to look out the porch screen at the approaching car. “Miwillie!” she cried, all smiles.
Josie lifted her daughter from the high chair and wiped her face, kissing the wriggling, giggling toddler’s damp, clean cheek when she’d finished.
“Mornin’,” Mildred Andrews called as she joined them on the porch. Mildred was short and squat, a small gray-haired woman in her early sixties with a pleasant round face and an ever-present cheerfulness. She made Ivy laugh. She made Josie smile. There was something so homespun about the grandmotherly woman. And best of all, she loved children—especially Ivy. They’d hit it off immediately, and Josie felt secure knowing Mildred was caring for her daughter. She was the grandmother Ivy would never have.
“I thought I’d take Ivy into the big city,” Mildred was saying. The big city Millie referred to was the tiny town of Three Forks, Montana, named for the Jefferson, Madison and Gallatin rivers that joined outside of town to make the Missouri River. “Can I get you anything from the grocery store?”
Josie scribbled down a quick list, the heavy weight of anxiety lightening at just the sight of Mildred. Ivy let out squeals of delight as the older woman took the list and Ivy out to the car. Ivy loved to go “bye-bye.”
It wasn’t until later, standing on the porch, watching Mildred pull away, Ivy waving and throwing wet kisses from the car seat in the back, that Josie felt a stab of doubt, like a thin blade of ice piercing her heart. She told herself she had nothing to worry about. Ivy was in good hands with Mildred. But she knew that wasn’t what worried her. Dead or not, Odell Burton and the past were still haunting her.
SHE HEADED FOR THE STABLES, knowing work would be the only thing that could get her mind off her worries.
By early afternoon, she was feeling better and relieved to see Mildred’s car coming up the dirt road in a cloud of dust. Ivy’s cherub-cheeked face peered out from the back seat.
Josie walked up the hillside to the cabin where she and Ivy lived, a rustic two-story log structure with a screened-in porch off the front and a deck and stairs off the back of the second story.
From the porch, Josie could see not only the stables and main ranch house, but beyond, across the valley and the Madison River, to the tops of the grain elevators in town.
But the view from the second-story deck off the back was her favorite. She often stood there, looking over the pines to the pale yellow band of sandstone known as the Madison Buffalo Jump. For years, before the Native Americans had horses, the site was used to harvest buffalo on foot.
Josie couldn’t imagine a time when buffalo roamed this river valley. She especially couldn’t imagine a time before horses. She’d had a horse since birth and had been riding almost as long. She loved horses and understood them in a way she’d never understood men.
Ivy was already out of the car and headed up the steps by the time Josie reached the cabin. She stopped at the car to help Mildred carry in the groceries. A widow, Mildred often stayed over. They’d fallen into the habit of having dinner together, with Mildred surprising them with her favorite dishes.
“Your daughter causes a commotion everywhere she goes,” Mildred said, laughing as she lowered a bag of groceries to the table.
“A commotion?” Josie asked, eyeing Ivy as she let the screen door slam behind her.
The cabin was narrow, built tall rather than wide. It ran shotgun style from living room to kitchen with a set of open stairs on the left up to the second-floor bath and two bedrooms.
Josie heard Ivy let out a squeal as she took off across the living room after Millie.
“What did Ivy get into now?” Josie asked with a pretend groan as she set down her armful of groceries, then turned to grab her daughter as she toddled past. She scooped Ivy into her arms and hugged her tightly. She couldn’t seem to hug her enough. Everything about the child filled her with awe. Josie never knew she could feel like this. It was the second revelation in her life.
“She was an absolute angel!” Mildred said in Ivy’s defense. “It’s not her fault that she’s so adorable that even good-looking, smooth-talking cowboys can’t resist her.”
“Good-looking cowboys?” Josie asked, feeling the first prickle of unease as she put the wriggling Ivy back down.
“Even at the store,” Mildred continued as she began putting Josie’s groceries away. “He just couldn’t take his eyes off her. He finally had to come over and say hello.”
Josie felt a wave of anxiety flood her.
Mildred looked up and saw her reaction. “Oh, it wasn’t like that. He was perfectly adorable. Polite with an accent like yours.”
Josie felt the floor buckle under her. Blood drained from her head. Her ears rang. “A Texas accent?”
Mildred looked scared, too, now. She’d paled, her fingers nervously kneading the edges of a box of macaroni and cheese.
Josie could barely form the words. “What did he look like?”
“Oh, Josie, I didn’t really pay him much mind,” she cried. “He was just a nice-looking cowboy in jeans, boots and a Stetson. I guess he was tall and dark and—” She realized what she was saying. “—and yes, as corny as it sounds, handsome. But he didn’t do or say anything…inappropriate, and with tourists coming through town all the time—”
“What did he do and say?” Josie asked, trying to keep the fear out of her voice. Trying not to scare Mildred any more than she already had.
“He said something like ‘Oh, what a beautiful little girl.’ Ivy was giggling. She liked him. Then he said, ‘She looks just like someone I used to know. The spitting image. Except for the eyes.’ Something like that.”
A chill raced up her spine like a Montana blizzard blowing in. She tried to tell herself it was nothing. Just like thinking she saw Odell in the pines yesterday.
This had only been a cowboy in a grocery store. Ivy always attracted attention with that pale blond hair of hers and her angelic face. And those startling dark eyes. So why did Josie find herself shaking, fear making her heart pound and her knees weak with worry?
She saw Mildred frown as if she’d remembered something that disturbed her. “What is it?”
“He did ask her name. I didn’t think it would hurt anything.”
Josie found breath to ask. “You told him her name was Ivy O’Malley?”
Mildred quickly shook her head. “I just told him her name was Ivy.”
Josie tried to breathe. She’d kept her name when she’d left Texas. She’d wanted something of her family to take with her, something to give her child, and after Odell’s death, she’d believed that no one would ever come looking for her.
But now she realized keeping her name had been a silly, sentimental and very foolish thing to do. If someone from Texas was looking for her, she’d made it easy. So didn’t that mean if the man had been looking for her, he’d have already found her? He wouldn’t be watching her from a stand of trees. Or chasing after Ivy in some grocery store.
“I’m sure it was nothing,” she said, trying to
