Always a light sleeper, Marta woke the moment the kitchen door closed. She listened carefully as someone built up the fire, pumped water and ground coffee and she laid back against the pillow and sighed. Just one of the boys. They'd taken turns being up early and restless nearly every day of the two weeks since the town social. Spot was gruff and twitchy, jumping when whatever was happening in his head was interrupted and Trout was sullen and silent. JoAnna's coldness rocked him, and he was hurt by her pushing him away but he didn't say a thing about it. He answered when he was spoken to in speech or sign, depending on his mood, but didn't offer up conversation. Not unless it was with Clarice. He couldn't help but give her the attention she demanded from him. Even if he had half a mind to keep quiet around her, she'd clamor up into his lap, placing her backside on his knees and tuck one of her feet on either side of his hips and look at him inquisitively until he smiled at her and signed, 'What's up, Buttercup?' She'd giggle and carry on conversations in clumsy baby sign, inserting words where she didn't know the right sign. She was an eager student and picked up his language without any real instruction and everyone could see how much he liked it, missing the ease of conversation when he didn't have to think and work for every word. When he drifted off, lost in thought, she'd lay her tiny blonde head against his heart and just wait for him to come back. Somehow, a three year old who had no patience when it came to her supper or her boots being tied or her hair being brushed had all of the patience in the world for him.

She let him, whichever him it was, be for awhile but when the feathery gray light of dawn started to creep in, she got up and dressed before sinking back down on Fletcher's side of the bed to nuzzle her face into the warm, tanned neck of her cowboy. "Morning," he sighed, kissing the top of her head and wrapping an arm around her waist, anchoring her hip to his. "Who is is this time?"

"Has to be Trout," she answered, tipping her head to the side and listening intently. "No cussing or dropping things. Spot's so clumsy when he gets worked up but Eli just tries to blend into the woodwork." She looked up at him and pressed her lips to his. He smiled into it, pulling her down so that her body was flush on top of his and pressed tightly into him, just the way she needed it.

"You know we should check on her. It ain't natural to not know a man has a wife, especially when he's worked for you for nearly three years," he drawled, pressing his cheek to hers.

"I didn't think you'd want me to after what the boys said about him," she answered quietly, her heart pounding in her chest with anticipation.

He held her up away from him so he could look at her, her hair falling like a curtain around them both, and grinned. "Please, like my wild woman could ever be bested by a slimey little turd like Gordon Flaherty." He laughed, his voice still husky and rough with sleep. "It takes more than a cowardly weasel like him to take down a Fletcher, and you, my love, are a Fletcher through and through." He slowly lowered her mouth back down to his, her curls pooling all around their connected faces and groaned as she pulled his lower lip into her mouth.

"You really are the love of my life, you know that right?" She had no expectation of him answering beyond smiling that wide, lazy smile of his. He'd already lost who he thought was the love of his life, and felt amazingly blessed to have found that kind of connection twice. Comparing his late wife to Marta felt like a betrayal to both of them to him and she respected that.

"You head on downstairs. I'll get the troops up," he said before kissing her deeply.

"That," she said, once his mouth left hers to travel down her jaw and to her neck, "is not really motivating me to leave." She sighed and moaned as he sucked and nibbled, his mouth making her wish she'd stayed in bed a bit longer. He chuckled naughtily and released her, but smacked her backside once she stood up. She squeaked in shock and stuck her tongue out at him before sauntering out and down the narrow staircase to the main floor.

Sure enough, Trout sat, stretched across two chairs at the kitchen table when she came in. He looked up at her wearily, and let an exasperated huff of air out as a piece of paper crumpled into a ball between his large hands. The door to the firebox on the cast iron stove was open from him tending to the fire and he tossed the paper ball into it before getting up to rinse his cup. "Mmmmmorning," he rumbled sourly, trying to convince her that nothing was wrong with a half assed attempt at a smile. "C-c-cah...c-c-c-c..." he growled and tugged at his hair in frustration. The longer he went without sleep, the harder it got for him to get the words out. She smiled patiently, waiting for him to keep trying. "C-c-cah-coffee's rrrrrrrready." Before she could start a conversation and make him talk more, he left to go get to work alone in the barn. She stared after him for a moment, wishing she knew what to say to help him before leaning down to close the door of the oven and saw the ball of paper sitting on the floor by the claw foot. She watched him out the window for a moment, knowing she should put it where he meant it to go, before smoothing in out and scanning over his neat handwriting quickly. "Oh," she whimpered as she read it.

