A Blessing for Broken Hearts – Extended Epilogue

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Four Years Later

“Don’t you put your luggage there; that’s where my luggage goes!” A high-pitched voice sounded out amongst the busy ranch, carrying over and above the background noises of livestock and chatter. 

“Alina, I told you this was where I was putting my luggage!” a small, blond-haired boy argued from where he stood in the back of a wagon, trying to tie baggage down. “I told you this was where it was going. You can’t just come and say this is where yours is going now! There’s plenty of room over there on that side. Put yours over there.” 

“I won’t!” Alina hollered back, stomping her foot as her messy blonde curls swung about her head and her violet eyes narrowed dangerously. “The food is on that side, and I don’t want my luggage next to any cheese. I told you that, which is why you agreed that could be my spot!” 

“Hey now,” a third voice called, cracking there at the end as the body the voice belonged to jogged down the front porch steps of the small ranch house. “You can both have the side the food isn’t on, guys. I’ll just move my stuff. I don’t mind smelling like cheese at all,” he teased. 

“Thanks, Blake,” Freddy sighed, looking relieved. 

Abby watched it all fondly from where she was finishing securing her own luggage. 

Blake was heads and shoulders over the two twins, having suddenly sprouted in the last year or two way beyond what she ever could have imagined from him as a child. He was a gangly, awkward-looking youth with more limbs than anything else, but his shock of messy brown waves hadn’t changed over the years. Nor had his kind brown eyes and helpful spirit. 

“Mama, do we have to take all of this?” Alina asked in an almost whine as she looked at the loaded-down wagon doubtfully. 

It took everything Abby had not to outright laugh at her. 

“Yes, Alina, we have to take all of this,” she replied as evenly as she could. “The trip to New York is a long one.” And one that she just knew would be made even longer by traveling with an almost eleven-year-old and two seven-year-olds. 

It was crazy to look at Alina and Freddy and think that when Abby had come to Farren herself, Blake had been the same age. 

It was crazy to look at the twins at all and think they were seven even. 

She could still remember the day that she and Galvan had gone to meet the ‘Orphan Train’ so that Abby could catch up with old colleagues, and they’d found the twins huddled in the back, waiting to go back to the orphanage. It was the second time they had seen the pair, and she’d just known they were being passed over and over again just like Blake had been. 

Alina was too opinionated of a little girl for most families to feel comfortable with, and she and Freddy fought too openly, but it had been amusing to Abby then. More so than it was two years later, still dealing with it at home, but Galvan had felt much the same way …

And so they’d brought the pair back with them and adopted them. 

So far, the twins had come with less strife and drama than Abby’s adopting Blake. But Abby thought a good part of that might have been that her father had finally given up on trying to convince her to go back to live in New York and marry Abram. 

“Mama!” Freddy complained, drawing Abby’s attention back to the present as he fended his sister off with one arm. “Mama, tell her I’m sitting here! That this is my spot!” 

Abby sighed as she forced herself to her feet, waddling back and forth a little bit until she caught her balance. “Oh, too quick,” she muttered as she looked back at the twins and shook her head bemusedly. “That’s neither of your spots,” she answered with a snort. “That’s Blake’s spot,” she corrected. 

“Blake’s spot!?” Alina repeated, shocked as she looked back at the seat they were considering so prime unhappily. “Why does Blake get that spot!?” 

“Because it’s between you and Freddy and will save us the two of you murdering one another on the trip,” Abby answered without missing a beat. 

“Isn’t that God’s honest truth,” a deep voice chuckled from the front porch steps. 

Abby grinned as she looked up, catching sight of Galvan and her heart skipping a beat just like it always did. Just like it had since the first time they had run into one another on that street back in Farren all those years ago. He was just so handsome, his blue eyes near permanently creased in laughter and his brown hair a tousled mess atop his head. Abby thought he’d grown even more handsome with the laugh lines forming on either side of his mouth and around his eyes over the years. 

“New York is a long way away,” Abby teased, grimacing playfully as she looked back at their children. 

Galvan only laughed as he made it down the steps to her, his hands framing either side of her very rounded belly as he kissed her temple fondly. “If they get too loud about it, we’ll just tie them to the back of the wagon,” he teased back. “Let them trail behind us so that we don’t have to listen to it.” 

“You will not!” Freddy and Alina cried in unison, their voices raised in outrage and disbelief. 

“They won’t.” Blake laughed, reassuring them as he finished tying his bags in their newly designated spot … next to the food. 

“They might make us stop for the night early, though,” he added knowledgeably. “The second trip we made out there, we made a lot of early stops,” he reminisced. 

Abby winced to remember those. Blake had been on such a tear back then, learning his limits and testing them since he had grown so comfortable. Sometimes it had felt like he argued just to argue back then. 

