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The next day was a whirlwind trip to the County Courthouse in Silverton. They walked in with their drivers’ licenses and social security cards, and walked out with a marriage license.

“This place isn’t any bigger than Crossroads,” Maggie said.

“No, but it’s the county seat of Briscoe County,” Sonny said, as he backed away from the curb.

He’d ridden through here on the bus, but he’d never been in the town where Matt Reddick worked before. They got back on the highway and headed home, and as they were driving, Maggie got a text from Max Andros.

Arrived in Santa Fe after midnight. Your precious works are all safe and sound at the gallery under lock and key, with a security guard on night duty. We will be in touch soon.—Max

She looked at Sonny and smiled. “Max letting me know they arrived safe. The paintings are locked up. He has a security guard. He’ll be in touch.”

“Awesome. You just took another step onto your new path. Now all we have to do is have a wedding and find a builder for our addition.”

“Grow old along with me. The best is yet to be, the last of life, for which the first was made,” Maggie said, then reached for his hand. “Robert Browning. I’ve always loved that line, and now it’s coming true for us.”

***

The next day Maggie was back at work, and Sonny was overseeing a crew digging footing, and building a frame for the concrete pour that would be the base of the gazebo he had ordered. It was after three the same day before they finished, but it was done, and Sonny had concrete coming from a concrete company out of Tulia, and two locals from Crossroads were coming to work the pour and set the big pins that would anchor the gazebo poles.

After that, it was a matter of waiting a couple more days for the concrete to cure and then hoping the prefab gazebo made its delivery date. After two hectic days, and another two days to wait, the gazebo arrived, bungeed down on a big flatbed trailer, already primed and painted with white, weatherproof paint, and in sections designed to reassemble.

It was the weekend by the time it was all done, but it was perfect. Where there had been no shade under which to rest, now there was.

That evening, he and Maggie watched their first sunset from the built-in benches, and sheltered by the ornate cupola above their heads.

They sat long after the sun was gone and the stars were out, listening to the far-off howl of a coyote, and the screech of an owl on the hunt. The horses knew they were there, and had gathered at the nearby fence to bed down.

Maggie was tired from the day and fell asleep on his shoulder. Reluctant to wake her, he picked her up. She mumbled something, and he shushed her, whispering love words to her she didn’t understand as he carried her inside and put her to bed, then went through the house, locking doors and turning out lights before he returned.

She’d awakened long enough to strip, leaving her clothes in the floor right where she’d walked out of them, and was already under the covers.

He heard the words, All woman and still the child, and undressed and slipped in beside her. Whatever she was, she was his to love.

He slipped his arm around her waist and closed his eyes.

***

The ensuing days passed fast, until all of a sudden it was the day before the wedding, and Sonny knew Charlie and the family would be arriving sometime today. He felt like a kid at Christmas, excited about what was yet to come.

Maggie had taken off work today, and for the next five days. She’d cleaned the house so many times Sonny was afraid to dirty a glass for a drink of water, but he understood her need to do her best. His family would be her family, too. Something she’d never had, and she was desperate for them to like her.

It was a little after 2:00 p.m. when Sonny got a text.

We just checked in at the Lodge. Everybody but me is peeing. Again. I will get a turn later. Nobody wants to wait to come see you. Are you ready for this onslaught?

“Maggie, where are you?” he shouted, then heard the screen door on the back porch slam, and she came running.

“I was taking out trash. What’s wrong?”

He handed her his phone.

She read the text, laughing. “Tell him yes, and we have food, and a place to pee.”

He grinned, and repeated her words in his text, got back a big LOL from Charlie, and then sighed.

Maggie hugged him. “You have so missed them, haven’t you?”

He nodded. “If it hadn’t been for you, I would have been lost. I predict Julia is going to have a few moments of jealousy.”

“Then give her all your attention. I know where I stand with you. Never shortchange the child for the elder.”

He nodded. “Your wisdom is far beyond your age.”

“I just remember being the little girl wanting someone special to love me. I have a little present for Julia, too. I found it in the dirt they dug up when they were doing the gazebo. I know she likes rocks, because she gave you her special one, so I’ll give her one back from the land where her Uncle Sonny lives now.”

“Show me,” Sonny said.

Maggie went to their bedroom and came back holding a cloth wrapped object. She laid it on their dining table and unwrapped it, revealing a small, oblong piece of rock with the most perfect leaf fossil Sonny had ever seen.

“That is amazing. It has to be thousands of years old, because there are no plants or trees around here anymore with that kind of leaf. Where did you say you found it?”

“In the pile of dirt from where they dug the footing before they poured concrete. I thought of her and put it away so it wouldn’t get broken.”

Sonny looked at her and smiled. “You always think of others before you do yourself. That is a rare and wonderful trait, Magnolia. She will love it.”

Maggie wrapped it back up and then took it back to the bedroom. “I’ll wait for the right moment,” she said. “I have their paintings framed and waiting, too. I just brought them up from the vault and put them in our closet.”

“Say the word, and I’ll get them for you when you’re ready,” he said.

She shrugged. “They don’t know any of this painting story.”

“Then I will brag on you, and you can answer all their questions, okay?”

