Page 1 of A Secret Heart
Chapter1
JUNE, 1893
He’d made a mistake.
Ed McGraw took two steps backward and pressed his foot on one of the new wood planks of the small porch of his Wyoming cabin.
Squeak.
There it was again.
Somehow, he must’ve missed catching a warped board. Now the spot squeaked when he stepped on it. That wouldn’t do. Not for a would-be carpenter like him.
He paused just outside the door, glancing over his shoulder. The view of the radiant sunrise glinting across the Laramie Mountains made a man want to share it with someone, but Ed had zero prospects. And finding a wife was the last thing he had time for.
He needed to hurry if he was going to finish detailing the wooden cradle waiting for him inside his cabin-turned-workshop. Morning chores were finished, but his older brother Drew would have a list of work that needed doin’ today the length of Ed’s arm when Ed joined the family down at the main house for breakfast. Drew had kept the four McGraw brothers together after they’d lost both parents within two years, taking on the mantle of family patriarch, but there was always too much work to be done on the McGraw homestead.
Hoofbeats sounded. Too late to finish his project now.
“Uncle Ed!”
Ed lifted his head to acknowledge his fourteen-year-old nephew, riding past Ed’s cabin on a pony.
With the awkward frame of a boy growing too tall too fast, David was the spitting image of Drew at that age.
David took a slight detour and reined in yards away from Ed’s porch. “Pa wants me to check the water level in the little pond in the east pasture. And see if Uncle Isaac is up there.”
If David was already riding out, that meant Ed had missed breakfast. His stomach growled a protest. He needed another hour or two’s work on the wooden cradle before it’d be ready for delivery. Didn’t seem like he was getting that hour today.
“Be careful,” Ed warned his nephew. “Isaac’s been tracking wolves around the high pasture.”
Too much like his pa at that age, David lit up instead of appearing worried. “I’ll look for tracks!”
And he was gone.
Ed cracked open the door long enough for a glance at the unstained wooden cradle sitting along the wall before he closed the door with a soft snick.
A sigh slipped from Ed’s lips. Would his family ever understand? He loved the feeling of a piece—chair, bed frame, shelf, anything—coming to life in his hands. He wasn’t so fanciful as to think wood spoke to him, but when he sketched out a new item to build with pencil and paper, he felt as if some hidden part of him came to life. One at a time, his arms slipped through the suspenders hanging at his side as he started toward the worn path between his cabin and the main house. His fingers riffled through his hair, sending a fine layer of sawdust tumbling through the orange-tipped rays of sunlight.
The main house had been built by Ed’s pa. After Isaac had joined the family, Pa had built onto the house, adding a second story and another bedroom downstairs. Ed had grown up running and riding all over this land, along with his older brothers Drew and Isaac and their youngest brother Nick. The McGraw spread was their legacy, a hard-fought family heritage.
Only, he wasn’t sure he wanted it any longer.
The kitchen window was open, and once he got close enough, girlish voices floated from inside. Drew’s daughters, at eleven and six, couldn’t have been more different. Jo was a tried-and-true tomboy, wearing trousers more often than anything else. Tillie, never without a ribbon in her hair, loved playing family with her dolls.
Ed would do anything for them, but when he opened the door and stepped inside, his first urge was to turn back around.
“Don’t pull!” Tillie whined. She sat in one of the straight-backed chairs, her face all screwed up.
Standing behind her younger sister, Jo scowled at the top of her head. “It’s a braid. They’re gonna hurt some.”
Drew’s wife Kaitlyn swiveled from gathering the dishes at the table, where Drew and Nick were still seated, to admonish her stepdaughters. “Stop arguing. The quicker you finish, the quicker you can head outside to the barn.” That was directed at Jo. And the pointed words hit home. Jo focused on Tillie’s braid, her tongue peeping out of the corner of her mouth.
Kaitlyn had only married into the family a few months ago, but she was whip-smart, and the children had taken to her. Now she glanced up and caught sight of Ed. He watched a minuscule grimace flit over her expression.
“I’m sorry. I forgot you were coming. I don’t know how much breakfast is left.”
Before he could say anything, she was already moving to the kitchen, bringing the dirty dishes with her. Ed scanned the table as Nick nodded to him. A strip of bacon remained. It’d go great with the last biscuit. No longer warm to the touch, but it was something. If he’d ignore the projects he kept hidden at his house, he might secure himself a big hot breakfast.