Freddy and Alina shared a look, their eyebrows furrowed. 

“It’s not so bad,” Blake continued, straightening and moving to help them secure theirs too. “It’s mostly just a lot of riding … and a lot of being bored.” 

He was an expert in the trip by now, four years later, and they’d made at least five trips back to New York over the years. They traded off with Timothy, going back and forth so that Blake had his grandfather in his life and so that Galvan didn’t feel so guilty about moving so far away from the man who had saved his life all those years ago. 

Alina and Freddy hadn’t made the trip yet, though, what with Timothy having come to them last and Abby finding out she was expecting their fourth (and first-born) child. They were, naturally, both curious and anxious about it all. 

“You sure you want to make this trip?” Galvan asked softly, tuning the children out and leaning down to rest his forehead against hers. It was a soft move that she had come to cherish over the years, realizing it was his way of showing her that she had all his attention and affection at the moment. 

Abby laughed softly. “No? With these children? Definitely not.” 

“I meant with this child,” Galvan said sweetly, his hand pushing softly into the round of her belly. “It’s been such a rough pregnancy so far …” 

“And if we don’t go now, we’ll have to wait til the baby is old enough to travel.” Abby sighed. She’d thought it through plenty on her own. It wasn’t fair to make the kids, or Timothy, wait for her to give birth and for the baby to be old enough. 

“If we go now, we have to make the trip back this way when you’ll be six months pregnant,” Galvan said with a frown. 

Abby reached up to gently brush her fingers over his cheek. She knew he worried. He’d worried ever since she had come home from the doctors to tell him what she’d been suspecting for weeks before she’d gone in. Adopting children was a walk in the park for him; it was something he knew, something he could identify with, having been on both sides of the fence. 

Having a child from birth? That was an entirely new aspect of parenthood for them both, and Abby knew it scared Galvan just as much as it excited him. 

“Do you want to tell Timothy that we’re putting it off again?” she teased lightly. 

Galvan snorted. “No,” he admitted after a moment. “I don’t know how that old man does it. Some secret of being a pa for so long maybe, but he could make me feel guilty for breathing wrong if he wanted.” 

Abby laughed. “It’s a good thing he doesn’t want to, then,” she murmured. 

“Pa!” Blake called from the other side of the wagon, drawing both their attention. “You want me to get the horses ready?” 

Galvan grinned in that way he did any time Blake called him pa. Abby knew even after four years of it, he still got tickled pink every time. 

He hadn’t had to wait years like Abby had joked that day so long ago in the paddock while Blake got Leftie ready to ride for the first time. He’d only, as it turned out, had to wait a month or two, but even that had seemed to long for Galvan, who had looked forward to it so much. 

“Yes, please, son,” Galvan called back happily. “Anything to save me more work!” 

Blake laughed as he jogged off, his long limbs swinging. 

“Speaking of pas,” Galvan murmured as he looked back at Abby, his eyebrows raised. 

Abby sighed. She knew what he was getting at, even if she didn’t want to face it yet. 

“I haven’t decided,” she admitted with a small frown. 

“You haven’t decided whether we’re going to stay there, or you haven’t decided whether you’re going to want to invite them back for the baby’s birth?” Galvan asked without judgment, his voice as gentle as his words, despite his encouraging her to tell him. 

“Both, neither, either,” Abby muttered as she looked down at her feet … or where her feet would have been if her belly weren’t in the way of her seeing them already. 

It had been a long four years as far as her folks went. 

It had been six months after she sent her father packing back to New York before her mother had written her finally, including a letter from her sister too. It had been full of apologies and questions about her life, as well as a desire to get to know everything that had happened since Abby left home. 

While they didn’t meet up when Abby went to New York next to visit Timothy, they did continue writing to one another regularly. 

It was two years before her father had sent his own letter, expressing regret over his choices and praising her for seeing through Abram. (His womanizing ways hadn’t changed a bit, her father had reported, not even after his marriage to Allison Crayton.) 

It was their next visit to New York that Abby, Galvan, and Blake all met up with the Lanes for lunch. 

“It’s so hard to forget what happened,” Abby admitted with a frown. “As much as I’ve forgiven …” 

“No one said that you had to forget, darlin’,” Galvan murmured, brushing one finger over her cheek lovingly. “And you don’t owe them us staying with them half our stay there or inviting them back for the baby’s birth. I will support whatever decision you make.” 

It was the same support and love that Galvan approached everything with, and Abby immediately felt her heart that she hadn’t even realized had started racing calm. 

