Page 60 of The Rancher's Wedding

She entered the telegraph office, where she sent a message:

Father STOP Please don’t come STOP I’ll go to Philadelphia in one week’s time STOP Estelle

She had no intention of actually following through with the promise, but at least it had the potential to buy her just a little bit of time. Unless, of course, her father had sent the telegram as he was leaving for Utah, in which case he wouldn’t receive the response until he returned home.

The ride back to the ranch was much slower than the ride there, partially due to the lack of urgency and partially due to Estelle needing to think about things some more. Part of the cat was out of the bag now. He knew she wasn’t an orphan, though it sounded as though he must have suspected that by his response.

She could tell him the rest of it, but it was too much to unleash in one day. It was certainly a good sign that his response to her having parents was so positive, but she worried that telling him about the arranged marriage might not go so smoothly. Estelle wasn’t an orphan, but even if she was, it was all in the past. The fact that she had an arranged marriage to a man from her childhood and that her father was coming to take her away was something that was still affecting her and, as a result, could affect Michael, as well.

As Estelle arrived back in the stable at the ranch, putting Orion away, she saw Michael stacking the hay.

“I want to tell you something,” she said.

Michael set the hay aside and took a seat on it, then gestured to another bundle for Estelle. She accepted the offer and sat next to him.

“It’s a story,” she said. “About my mother.”

“Well,” Michael said, “let’s hear it, then.”

“My mother did die when I was young, and I don’t remember her particularly well,” Estelle said, “but she was a beautiful woman. Taller than me, with similar hair. I wish we had a picture of her because, as a little girl, I remember wanting to grow up to look like her. And my father said I did.”

Michael blushed a little bit, as if he was thinking something but didn’t want to interrupt her.

“As a girl, she would always read me stories. I remember, in particular, her reading me Cinderella, have you read it?”

“Can’t say I have.”

He listened on with interest as Estelle regaled him the with the tale her mother must have read her hundreds of times.

“This poor woman is mistreated all her life by her wicked stepmother and stepsisters, but because she does what she’s supposed to do, one night, a fairy godmother dresses her up like a princess and she meets a handsome prince and they fall in love and get married and birds peck out the eyes of the evil stepsisters.”

He appeared shocked and confused. “She read you that as a child?”

“Oh, yes,” Estelle said, realizing for the first time just how morbid the image was. “But it was the lesson in there she was trying to get through to me, that we try to get through to all little girls—if they behave and do what they’re supposed to, they’ll find their sweet prince who will love them the rest of their lives.”

“I like that,” Michael said, smiling, no doubt happy that she was finally opening up to him. He obviously didn’t know where she was going with this story.

“So, think of that as the preamble. As I said, my mother died when I was young. When she was dying, the doctors came to bleed her in an effort to save her. As they did, her voice took on an airy quality and she always seemed half in a dream. I would talk to her and she would always respond slowly, but she was also the only adult who talked to me like an adult and listened to me like I was an adult, and she told me something.

“She told me, ‘Estelle, I have a secret for you that no adult will ever tell you, but we all know it’s true.’ Her face was pale and, looking at her, even as a child, I knew she wasn’t going to be with us for very much longer. She said, ‘There is no such thing as true love, and you will never find a man who loves you as much as you deserve to be loved.’”

Michael looked as though he just smelled an unpleasant odor. “Do you believe that?”

“I don’t know if I believed it, then, but I trusted my mother and thought it at least had the possibility of being true. It was something that stayed in my thoughts and, truthfully, the more I grew, the more I realized that it made quite a bit of sense. How many wives actually seem happy to be married to their husbands? Young people, sure, but older people? I don’t recall seeing any. At most, they seem comfortable with each other.

“So, the older I got, the more this idea cemented itself in my mind, because I couldn’t find anything that went against it—and I think that’s why I came out here. Because she said you can’t truly love a person. But she didn’t say you couldn’t love a lifestyle.”

“That’s true,” Michael said. “I’ve been out on the land all my life, and I’m still in love with it.”

“I see that, but there’s another thing,” Estelle said.

“What’s that?”

“I think she may have been wrong.”

Michael was listening intently.

“Perhaps,” Estelle said, “I’m not sure right now. What I do know is she was telling the truth. Her truth, anyway. She felt that she deserved to be loved and she did, but whatever my father was doing wasn’t enough for her. I was just a girl and she was telling me that she didn’t love my father, and it wasn’t until I got out here and had a chance to think for myself that I realized, even if she didn’t know it, what she was saying.”

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