Free A Place Called Harmony by Jodi Thomas Page B

his signature on an agreement to work for Harmon Ely. She’d been writing the trading post owner for four months, and all her letters were signed with her husband’s name.
    She’d been the one who’d applied for and accepted the job to help build a town. The dream of joining her husband in a newborn town had been just too good not to gamble on.
    So, she loaded her four little boys, with black hair and blue eyes like Gillian, and all her household goods in two wagons. The trip took a month, but with her two older brothers driving the wagons and four of her teenage nephews riding along to scout and hunt, the journey was an easy one. Her parents insisted she take two milk cows and a crate of chickens. The men also brought extra horses, planning to leave some with Gillian and ride the others back home. They’d get her to Texas and settled, then ride back to the farm in time to help with the spring planting.
    Daisy, who’d never been more than a few miles from home, was both excited and terrified. The last time Gillian came home he hadn’t begged her to go with him, but she hadn’t been brave enough to leave. Her mother had told her if she held out, eventually Gillian would stay on her family’s farm. Only he didn’t, and each time he rode away, more of her wanted to go with him. When he hadn’t made it home for Christmas, she knew she was losing the little piece of him she thought she had.
    She had to change. She had to go to him. Standing up to her family had been far harder than the monthlong journey. They’d all taken their turn listing all the reasons she should stay, but Daisy kept packing.
    In the end, they’d all stood and watched her go. She’d silently cried every night for the first week, and then slowly an excitement built inside her. She’d never been brave, but she was now doing one brave thing.
    During the journey, the weather was cold and the days boring, but she’d made it to Harmon Ely’s trading post by the first of March. Like her family, Harmon believed her husband would join her within two weeks. He put her and the boys up in his own room beside the kitchen and left her wagons packed in the barn. The owner of the trading post took one of the small rooms upstairs that he’d added on for his children. He said his family would come as soon as the town was built.
    Daisy settled in and waited. Her handsome captain would come. He would stay with her and they would start a new life together, she kept telling herself, but deep down she feared he might not join her. If he didn’t, she’d go back home and call herself a widow for the rest of her life.
    Harmon Ely was a grumpy old man in a fifty-year-old body. His hair seemed to have slipped off the back of his head. The few remaining strands hung tightly to the last of his scalp in long, fussy, gray ringlets. After eating his cooking for two days, Daisy offered to take over the kitchen as part of her board. Though Mr. Ely lived alone, he had a habit of inviting anyone riding by to stay for supper, and with Daisy cooking, he did so proudly.
    As soon as the settlers passing by tasted Daisy’s food, they began to shop later and stay for another meal. In exchange they brought apples, peaches, and butter. So apple pie quickly became a standard at the trading post table.
    Daisy didn’t mind the extra people at the table. She was used to cooking for a dozen or more. Only a few of the men smelled so bad she made them take their supper on the porch.
    On warm days she roped off the back porch and let the boys play while she baked bread and did laundry. Mr. Ely claimed just the smell of her bread doubled his sales. More often than not, when he wasn’t busy with a customer, the old man was playing out back on the porch with her sons. He was a man who loved children and talked about how his were growing up without him.
    “As soon as I get this town built, my family is coming,” he’d say over and over.
    In the evening, after the dishes were done and the