Then they both heard a big truck shifting gears and went to the window.

“It’s them,” Sonny said, and grabbed her hand as they ran out to meet them.

***

Auntie was sitting in the back seat with Julia, taking in all the land that she was seeing, knowing that Sonny’s land began somewhere around the two-mile mark from Crossroads, and then it was everything they could see to the west as they drove. Compared to the acres of wooded lands and abundant creeks where she lived, this was closer looking to desert landscape than she’d expected. But a thousand acres of this was a gift. And then they saw the horses. Eight of them running south, their heads up, manes and tails flying, and when she saw the Appaloosa, she grunted. Warrior horse.

As Charlie drove beneath the big metal sign over the entrance to the ranch, he could see Sonny had come into his own. A big roping arena, a long building he guessed were the stables, the huge barn attached to an even larger corral—it all left him speechless.

“There they are,” Frannie said, pointing to the couple coming out of the house. “Oh, Charlie, look at Sonny’s face. He is so happy, and look at that beautiful gazebo. I would love one like that.”

“You wanted a chicken house,” he said. “A fancy place for sitting outside will have to wait.”

And then they were out of the truck, and much hugging and talking ensued, and trying to introduce Maggie to everyone amidst the noise, with little Julia getting lost in the shuffle until Maggie gave Sonny a nudge.

“Somebody’s feeling left out,” she whispered.

He turned around, saw Julia holding on to her mother’s skirt, and let out a whoop.

“There she is! There’s my best girl. Don’t you hide from me. I’ve been missing you,” he said, and swooped her up in his arms.

Then she was all giggles and hugs, and talking a mile a minute as they all walked into the house.

Auntie was walking behind, and when she got to the porch where Maggie was holding the door open, she looked into Maggie’s eyes. “I saw what you did. You have a kind heart, Magnolia. Thank you for including the child.”

Maggie was trying to decide whether to laugh or cry when she realized everyone was inside except her. She stepped across the threshold and closed the door, and let the sound of happy voices wash over her.

Charlie was a stockier version of Sonny and wore his hair in two braids. Frannie was beautiful in her pink slacks and pink-and-white shirt. She wore her long hair down and fastened at the back of her neck with an ornate beaded clip.

Auntie’s mien and demeanor, and her status as family elder gave her a cachet she didn’t really need. She was obviously the matriarch, and had come wearing a loose-fitting denim dress and sandals, hand-beaded earrings, and her thick gray hair in one long braid, hanging down her back.

Julia was wearing pink shorts and a pink-and-white top—a tiny version of her mother.

What Maggie didn’t know was how anxious and embarrassed Auntie was feeling, facing the woman who’d been a victim of her brother’s actions.

Charlie saw Maggie watching them all. Her sky eyes were sparkling, her lips slightly parted in a smile waiting to happen. When she looked his way, he winked and grinned. “Have we scared you off yet?” he asked.

Sonny looked up, suddenly worried that he’d missed something, but Maggie just shook her head.

“I don’t scare easy. Sonny will attest to that. The second time he saw me, I was going after a man with a baseball bat.”

The room got quiet, and then Sonny chuckled.

“It’s true, and it was the most magnificent thing I’d ever seen. Took a minute for me to figure out that it was the same man who abandoned her nineteen-year-old self on the steps of the Rose six years earlier, and drove off without her. He never imagined she’d still be there, and I’m entering the café and I see this guy on his hands and knees, blood dripping from his mouth and nose, trying to get out of this puddle of water on the floor, but he kept slipping and falling.”

Maggie sniffed in disgust. “I didn’t bloody his nose or his mouth. He did it to himself when he slipped, but I did dump a pitcher of water on his head and tell him to get out. It was Pearl coming out of the kitchen with her shotgun that scared him. She thought I was being killed. Guess I was screaming a little loud. Sonny already knew the pitiful story, put two and two together, and without saying a word, picked the man up by the back of his jacket and dragged him out of the Rose, and dumped him in the dirt. We saw them exchange a few words, but couldn’t hear anything, and then all of a sudden that guy was running for his car. He got in, and then it wouldn’t start, and we could see him bawling like a baby while the starter just ground and ground, and then it finally it fired, he took off like a scalded cat.”

By now, the whole family was in stitches, laughing at the story, and Sonny was watching their faces and seeing Maggie come alive.

“What happened after?” Frannie asked.

“Oh, Cool Dude over there comes sauntering back in, promises that he’s seen enough to never want to make me mad, and then Conrad, our dishwasher, asks Sonny, ‘What did you say to him?’”

Maggie looked at Sonny. “You tell them what you said?”

Sonny put his hands over Julia’s ears. “I told him if he ever showed his face in Crossroads again, or bothered Magnolia in any way, I would strip him naked and stake him on an ant hill. He took one look at my indigenous self, and seemed to take it seriously. Like I told Maggie… I didn’t think people actually believed that. I thought it was something Hollywood made up. Anyway, I made it my business after that to stay on her good side.”

“And it worked,” Maggie said.

They were still laughing, and she was no longer anxious that they didn’t like her. What she didn’t know was that, by standing up for herself and for the way Sonny had defended her, they’d already taken her as one of their own.

