Page 174 of Head Room

With the cloths fallen open over her hand just like the other time, she looked at the picture.

This wasn’t the image from before.This wasn’t the dark-haired beauty.This was a woman — older than the other one — with a man near the same age, surrounded by two stripling boys and a young girl.

It was not the same picture as before.It was bigger than that delicate miniature, and the frame was dark, polished wood instead of silver, a rectangle instead of an oval.

But there was something familiar...The woman...And the younger of the stripling boys...

Before she let hope burrow so deep that rooting it out would like to kill her, Maggie reached in her other hand and searched around the recesses of the satchel.

Empty.

She let out a breath.

“Looking for something?”

Ransom’s voice from behind her didn’t make her jump.It froze her, her heart, her breathing, going to earth in utter stillness as it always did with danger.

Danger.No, this was Ransom.

She slowly turned to him.

He leaned one shoulder against the frame of the door, the crown of his head nearly brushing the top of the opening.He grinned at her.Her heart sped up.

“I see you’ve made the acquaintance of my family.That’s my sister Flora — a few years ago now.She’s grayer.Her husband’s gone.Peter hasn’t changed that much.Thomas—” His voice dropped.“—you’ve heard about.And that heartbreaker on the right’s his sister, Celine.”

He looked at the picture she still held in her hand, but she looked only at him.She didn’t understand.

He took the frame from her and moved to the dresser Mrs.XX had given them.He set the frame there.It threatened to topple on the sloped surface caused by the uneven floors.

“Where is the other?”she asked of his back.

“The other?”He patiently sought a balanced spot for the frame.

She gestured into the open mouth of the satchel with the hand that now held the cloths crumpled into a fist.She felt the silence welling up in her.She fought it back.“Her.”

“Her?”He repeated absently.He held his hand away from the frame, ready to catch it if need be.It stayed upright.“I think we’ll be needing to hang this on the wall or it’ll topple any time a breeze passes through.”

“The woman,” Maggie heard herself say.

He crossed back to her and put his hands lightly at her waist.“I don’t—” He stopped, and his gaze went to the satchel, then the cloths in her hand.“You mean the miniature of Laidey.”

“Yes.”

“I left it.”She heard no regret, no matter how hard she listened.“It was part of my past.Like North Carolina.So that’s where I left it.”

His hands tightened, drawing her a step closer.She rested her hands on his forearms.She felt the heat inside her.The heat for him.

“It seemed fitting to leave that past behind, since all I could think about was coming here and claiming my future.And you, Maggie.”Something flickered across his eyes.“Because you’re all of my future.If you’ll have me.”

She slid her hands up his arms, across his shoulders and into his hair, drawing his face down to hers, to build the heat into the fire she had thought never to share again.

Just before his lips found hers, she whispered one word.

“Yes.”

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