Harrison Mulholland leaned back and puffed at his cigar. “We’re more than a year out from the election. Theoretically, there’s plenty of time. But primarying Kent will be tricky. You’re both Progressive Republicans, and he’s the incumbent. He’s not a strong incumbent, but you’ve never held office. We need to find something that hurts Kent, or something that helps you, because on the issues, you’re not that different.”
“He’s a lot softer on the suffrage amendment.”
William’s new campaign manager nodded and looked out over the ranch landscape. “We need to put our finger up and see which way the wind’s blowing on that. Could help you, could hurt you. It’ll help you if we get the ladies out to vote.”
The screen door opened, and William’s mother came through, with Nora right behind her. The three men on the porch all stood at once.
The women were dressed alike, wearing tidy plaid blouses, leather gauchos, and tall boots—what passed on the Frazier ranch for ladies’ riding habits. He didn’t think his mother had ridden sidesaddle ever in her life. William saw his wife, glowing with happiness, her wavy blonde tresses wound in a loose braid, a flat-crowned cowboy hat hanging on her back by the leather thong at her throat, and he went hard at once. Nora was beautiful in anything she wore, but she looked best in clothes in which she felt comfortable, like these.
“The ladies will vote, Harrison, you can rest assured,” William’s mother said. “And will you please put that reeking thing out, or at least take it away from my porch.”
Harrison Mulholland was a hard-dealing, hard-living lifelong soldier on the battlefield of California politics. At Angelica Frazier’s rebuke, he blushed and cast his eyes about for a place to stub out his cigar. “Sorry, ma’am.”
William’s father laughed and kissed his wife’s cheek. “Going riding, I see. Got a destination?”
“We thought we’d just amble around the ranch a bit, get Middy used to his new home.”
Chris had shipped Nora’s horse to her from Tarrindale. The gelding had been fairly traumatized by the long journey, skittish and suspicious of his new surroundings. Their vet had suggested they keep him isolated and ease him gently into his new life. Both William and Nora had understood the horse perhaps better than most humans could. When Nora had wanted to spend the first few nights after Middy’s arrival sleeping in the stable with him, William had made a place for them both to sleep just outside the horse’s stall.
For the past week, she’d been riding him again every day, but only in the paddock. If they were going out onto the open ranch, William wanted to be with them.
So did his father, apparently. “You want company?” he asked.
“Aren’t you busy plotting your takeover of California’s First Congressional District?”
“Yes, we are,” Mulholland interjected.
“It can wait,” William said. “Let’s ride.”
“Go on inside, Harry.” William’s father led the man toward the door. “You can work in my study. We’ll be back in a couple hours.”
“You’re welcome to stay for dinner, Harrison,” his mother said with a subtly smug smile. “Adelaide will be here by then.”
Harrison Mulholland, a large, beefy man, reacted to that news by taking off his hat and smoothing down his hair, as if the lady in question had stepped onto the porch before him.
“Thank you, Angelica. Don’t mind if I do.”
William chuckled to himself. Mulholland had about the same chance of catching his aunt’s eye as he had of sprouting wings and flying to the top of Mount Tamalpais. His elegant mother had some twist in her steel. She liked to keep men like him off balance, and she wasn’t above a little foul play to do it.
But that was Mulholland’s problem to work out, and William had better things to do. He took his wife’s hand and said again, “Let’s ride.”
Lupe set a plate on the table before Nora, and she gasped quietly and put her hand to her mouth.
William set his hand on her knee. “All right?” She’d seemed a bit flushed, but they’d been out in the summer sun all afternoon.
Actually, now she was pale. “Nora?”
When Lupe left the room, Nora pushed her plate aside. It was one of her favorite dishes—tamales and red beans, a typically tasty, unpretentious meal on the ranch—but as William watched, her complexion became positively pasty.
She cleared her throat. “You know, I’m not feeling very well. Ex—excuse me!” She jumped up from the table and was out of the dining room before the men could rise to their feet.
“Excuse me, too,” William said, intending to go after her.
“Wait, William. I’ll go,” Adelaide said.
“You think she’s truly ill?”
