On our wedding night, my new husband saw what was under my robe—and went dead still.

Aunt Clara came out onto the porch three minutes later, wearing an old red cardigan and wiping her hands on a tea towel.

She was sixty-two, her face lined with thirty years of mountain winters, her hair pulled back into a small gray knot at the back of her head. She looked at the long black car, at Nathan sitting in the mud with Lily on his knee, and then at me, standing up with Johnny and Paul holding onto both of my hands.

She didn't say anything for a long time.

She walked down the three porch steps, her heavy work shoes making a dull thud-thud on the oak boards, and stopped two feet from me.

"You look thin, Emily," she said, her voice flat, dry, and thick with the mountain drawl that I hadn't heard in two years.

"I’m fine, Aunt Clara," I whispered.

She looked at Nathan.

She looked at his broad shoulders, his clear gray eyes, his clean hands that were now covered in Raleigh County red clay from holding Lily’s pink boots.

"Is this him?" she asked.

"This is Nathan," I said. "My husband."

Aunt Clara looked at him for three long seconds. She saw the way his left arm was positioned—curved around Lily’s back like a shield, keeping the wind off her small neck. She saw the way he looked at me—not like a man who was showing off a charity project, but like a man who was standing beside his life.

"He's tall," she muttered, wiping her nose with her towel. "Come inside. The kettle’s on."

The inside of the yellow house smelled of fried bacon, wood smoke, and dried mint—the exact smell of my grandmother’s kitchen in Slab Fork twenty years ago.

We sat around the narrow oilcloth table while Clara poured black tea from an enamel pot into five mismatched cups.

Johnny sat on Nathan’s left, his small eyes tracking every movement of Nathan’s leather watch band. Paul sat on his right, leaning his chin on his fist, watching Nathan put two spoons of sugar into his tea.

"The lawyer from Charleston came by yesterday," Clara said, setting the teapot back on the wood stove with a heavy clink. "He had a box of papers with gold stamps on 'em. Said Mr. Carter had bought the old Henderson property up on the ridge."

I turned my head quickly toward Nathan. "What?"

Nathan took a slow sip of his black tea, his face completely calm. "It’s forty acres, Emily. The old stone house near the upper spring. It has a barn, six apple trees, and a porch that looks out over the whole valley."

"Nathan..." I whispered, my heart giving a heavy, sudden knock. "That property... that was the old surveyor’s house. It costs—"

"It costs less than my mother’s summer rental in Newport," Nathan said, setting his tea cup down and looking at Aunt Clara. "And it belongs to Johnny, Paul, and Lily."

Johnny’s head snapped up. "The stone house with the big red barn?"

"The very one," Nathan smiled, reaching out to ruffle the boy’s dark hair. "And the red barn needs two horses, Johnny. Do you know anyone around here who knows how to feed a horse?"

Johnny’s mouth opened into a wide, toothy grin that stretched from ear to ear—the first real smile I had seen on his face since the night the furnace exploded four years ago.

"I do!" he shouted, jumping up from his chair. "Paul knows how to pitch hay! Show him, Paul!"

Paul stood up and made a wild, theatrical swinging motion with an imaginary pitchfork, nearly knocking Clara’s tin sugar bowl off the table.

Clara let out a short, dry snort that might have been a laugh, then she reached into her apron pocket and pulled out a small, rusty brass key attached to a piece of string.

She laid it on the oilcloth between Nathan and me.

"That’s the key to the front door on the ridge," she said softly, her hard gray eyes softening as she looked at my face. "Your dad always wanted that land, Emily. He told me twenty years ago that if he ever hit a good pocket in the upper seam, he’d buy that ridge for you and your mother."

I looked at the small brass key.

I reached out, my fingers trembling as I picked it up off the oilcloth. It was cold, heavy, and smelled of old iron and cedar—just like the key to my green trunk in New York.