Page 43 of The Cowboy's Secret Babies

And she bumped along, cozy in the car with her thoughts, for the next hour or so.

The views were beyond breathtaking. It was normally an hour out from the lodge, though today she wouldn’t be surprised if it was twice that. Because it was winter, and no one could ever really be sure what a mountain might do when it got all icy and cold.

She passed the two-hour mark and kept going, following the same tracks carefully because the road wasn’t always where it ought to be. As always, she smiled in something almost like relief when the road narrowed even further. Moments later she rounded a mountain along a cliff that could only be called treacherous, and then, finally, crossed a familiar one-lane bridge over a frozen creek.

Just like that, she was there.

The trees stretched high above her, covered in snow, but there were lights in them. Fairy lights to lead the way until she saw the big archway to one side, woven together from twigs and branches and what her mother had once calledsacred energy from the mountain itself.

Hey, whatever worked.

She drove through and entered Nepenthe Creek, the community where her mother had lived for most of the last decade. Before that, she had been a frequent visitor—especially when she didn’t want to be around her husband or his family.

Rosie had been here a lot. More than she’d wanted to, some years. But Charlotte had never been one to ask for input on her decisions.

Rosie parked her car in front of the first building, because cars were frowned upon here, tools ofthe worldthat they were and all. She got out and stretched, then zipped her coat up. There was more of a breeze up here and the cold was piercing, but she decided it felt like clarity.

And she certainly needed some of that.

She rubbed her hands together, did a few squats to loosen up her legs, and then followed the shoveled pathway that led deeper into the community. It was surprising that no one was around, but she didn’t dwell on that. These were the sort of people who could be derailed for hours by an impromptu drum circle or the plight of a wild animal.

Sometimes she envied them, Rosie thought. Sometimes she wished she was brave enough to live outside the bonds of society, to make her own way, and to welcome whatever came with no expectation or judgment.

But that wasn’t her. It never had been her, to her mother’s dismay.

Rosie made her way to the cluster of buildings over near where the creek ran sweet and clean in summer to see if her mother was in the cabin where she lived these days. She went and knocked on the door, even though her mother had told her a thousand times that no one knocked in a place where they all belonged.Shedid not belong here, Rosie had always thought, but had refrained from saying. She always worried that Charlotte would take something like that as a challenge.

When there was no answer, she continued on down the path to the place the people who lived here called their temple. It wasn’t a church. It was as sacred or profane as they decided it was in any given moment. It was the round building in the center of the community where they gathered each morning and night. They ate there, lounged around there, held their many groups and encounters and festivals. Jack had once called it the community Starbucks, which had not gone over well with the anti-capitalists.

Rosie walked into the temple building, all wooden and built by the hands of community members past. She could admit it was a pretty place, with its soft lights and warmth, and tapestries hung to billow and wave. There was the smell of something like curry mixed in with woodsmoke, and despite herself, it all felt welcoming.

Maybe this whole Ryder situation was mellowing her more than she’d thought.

She’d have to tell Charlotte, who had long maintained that what Rosie really needed was to mellow out and let the universe lead her, or something like that. She’d never paid as much attention as perhaps she should have.

There was the sound of voices and musical instruments from deeper in the building. Rosie knew then that the community was gathered for their morning meeting—perhaps held later today because of the snow—and, as usual, some felt that they could best express themselves by playing musical instruments in the midst of these conversations.

She dutifully shed her outer layers and hung them on a peg by the door, then set her boots in the neat lines that were already there. Then she padded in, past the outer rooms that had only ever been described to her asmultipurpose, though no purposes were ever explained. She found the community in the huge central room with the dome ceiling that was painted with constellations, none in their proper place.

There were many familiar faces in this room. Some that Rosie had known forever, some that she’d met last time she’d come here, and some she’d simply seen in town over the summer, selling crafts and wares at the summer market. She put on her smile and looked around until she found her mother in the crowd.

“Moonshadow,” someone said. More than one someone.“Moonshadow.”

It took Rosie longer than it should have to remember thatMoonshadowwas the name her mother was using these days.

But everyone turned, so Rosie did too, and there was Charlotte. Sitting with her eyes closed, and a look of familiar bliss on her face as shetuned in, as she called it.

The trouble with Charlotte, Rosie thought, was that she didn’t look the way some of her friends here did. As if their bodies had been crying out for the meat and sugar they’d been denied for decades, leaving them a bit gamey, as Matilda had once put it.

Charlotte looked radiant, as ever. Her brow was notably unlined. Her hair was the same strawberry blonde as Rosie and Matilda’s, though it gleamed with a touch of silver, here and there. She liked to keep it full and long and flowing all around her, and when she opened her eyes to see her daughter standing there, she beamed.

“Did I forget that you were coming?” she asked in her lovely, musical voice. “I know that disappoints you.”

And Rosie burst into tears.

Because her mother was a silly woman in many critical ways. Her mother was also a selfish woman, in a whole host of other ways that made even less sense to Rosie now that she was a mother herself. Yet at the end of the day, Charlotte was her mother.

Right now, Charlotte was exactly who Rosie needed.

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