“I want to see them,” she admitted softly. “At least to try and stay with them for a few days … My sister says they’ve really been changing. I know writing Blake like they have, and now the twins has really made them reconsider some things …”

“Then that’s what we’ll do,” Galvan said simply. “We’ll try it out. If something goes wrong, we can always head back over to my pa’s. And if everything goes well enough, you can decide then if you wanna invite them for when the baby is born, yeah?” 

Abby smiled and nodded. “Yeah,” she agreed. 

Galvan bent down, his face close to Abby’s, but the–

“Galvan! Abby!” from the front porch stopped them both as they turned towards the young woman waddling out of the house with two small toddlers clinging to her. “Where did you say you left the extra keys? And when is Jacqueline supposed to be getting here? Didn’t you say she was coming today?” 

“Calm down, Bonnie,” Galvan soothed as he let go of Abby and took a step back. “Jacqueline’ll be here. She’s never been one for being late.” 

Bonnie didn’t look so sure, but then Bonnie rarely looked sure of anything. She was their most recent in a long line of young mothers to come stay with them as she got on her feet and was by far the most anxious of them yet. 

Abby didn’t even know how they had become the sort of halfway house for children, young mothers, or those in need could come to when in need – but somewhere along the way, they had. 

“But she’s not going to stay?” Bonnie asked for what had to be the twelfth time, her nervous gray eyes scanning the ranch as if afraid that the boogeyman would erupt right up out of the ground. “Maybe I ought to see if I can stay with her …” 

“She’s not going to stay,” Abby soothed, catching her youngest toddler as he ran to jump off the stairs. “She’s got all those kids of her own back at home, and her husband just broke his leg. But she is going to pop in every day and see if you need any help …” 

“And Deputy Marks is going to be out every day to check on you, too,” Galvan added with a grin. 

Abby elbowed him as Bonnie burnt up to a bright red at the information. 

Deputy Marks had been coming around more and more since Bonnie had fled Tennessee and her abusive ex-husband to come stay with them. He was real sweet on the young mother, and she on him, but they both danced around the situation like a pig in heels. 

“I just … I don’t know how I feel about staying out here all on my own,” Bonnie admitted with a sigh, smiling as Freddy and Alina started rolling a ball back and forth with her older toddler, Jason, in the grass next to the wagon. 

“You’re always more than welcome to come to New York with us,” Abby offered again, her tone understanding. She knew Bonnie was scared of being on her own and her ex showing up, and she knew it was a big reason they hadn’t left the month before. 

“No …” Bonnie sighed, obviously using those techniques Galvan had been working with her on to calm herself down. “I wanted to use this as a way to get used to staying on my own,” she said slowly. “I just keep forgetting,” she admitted sheepishly. 

Abby reached out to hug her comfortingly. 

“It’s hard,” she said knowingly, “but it does get easier.” 

“I don’t have a Galvan as my husband,” Bonnie teased with a knowing grin. 

Galvan was the one who laughed at that, tossing more of their luggage in the wagon as he looked over at Abby with a big smile. “Abby didn’t always either,” he said with a shrug. “Actually, I reckon she did a whole lot on her own before I ever showed up. And I’ll bet you dollars to dumplings I made things a mite harder on her for a time there.” 

Abby smiled at what felt like far-distant memories, her hand falling to her belly as she felt their baby shift inside of it. 

He had made things harder for a spell, but he’d been there with the shovel to help clean up the mess he’d helped make … and he’d been there ever since. 

“Pa! The horses are ready!” Blake called as he jogged back up from around the side of the house. 

Galvan nodded, grabbing Frank up and swinging him up onto his shoulders as he headed to go meet him that direction. “Alright! How ’bout you boys help me get them out here and hitched to the wagon, yeah?” 

“Yeah!” Frank and Blake chorused with equal excitement. 

Abby lowered Bonnie’s daughter, Ophelia, to the ground again to run off to play with Jason and Alina in the grass. 

“Did he really make it harder?” Bonnie whispered as Galvan disappeared out of sight. 

Abby smiled and nodded. “For a bit,” she admitted. Her voice was fond as she stared out at the ranch and what they’d built out of all of it over the last four years. “And then he helped me pick up the pieces.” 

“Weren’t you afraid to let him?” Bonnie asked with a hitch in her voice. 

Abby knew she was thinking about Deputy Marks. 

“I was,” she confessed. “But a wise man once told me that God leads people to us when we need them most, those who are meant to be there with us, and I know that for me that was Galvan back then. Sometimes you just have to sit a spell and think about it. Life has a funny way of working itself out.” 

Even as Abby spoke the words she knew them to be true. 

After all, look what life had given her after all of those years, putting Blake and Galvan in her path and all the trials and tribulations that had come with it. 

It was worth all of them a thousand times over. 

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