After that, the food and drinks came out. The women sat at the table to eat and talk, and left the men on the sofa, holding their plates in their laps. And so it went, until Sonny changed the subject.

“I recently found out this woman had been keeping a secret from me, but a very good one. The deal is, Maggie is an amazing artist. She draws. She paints, and she just considered it her hobby. Never talked about it, never showed what she did to anybody, because she didn’t want to be made fun of, and I understood why. She’s never known her family. She was dumped at a fire station when she was about two weeks old, right honey?”

Maggie nodded. “Somebody threw me away. I don’t even know who named me. I don’t know squat about my birth other than they didn’t want me, and nobody ever came looking. I grew up in foster care and was always in trouble for wasting paper with my drawings. But after I aged out and wound up in Crossroads, I taught myself how to paint what I was drawing. Then Sonny found them all in the spare room when he took me home after…after my abduction, and I thought he was going to pass out. Then I wanted to pass out, taking his silence for disgust.”

Sonny laughed. “To the contrary. I begged her to let me send some photos to Max Andros.”

“Isn’t that the guy who has the bull-riding photos of you on display in his gallery?” Charlie said.

“The same. I sent a bunch of pictures and Max called me, and the rest is history. As of this past Monday, her paintings are at his gallery being framed. He’s organizing a big event for her work. She’ll be on-site at the opening, and he swears she’s going to be famous. He can’t talk about her paintings without tearing up.”

“That’s wonderful,” Charlie said. “I wish we could have seen them.”

“Maggie, show them the picture you took of the painting you did of me. I’ll be right back.”

Maggie pulled it up from her phone, then handed it to Charlie. The look on his face went from shock to awe.

He handed it to Auntie, who looked, then stared at it for a long time, and then looked up at Maggie. “You don’t just see a face as you paint. You see the soul. This is the gift you were given for all the sadness within you.”

Maggie’s eyes welled, as a look passed between them.

Frannie took the phone, looked at the painting and then at Maggie.

“You have been given a most remarkable gift. This doesn’t look like a painting. It looks like a photo of the real man. Did he sit for this?”

At that moment, Sonny walked in with the paintings. “No, I didn’t sit for that,” he said. “I didn’t even know she’d done it until I saw the whole room full of treasures. And speaking of treasures. One of Maggie’s things is watching the sunsets. They’re magnificent here. She wanted to give one to Auntie, and one to Charlie and Frances so that you would all see what I see every evening as the sun goes down. That’s why I built the gazebo…to watch the sunsets with her, and then the stars with her. Maggie, you do the honors. They’re your gifts to give.”

She took the first one. It was the one to give to Auntie. “I asked Sonny to pick them out for me, because he knew you all best.”

Auntie gasped and then touched the light hovering over the horizon, half expecting it to burn. “You have given me a piece of the sky.”

Maggie took the other one and gave it to Charlie and Frances. “It’s different, but then all of the sunsets every night are different. Charlie said you would like this best.”

Frannie’s fingers trembled as she held one side of the frame as Charlie held on to the other.

“This is beautiful,” Charlie said. “It will be a great honor to hang this in our house.”

Maggie saw the wistful look on Julia’s face and knew it was time.

“And you, my little flower girl, I have something different for you, but it is very special. Wait a moment and I’ll go get it,” she said.

Julia’s dark eyes sparkled as she flashed a shy grin. “Something for me, Mama.”

“I know,” Frannie said.

Maggie came back holding the little cloth-wrapped package, and then she got down on her knees in front of Julia and laid it in her lap, then carefully unwrapped the cloth. “Uncle Sonny told me how much you like rocks, and I found this on his land. Do you know what it is?”

Julia’s eyes grew big, as she traced the embedded shape. “Is it a real leaf in the rock?”

Maggie smiled. “It’s called a fossil. It is many thousands of years old, and all that’s left of the leaf is the imprint of it.”

“Like when there were dinosaurs old?” Julia asked.

“Very likely,” Maggie said. “See that leaf? Those kinds of trees and bushes don’t grow here anymore. It is from the time before.”

“It’s kind of like an X-ray,” Charlie said. “Remember when the doctor took pictures of your arm to see if the bone was broken but it wasn’t?”

Julia nodded.

“So, the leaf fell in the mud and when time passed the mud got hard, and the leaf crumbled to dust, this is what was left behind. It’s very special, and very valuable, and very old. Are you old enough to take care of something this rare?” Charlie asked.

“Yes, Daddy, I am. I won’t play with it, and you can make me a box with a window, so I can see it. And we can hang it on my wall like you hang Maggie’s painting.”

“We can do that,” Charlie said. “Now what do you say to Maggie for such a fine gift?”

Julia wrapped it back up, handed it to her mother for safekeeping, and then threw her arms around Maggie’s neck. “Thank you, and I am happy you are going to be Uncle Sonny’s wife. That means you will be my Auntie Maggie, won’t it?”

“You’re so welcome, and yes, I will be your Auntie. Thank you for making me feel welcome,” Maggie said.

Julia beamed. She liked Maggie Brennen a lot.

***