JoAnna,

I've spent the past six years knowing that you left me, knowing that you didn't want me, but also knowing that I had to find you so that I knew you were safe. Not knowing you whether you were all right or not broke my heart far more than knowing our time was over. I never blamed you. I knew from the start that regardless of how complete you made me feel, that I would never be good enough for you.

If you are happy, then my wasted heart will continue to love you from afar like it's done since the moment you left my sight. I'll always be here, just follow the tug of that string between our hearts and it will bring you home to me.

It was you that led me here. I know now that someday you will follow that pull just like I did. I'll be waiting for you. You are the reason my heart beats, the reason I walk this earth, and I will wait until Doomsday if that's what it takes.

Yours Always,

Eli

She knew the moment she met Jo that she was something special. Jo saw something in Trout that almost no one else did. She showed up at the Poplar Street Lodging House, wide eyed and reeling of perfumed soap, looking like the boys might grow fangs and eat her, but managed to get a message from Trout to Marta. Marta ran her fingers over the ratty cardboard cover and a warm smile spread over her freckled face. No one knew what happened to Trout after the rally. All the boys who were arrested were bailed out by the reporter from the Sun, but Trout wasn't with them.

Jo smiled, the kind of smile that got Marta's attention, because Jo didn't know she was glowing with it. She didn't know that her brown eyes seemed warmer, her cheeks more rosy and that everything about her lifted and lit up when he was mentioned. "He wanted you to come see him tomorrow, if you're free. He's still pretty weak."

Her smile softened as her long fingers ran over the paper again as if it connected her to the boy who's voice was scribbled all over the pages, as if her fingers were brushing his arm instead of the care worn cardboard. She opened to the page addressed to her.

Marta,

I'm safe at St Xavier's School in Manhattan. Nurse here won't let me out of bed either. Arm's broken, not my whole body! They say I have to stay until you come speak for me. I won't break your heart anymore. Don't leave me here.

Trout

And Marta, don't do that thing you like to do to the girls the other boys bring home to JoAnna. Please. Don't make her cry.

The kitchen door opened again and Darcy came in with Cooper in her arms and Clarice at her skirt, but looking pinched and tired. Marta quickly folded the note and tucked it into the pocket of her apron before plastering a hasty smile on her face. "Everything all right?"

Darcy smiled softly. As much as Trout's behavior worried Marta, Spot concerned Darcy. "Between Cooper's colic and Spot's nightmares, it's a wonder I get any sleep at all."

"Old ghosts are hitting everybody hard," she murmured, shivering in the chill of the morning.

She placed two of the blue and white speckled cups on the table and filled them with coffee. "I can't believe she's been next door all this time and no one knew."

Darcy's eyes looked at the far wall of the kitchen, narrowing in anger. "It's a trick they like to use. They make you so dependent on them that even though you're free to go out, you don't want to. They make you think the worst of everyone around you and make you certain that everyone knows your deepest darkest secrets. The beatings are bad, but what men like that will do to a woman's mind is the real torture."

Marta hated to think about the Dockside boys and her whole tangled past with them. Darcy drank her coffee like her life depended on it and closed her eyes. Out the window, Eli came out of the barn with Clarice wrapped around his back and shoulders like a knapsack. Darcy smiled sadly as he reached up and patted the tiny hands that were clasped at the base of his throat. She looked at Marta, seeing the golden glow of mischief in her sister's eyes. "You're planning something and I want in."

Marta sucked on one of her cheeks and felt the note in her pocket. "If there is a sliver of a chance of getting her out of something that is destroying her while making him happy like that again. I'm going to take it." She stood up and held Cooper up on her shoulder as she grabbed a pan to start breakfast for everyone. "Coop, you get to help Aunty Marta make a pie."

"Too bed we ain't got any arsenic," Darcy grumbled with her nose deep in her coffee cup.

Marta quirked a tawny brow at the woman she loved like a sister, "Remind me not to get on your bad side when you haven't slept."

Later that morning, with only Cooper in tow, the two women set off in the wagon to the Flaherty place. JoAnna answered the door in her nightgown with a shawl wrapped around herself looking miserable. "Can I help you?" she asked, covering her mouth as she coughed weakly.

