I realized that while Millie has appeared in almost every chapter of this story, there's never been one chapter focused just on her. I had to correct this, so here is a chapter starring our heroine, Millie (and costarring the late Hilda Pontipee).


The days just after her wedding to Adam were a hard time for Millie. Of course, she knew from the moment she said yes to his proposal that there was some risk in marrying a perfect stranger. She was a smart girl, and she had good feeling about Adam, and in some ways, she was proven right. He wasn't a brute. He didn't try to force her on their wedding night – Millie knew this happened to some new brides, especially out west, where the country was less settled. But on their wedding night, Adam had actually been willing to sleep in a tree outside the window to make her more comfortable. She'd been tempted to leave him out there all night, but the gesture softened her heart, and she invited back into the bedroom.

Her first instinct about him was right in some ways – but in others, it was wrong. What a rude shock it had been for Millie to learn that Adam had six brothers, all younger and more ill-mannered than him, and all of them living right there in her new home. Millie put on a brave face in front of her new brothers-in-law, but inside, she was quite shaken, full of regret over marrying Adam, fears about her future, and uncertainty the family she'd just married into.

One of the few pleasant surprises in her new life was found in a trunk in the attic of her new home. Adam had told her that he had a trunk of his late mother's old clothes, and on her first full day at the Pontipee farm, Millie brought it downstairs and looked through everything carefully. The clothes in the trunk were old, of course, but they were mostly still in good condition and would fit Millie close enough. Looking through them – all plain but clean, and clearly sewed by skilled hands – Millie had the sense that her late mother-in-law had been a handy, practical sort of woman, not unlike her.

The surprise was at the very bottom of the trunk: a thick, worn book with covers of cowhide leather. Millie knew at once that it was a diary. She quickly hid it away and only read it when the men were out working the farm and she was alone in the house. She wasn't sure that Adam would want her reading something so private, and she wasn't sure if he even knew it existed. Surely he did, but he'd mentioned only a trunk full of clothes, and Millie could tell from the dust on the trunk that nobody had opened it in a long time. Perhaps Adam had known about the diary once but then forgotten.

Millie hoped at first that the diary would be full of rosy stories about Adam's childhood, that it would help her get to know the stranger she had married. But as soon as she opened it, she saw that it wasn't quite like that. Hilda Pontipee had been a farm wife and the mother of seven boys, which left little time for writing. Her diary was more of a record of life on their homestead. Most of it was filled with recipes and remedies and reminders, dates and notes about when new animals were born, when new acres of land were cleared and planted, whether she had any credit at the nearest trading post, and what vegetables grew or failed in her garden. Hilda's handwriting was small, often messy, and occasionally misspelled – not easy to read, even for a smart woman like Millie, but she persevered.

In the diary, Hilda referred to her husband and sons only by their first initials, but it was easy to tell who was who. Millie never actually learned Father Pontipee's first name, but it started with an O, and their boys, of course, were A through G. Hilda had loved her sons, of course, but she didn't seem like a sentimental sort of mother, for most of her notes about them were brief. C has grown five inches this summer! A can now eat porkchops three at a time. D is the worst of em at trackin dirt in the house. Squeezed in next to one recipe were the words, B's favorite.

The diary wasn't quite what Millie had hoped for, but it did give her some insight into the Pontipee family. One day, she read this entry: C wanted to help me cook dinner but all he did was burn this hand on the stove. Poor boy, next time he wants to help I'll tell him to set the table. And that day, when Caleb came in from working, Millie noticed for the first time a small, reddish spot on his right hand – an old burn mark. And did she only imagine it, or did he still back away from the stove just a little whenever he passed through the kitchen?

Another day, Millie read, Hawk got to one of our hens last night. D found the body this mornin and cried his eyes out, bless him. And she imagined Daniel crying over the body of a dead hen and began acting a little more tender to him especially.

Millie read Hilda's diary slowly. She had taken on her mother-in-law's old role on this farm – cleaning the same house, cooking in the same kitchen, sleeping in the same bed – and just as Hilda had little free time to write it, Millie didn't have much time to read it. But she didn't mind, because she wanted to make it last, anyway. But she made sure to read a little from it every day, usually while she was making dinner. It was easy to sit at the table with the book open beside her and read while she chopped or stirred something. The brothers were all hopeless at cooking and didn't usually venture into the kitchen unless it was time for a meal.