His aunt only smiled and left the table.
William let her, and the men sat down. When he looked to his mother, seated at the end of the table, he was stunned to see her grinning like the Christmas when his father had given her Columbia, her Thoroughbred mare.
“What?”
His mother stood up, too, and all the men got up again. Still grinning like a teenager, she hurried from the room without bothering to excuse herself.
William stood and gaped at the doorway. “What the hell is going on?”
Behind him, his father chortled. “Son, for a man of the world, sometimes you’re thick as a barn door. Have you been trying to make your mother happy?”
He turned to face his father. Now everybody in the whole damned house was grinning, including Harrison Fucking Mulholland, who was at risk of finding himself with a mouthful of William’s fist. “What?”
“William,” his father sighed. “They think she’s expecting. In the family way.”
“Oh. Oh.” He turned back to the door as the wave of understanding crashed over his head. “Oh, shit. I need … I should be there.”
His father had come around the table; now he set his hand on William’s shoulder. “You should wait until the women do what women do. Addie will come for you when you’re wanted. That’s the way of these things. Your part is over except for the waiting. Best get used to that.”
His father sent Mulholland away, without the chance to eat his dinner or press his suit with Adelaide. Then the Frazier men sat on the porch in the twilight and waited.
It was his mother who came to find him. William jumped from his seat as soon as the door creaked open.
“Is she … How is she?”
Her grin had become positively beatific. “She’s good. And Adelaide says yes, she’s about six or eight weeks along.”
Eight weeks ago, they’d been on their way home from England. William recalled the explosion of joy he’d felt when Nora had asked him to fuck her, and to come inside her. Had he made her pregnant on that very night?
Maybe—or almost any subsequent night since. He should have known what everybody was grinning about; they’d been trying hard enough to make it happen. But he’d spent a long time not thinking of fatherhood at all, and the past couple of years trying not to think about the children he wanted to have with Nora. He’d gotten good at it, apparently.
“Can I see her?”
“That’s why I’m here. She wants you.”
As he walked past his mother toward the door, she grabbed his arm. “Hey.”
He turned to his mother, and she lifted her arms. William stepped into them and held on. “You two are going to make the most wonderful family,” she whispered at his ear. “I can’t wait to watch it grow. So much good is in store for you, my sweet boy.”
Before he went to see her, William went out to the garden. He found the perfect bloom and clipped it.
She was in bed, propped up on pillows, dressed in a blue nightgown that he especially loved for the way it brought out the unusual color of her eyes. Her hair was loose over her shoulders, and she was beautiful, even with the pallor of faintness flattening the usual glow of her complexion. Her bright smile brought a glow of its own.
He sat on the bed at her hip and handed her the stem he’d clipped—a blooming white rose, with a tiny white bud from a slender shoot below it. “For you. Mother and child. My Kensington Roses.”
Her eyes glittered as she took it and put the bloom to her nose.
“Do you feel any better?”
“I don’t think I’ll be eating beans for a while.” She shuddered. “Even the thought of them makes my stomach clench. But yes, I feel better. Just tired.”
“I think Mom’s already started knitting.” He set his hand on her belly. “There’s a little Nora in there?”
“Or a little William.”
“I hope it’s a girl. I want to see you shape a woman for this world and give her everything you fought so hard to have yourself.”
Nora laid her hand over his. “If it’s a boy, we’ll raise him to be man like his father, who can love a woman who stands at his side and not behind him.”
William stared at their hands, resting on her flat belly. In the quiet peace of this moment, while his heart swelled at the idea of their child, his mind flashed the past three years before his eyes—not as if in the certainty of his death, but in the hope for his life. He remembered the naïve, lovely young lady he’d met that summer day in Hyde Park, the keen wit and sharp pain that glittered in her turquoise eyes. The woman she’d become, the one she’d wanted to be, lay before him now, in their shared bed. Between that first moment and this present one, a mere three years, they’d lived more life, endured more trials, than any one lifetime should hold.
And it had all brought them here.
“My God, Nora,” he whispered; he felt nearly like he was praying. “Look where we’ve come. After everything, look where we are.”
“Home,” she whispered.