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Rebekah let her eyes wander out the window. No sign of Ed. How like the day she stood by the window, waiting to see if Isaac would be the one to drive her aunt and uncle to town. Only this time, she was hoping to see Ed. Her feelings had changed so much in the course of a few short weeks.

A humming, spinning Tillie bumped into her. The knife clunked to the countertop. Both of them daydreaming seemed a recipe for disaster.

“Can I help?” Tillie asked.

“Not right now.” Rebekah skirted around her with the celery. She needed to focus.

“I can do it.” Tillie hurried to place her hands under the bowl, walking with Rebekah as if carrying it herself. “Let me pour it.”

“You might pour the pieces in too fast. I’ll do it.” Rebekah was aware of Kaitlyn watching from the stove. Tillie had Rebekah ready to snap with her constant chatter. How did her friend manage?

A pout spread on Tillie’s face but faded as Kaitlyn offered to let her stir. The quick motion of Tillie’s stirring splashed a bit of stew onto Rebekah’s apron.

“Tillie, be careful.”

Kaitlyn placed a hand on Tillie’s shoulder, then bent to whisper in her ear. Tillie grinned and skipped into the front room before Kaitlyn turned to focus on Rebekah.

“She’s only a little girl. She won’t be doing everything exactly like you do.”

“I want it done right.” She probably deserved Kaitlyn’s reprimand, but Rebekah’s hand trembled as she stirred the stew. Her own distraction had caused her to lose her temper.

“Seems you want it done to suit you.” Kaitlyn’s brow quirked up even as kindness filled her eyes. “But you can’t control everything. You’ll end up miserable and it won’t work. You need to give God control of your life.”

Rebekah kept stirring. Was Kaitlyn right? That last letter Rebekah had sent with the proposal to Isaac had only made things worse.

“I guess I’ve been trying to arrange things to suit myself for so long that it’s hard not to.” She watched the vegetables bob and swirl in the stew as she stirred. “It’s how I got here. Writing a letter to Aunt Opal to come get me. My mother didn’t know until Opal arrived to take me out west.”

“Why did you want to go west?” Kaitlyn asked.

“Things were hard after my father died.” Rebekah dropped her voice low, aware of Tillie’s listening ears nearby. She hadn’t talked about this in a long time. Hadn’t thought about it either.

“My mother met someone. But I just wanted my father back.”

A gentle hand landed on her arm. It helped soothe the emotions that threatened to choke Rebekah. Mama had had stars in her eyes from the first moment she’d met Claud Browning.

The face of her mother, worn and weary with trying to run things, flashed before her. Rebekah had wanted her mother happy. Wanted to see her smiling again. But not with Claud, the man who’d become her stepfather.

Kaitlyn listened, seeming to understand that Rebekah wouldn’t be able to go on if she was interrupted.

“My stepfather didn’t want me around. Wanted to send me to boarding school.

And Mama didn’t want to anger her new husband.

So I fixed it. I wrote a letter to Aunt Opal.

And I came here.” Rebekah remembered those first days in Calvin.

Missing her father and mother so much that it made her ache inside.

She hadn’t been sure she’d made the right choice.

Not until later. Now, she loved the wide-open spaces of Wyoming and her home with the Boutwells—even if Rebekah hadn’t seen her mother since, and even though they only corresponded by letter occasionally.

Kaitlyn touched Rebekah’s shoulder. “I’m glad you did.”

Rebekah lifted her eyes to the window again. She’d frozen in fear when the shooting had started yesterday. If Ed hadn’t protected her, she might be dead. A shiver ran through her.

“Hoping to see Isaac?” Kaitlyn interrupted Rebekah’s thoughts. “Or Ed?”

A flush of heat blasted her face. She hadn’t meant for Kaitlyn to catch on.

“Ed couldn’t keep his eyes off you last night.”

Rebekah concentrated on wiping off the counters. It was easier than meeting Kaitlyn’s knowing gaze.

“I know we once talked about you running an ad for yourself. Or answering one. What did you ever decide?”

This wasn’t going away. She placed the washrag in the sink, then faced her friend. “I was writing letters to Isaac, in response to his ad.”

Kaitlyn waited. If this news had surprised her, she certainly didn’t show it. Had Ed told her? Or Isaac?

Embarrassment flared, but with Aunt Opal gone for the foreseeable future, Rebekah didn’t have another woman to talk to. Maybe Kaitlyn could give her advice to help her out of this muddle.

She told Kaitlyn all of it. Answering Isaac’s ad. Holding back the letters. Mr. Sullivan’s anger.

“Now I don’t know what to do.” The words from her proposal letter to Isaac flashed through her mind.

I would like to define our relationship. I need to know if you truly feel as I do.

Isaac hadn’t even wanted to talk to her. And Ed was there, with his steady warmth.

“For so long, I thought I hated Ed,” she murmured. “But spending time with him…he’s not who I thought.”

Now everything was a muddle.

“I always thought I wanted a hero like my father wrote in his books.” Rebekah looked straight at Kaitlyn. “Like what you’ve got with Drew.”

Kaitlyn’s eyes danced as she covered her mouth with one hand.

“Drew isn’t perfect. Is that what you heard when we talked?

Oh, Rebekah, things were difficult when I came.

Surely you remember all that happened? It wasn’t easy.

When I arrived, I had to convince Drew to let me stay.

As a business arrangement.” Kaitlyn’s eyes peered into Rebekah’s as she slid her hands down to hold her friend’s hands.

“We had to get to know each other. We had to make a choice to love.”

Had Rebekah let her imagination run away with her in this too? Drew and Kaitlyn always appeared so perfect. Rebekah’s pulse thudded in her ears. Were those roses without thorns existing only in her mind? All running through the filter of her books?

“But the love you read about in books is so, so—” Rebekah released her grip on Kaitlyn’s hands to wring her own in the air. Why didn’t she have the right word? She always prided herself on having the right word.

“Real love is a choice.” Kaitlyn searched Rebekah’s face as she spoke. Her words were gentle.

Rebekah had been in love with the idea of Isaac.

The hero. Yet Ed had acted the hero on the boardwalk in town, shielding her from the shooter.

But hadn’t it also been heroic when he’d patiently explained his tool to Tillie?

Helped David with his chores? Set aside his dreams for the sake of his family?

The knowledge sank into her, settling deep.