"Heya, Poppet," Marta answered quietly, as if she might startle the girl if she spoke to loud. She reached sideways for Darcy's hand and gave it a squeeze. The dead look in Jo's eyes was too familiar for both of them. Four years hadn't cleared their memories of how Darcy looked when she was in Mick's house. "The boys said that we've been neighbors all this time and I had to come and see you for myself."

JoAnna just stared for a moment before a half smile softened her hardened appearance. "Marta?" Her voice cracked and she looked down and tried to cover herself better with her shawl before looking up fearfully at Darcy.

"This is Darcy, she's my friend and Spot's wife. She's ok, we dragged her along from New York."

Jo seemed confused for a moment, before she stepped aside to let them in. "Gordon went to find work. I don't feel very well, so I'll understand if you don't want to stay." She laughed harshly. "I'm not exactly a Park Avenue princess now."

Marta blushed and set her basket on the tiny kitchen table, ignoring Jo's self deprecation. "We made you some chicken and dumplings and a berry pie. It looks like maybe you could use the rest." She tried to smile, but this young woman in front of her was so far from the girl she knew that her mouth didn't want to obey. Jo was so thin and frail looking."You let Darce and I give you a hand while you rest."

Darcy moved over behind JoAnna and touched the inside of her wrist to Jo's forehead. "Sweets, you are burning up. Lets get you to bed."

"I can't," JoAnna groaned, pulling away from Darcy's touching standing on shaking legs. "I have to clean the house and feed the animals or Gordon will be cross with me."

"We'll take care of it," Darcy said in that same quiet voice. Marta knew that voice, it was the same one she used when Spot was losing it. Darcy never ceased to amaze her. The amount of strength that was hiding behind all of the sass and wit was seemingly never ending. She came out of the Dockside crucible forged into something that was nearly unbreakable. She hoisted Jo out of her chair and held her up long enough to walk across the cabin and tuck her into bed.

"Why do you care?" Jo whispered.

"Because you deserve it."

Jo's deep, dark brown eyes pleaded with them when Marta came over and handed Darcy a cool washcloth to bathe JoAnna's face with. Jo locked their eyes together, making Marta want to gather her up like a child and run home with her. "How can you even look at me knowing that I left him."

Marta smiled at her sadly, but didn't answer. Darcy set the rag on her forehead and she shivered against it. "Did Gordon know you were sick?" She nodded and pulled the covers more tightly around her shoulders. Darcy's little pink mouth pressed into a firm line. She pressed Jo's damp, dark hair back from her face until she fell into a restless, feverish sleep.

Marta pulled her back towards the stove. "I'll be home once Gordon comes back."

Darcy's face was still hardened and grim. They both looked around the desolate cabin. It looked like they moved in the day before with how stark it was. The only things in it were the bedstead, the kitchen table with two chairs, the stove and a trunk at the end of the bed. The girl Marta once knew wouldn't live like this. "She isn't that girl anymore," Darcy gritted, "He's twisted her into someone else. You have to be patient with her if you're going to stay." She cocked a blonde brow and smirked knowingly while pointing a finger up towards the tip of Marta's nose., "Try to be a lady, huh? Don't bait Gordon when he comes home. You won't do her any favors doing stuff like that." Marta rolled her eyes and handed the baby back to his mother.

Jo woke herself up coughing not long after Marta finished tidying the sparse house. She watched the woman she once looked up to in awe from her bed, but Marta just smiled back sadly. "How are you feeling, Poppet?" There was sweat beaded on Jo's temples and her breathing was shallow.

Jo stared at her dully. "Why are you helping me?" she croaked. Marta looked deep into her dark eyes and saw nothing of the sweet, fanciful child she once knew. Darcy's words began to sink in. Gordon had taken that kind, silly creature and twisted her into something filled with fear and mistrust. She'd been fed a steady diet of betrayal and manipulation for years.

Marta cleared her throat and pulled a piece of hair around the front to keep her fingers busy. "You took care of one of mine once upon a time when he needed it. If it will make you feel better, you can say that I'm repaying a debt," she paused and perched on the edge of the bed, "but really its because you've been in the back of my mind all this made a mark on us, Jo, whether you want to believe it or not. Trout was out searching for you for weeks. Your aunt came by every day for weeks to see if we'd seen you."

"My mother?"

