Anna stared.
"I beg your pardon?"
"We have stew."
Thomas closed his eyes briefly.
"And bread," Lily added. "My father bought bread because the last loaf I made was terrible."
"It was not terrible."
"It could break windows."
Thomas looked at Anna.
"I'm sorry."
But Anna's mouth had already curved into a faint smile.
It was the first time she had smiled all day.
Lily stepped closer.
"You could come just for supper."
Anna's smile disappeared.
The reality of her situation returned immediately.
"I couldn't."
"Why?"
"I don't want to impose."
Lily frowned.
"You can't be an imposition because you're hungry."
The sentence was so simple that Anna did not know how to answer it.
Thomas looked down at his daughter.
Something softened in his face.
Then he looked back at Anna.
"My daughter has made the invitation rather difficult to withdraw."
Lily nodded.
Thomas continued.
"We have a spare room."
Anna stiffened.
Thomas immediately understood.
"You are under no obligation to stay beyond tonight. My ranch hands sleep in the bunkhouse twenty yards from the main house, and Mrs. Dalton from the neighboring property will be coming by in the morning. You wouldn't be alone there with me."
Anna noticed that he had anticipated the concern without acting insulted by it.
Still, fear remained.
She had learned how expensive kindness could become when someone later decided it had purchased the right to demand repayment.
"I can work for supper," she said.
Thomas frowned slightly.
"I didn't offer employment."
"I can wash dishes. Mend something. Clean."
"You don't need to earn a meal before you've eaten it."
Lily smiled triumphantly.
"That's what I said."
Thomas sighed.
Anna looked from father to daughter.
Darkness was settling beyond the tracks.
The station would soon close.
She had twelve cents.
No room.
No plan.
And for the first time that day, someone had spoken to her as though her situation were unfortunate rather than shameful.
"What kind of ranch?" she asked.
"Cattle mostly. Some horses."
"How far?"
"Seven miles."
Anna looked at her suitcase.
Then at Thomas.
"I would stay only tonight."
"Then tonight is all we're talking about."
Thomas extended one hand toward the suitcase rather than toward her.
"May I?"
Anna hesitated before nodding.
He lifted it into the wagon.
Lily climbed up beside him and immediately began describing the ranch before Anna had even taken her seat.
"We have chickens, but three of them are mean. The red one is the worst. Her name is Queen Victoria because she acts like she owns everything."
Thomas clicked his tongue to the horses.
"I never approved that name."
"You never gave her a better one."
Anna sat on the far side of Lily.
The wagon rolled away from Willow Creek station.
She looked back once.
The platform where she had believed her journey ended grew smaller behind them.
She did not know Thomas Reed.
She did not know his daughter.
She did not know what waited seven miles down a darkening road.
But as Willow Creek disappeared behind the trees, something inside Anna loosened for the first time in months.
Not hope.
Hope felt too dangerous.
Perhaps only relief.
For one night, she knew where she was going.
That was enough.
The Reed ranch appeared after the last of the evening light had faded.
Anna first saw a lantern glowing beside a barn.
Then the dark outline of a large house emerged against the sky.
It was not grand.
But it was substantial.
A two-story timber house stood behind a low fence, with a broad front porch and a stone chimney. A barn, stable, smokehouse, chicken coop, and bunkhouse formed a loose semicircle around the yard.
Beyond them stretched open land disappearing into darkness.
Lily jumped from the wagon before Thomas had fully stopped it.
"Don't run in the dark," he called.
"I know where everything is."
"That doesn't make the ground flatter."
Lily was already running toward the porch.
Anna stepped down more carefully.
A dog appeared from beneath the steps.
Large.