Peeling potatoes one day, Millie came across, Heavy rains flooded my summer garden I bin workin so hard at. Lost almost everythin. O says not to worry, river south a here still jumpin with fish. Bin servin fried fish for dinner every nite almost a week now, but the boys don't complain, bless em. She imagined these brothers as young boys, eating fish for dinner night after night and never complaining that they were tired of it. Then she felt a little guilty for yelling at them for their bad table manners on the first night she served them dinner. She could see now that it wasn't so much impoliteness as excitement to have a good, filling meal for the first time in so long.

Just down the page from the lines about fish, Millie found one of the few entries long enough to qualify as an actual story. It was a family anecdote that made her laugh out loud. Bear cub wandered almost right up to the house today, guess it smelled me cookin fish for dinner again. D hollered & E ran into the house & I told em, boys, they're just little bitty ol bear cubs, they wouldn't hurt a fly, it's the mama bear you gotta be skeered of. Then O said, well you must be a mama bear yourself, Hilda, and all of em laughed at that plenty. That man! I gone back to callin him Mr. Pontipee for now.

Millie worried sometimes about what Adam would say when he discovered that she'd had his mother's old diary all this time. As careful as she was with it, he probably would find out about it, sooner or later. But she didn't worry too much. If Adam was angry at her for keeping it from him, she would remind him that he had kept things from her, too. But she'd gotten over her first anger at him, and they became closer – almost like a normal husband and wife – as the weeks went by. Millie still didn't like having six brothers-in-law to cook and clean for, but she planned to solve that problem. She was giving them lessons in the parlor every evening on how to woo women, and soon she would take them into town to find wives of their own.

Then Millie found some lines dated from when Gideon would've been still a baby: You think A'd be tired a younger brothers, but he loves G so much & is really good with him, can get him to quit fussin when even I can't. O jokes when G starts talkin he'll call A his pa.

Millie kept flipping back through the diary and rereading those lines. She felt they proved her hunch that Adam was a good man at heart. They were heartwarming to read, though they didn't really tell her anything new. She knew already that there was a special bond between Adam and Gideon, that they were closer than their other brothers. Of course, given how young Gideon had been when their parents died, Adam had probably been the one to really bring him up.

The days after first marrying Adam had been hard, but nothing compared to that awful, cold winter night when he and his brothers showed up on the front doorstep with six sobbing, terrified girls. The shock of first finding out about Adam's brothers was nothing compared to learning that they'd just kidnapped these girls – snatched some of them right out of their beds! – and caused an avalanche that made returning to town impossible.

All her steadfastness that Adam really was a good man! All the progress she thought she'd made with his brothers! Millie had never felt more foolish or full of regret, and an avalanche came crashing down in her heart even worse than the avalanche in the mountain pass.

Millie stayed up very late that night. It took a lot of work to get the six hysterical girls settled down enough to sleep. Then there was a terrible argument with Adam, a lot of grumbling and angry glares from his brothers, a lot of pacing the floor and wringing her hands. When she did finally go to bed, she thought about turning to her Bible for some comforting verse, but instead, she got out Hilda's diary. She opened it and went straight to the last page, suddenly curious to see the last thing she'd written before she died.

It was a single line, and Millie's tired eyes stared at it with surprise, for never before in the diary had Hilda recorded one of her dreams.

Had a dream last night A married a woman with eyes blue as cornflowers.

The words seemed familiar to Millie, and after a moment, it came back to her. The words Adam had sweet-talked her with on their wedding night. She couldn't remember exactly what he'd said now... something like, hair the color of wheat in the sunshine and eyes bluer than cornflowers. How had those words gotten into Hilda's diary? Could she have really had a dream about the future, and seen Millie arriving at this house years later?

But Millie was too tired to consider that. Dreams in general now seemed like a waste of time to her. She'd built up so many dreams about love and marriage... and her husband was nothing but a thief, a common criminal. She was too tired even to cry over it, and she closed her blue-as-cornflower eyes and fell asleep.


One free review to the first person who can tell me where I borrowed Hilda's line about bear cubs from - but no cheating!
Update: Congratulations to T'Ley, who answered correctly where this line came from. Thanks for playing!