Marta looked away, and that was all the answer Jo needed. She swiped a hand across her red eyes and stared at the window silently. Marta had just about given up on continuing the conversation when JoAnna's thin, rasping voice whistled out in to the small room. "I waited so long. The train was pulling away when I jumped on. We both thought the other didn't want us." Suddenly, the crackling paper in Marta's pocket was like a lead weight on her leg. She pulled it out and placed it in JoAnna's hand.

"He wanted you. He had no clue you were going." She could see Trout's pale sleepy face as she tucked him into bed in the school attic the next day. She asked what he was calling the sweet girl, and he showed her the gesture he'd chosen, tucking his middle three fingers in, his thumb and pinky out and moving his hand back and forth. It was strange, most of the name gestures he made up had to do with their physical appearance or common mannerisms. As Kisser, hers was a kiss placed on a clenched fist. It was much later that she learned the other meaning of that motion in the language they taught at the school. It meant "the same."

She watched Jo scowl and retreat, crushing the paper in her hand. Marta rinsed out the washcloth and wrung it back out before placing it on Jo's chest, pulling a comforted sigh from her. "Its not important," she whispered in that rough, sandpaper voice. She looked at the paper in her hand. "What is this?"

"Something you should know. You don't have to stay here."

She read it, her knuckles dragging absently up and down her breastbone. It only took a few words for the tears to start flowing down her gaunt cheeks. "I can't just leave my husband because my childhood sweetheart is refusing to allow himself to love anyone else! I loved him, but its too late now!" Marta wrapped her arms tightly around JoAnna and held her close like she would one of her children. Jo cried until she fell asleep with tears still running down her face. Even with a feverish head on her chest, Marta couldn't make herself let go. She held tight, wondering if Jo could make the two mile hike back to the ranch or if she would end up having to carry her most of the way. She had just decided that she needed to try when the door banged open and Gordon came in.

He eyed her cooly before pasting a charming smile on his boyish face. "Afternoon Missus Fletcher. To what do we owe the pleasure of your company?"

She gently released JoAnna from her embrace, setting her back against her pillow and trying not to wince at the whimper that came from the girl at the loss of comfort. Her hands ran down her skirt, smoothing imaginary wrinkles before she narrowed her golden eyes and glared at him. "If I had known you had a wife, we would have had to over for supper. Both of you."

He stuffed his hands in his pockets, "Shoulda known when she knew Spot and Eli that you'd come sniffing around. My wife is my business, and if I don't want her consorting with the likes of you and your brother then she won't. Stay out of my house and away from my wife, or I'll get the sheriff." He hustled her towards the door as Jo whimpered again and propped herself up on one elbow. The look of horror on her face as the two squared off was enough to help Marta keep her temper. She didn't want to make it any worse for the girl.

She stomped all the way home, hissing and spitting like an angry housecat. Fletcher was sitting on the front steps of the white clapboard two story, leaned back on his elbows with his legs sprawled down the steps.

He grinned, long and lazy and raked his hand back through his golden blonde hair. "How's th'other guy look?" he drawled as he hauled himself to his feet and wrapped his arms around her.

She buried her face in his shirt and let out a long string of cuss words that would make most God fearing men blush, but Fletcher just chuckled into her hair. "Don't be surprised if Cruz stops by tomorrow," she mumbled, not bothering to pull her face away.

"Lord Almighty, woman, what did you do?' he groaned, trying to hide a chuckle. She sighed and ran her hands up and down his ribs and pressed her face into his muscular chest. "What am I doing, Fletcher?" she moaned.

"You're a good woman," he said quietly, his voice rumbling straight into her ear. "Crazy as all get out, but the best kind of crazy. I'm proud of you." She smiled up at him, and locked lips with him. "Come on Wild Woman, we'll see if them boys left you anything from lunch."

He guided her in with an arm at the small of her back. "Didn't you eat?"

"No, Ma'am," he answered. "I was a little preoccupied, waiting for my gal to come home. When Darcy came back alone, I had half a mind to ride on over there and wait you out."

She stopped and grinned, "Oh, so all all that talk about me being a Fletcher through and through, having no problem taking care of a little weasel…blah blah blah…that was what?"

"Ego stroking. Blatant, self serving ego stroking," he answered apologetically.

She smiled like a naughty child and kissed the tip of his nose. "You know just what to say to make sure I'm distracted all day long, don'tcha, Mr. Cowpoke?"