboys had finally gone home and the straight arrow citizens were still asleep, that he felt most at peace. He stopped his horse on a hilltop off the road and looked back toward the east. Texas was beautiful this time of year. The plains, normally blanketed with thick, green grass, were now covered in a mix of bluebonnets and Indian paintbrushes that blended with the majestic glow of the blue and red sky as the sun rose over the hillside.
    Each morning, he took this time to remember the beauty of what life had to offer. He pictured his wife, Rose, her long, blonde hair waving in the wind as she walked hand-in-hand through the flowers with his sweet, blonde twin daughters, Grace and Anna—the spitting image of their mother. He could hear Grace call, “Daddy!” and picture her breaking loose from Rose’s grip to run toward him with a big smile on her face as she leaped into his arms.
    As the sunrise vanished, so did the vision of his family, the sound of their laughter fading, until all he could hear was the humming of the cicadas. For a long time, John hadn’t been able to stop and think about his wife and daughters. It was too painful. But now, he felt it was honoring their memory when he took time out of his day to relive the past—only the good parts, because if he focused on what had happened to them, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to pull out of that dark place a second time.
    After sleeping all day, John woke to the sound of someone banging on his door. “Hold your horses!” he yelled from his bedroom as he quickly got dressed and headed to the front. Standing on the porch was a thin young man, no more than twelve or thirteen years old. John recognized him as the bar help at the Emerald Saloon on Main Street. “What is it, Joseph?” the sheriff asked.
    “Hank’s