back, so she just nodded. Lynn squirmed, and she set the girl on her feet and took the rock. “Thank you, baby.”
Lynn ran back to her parents, and Etta met Judge’s eye. He pressed his fist to his heart, and Etta accepted his love—she accepted him just how he was. Mister grinned at her as he made the gesture, and she touched her fingers to her lips and gave him a soft air kiss.
She could barely look at Preacher, because she’d grown so close to him over the past several months. He wept for her, and that nearly undid her composure completely. Both he and Charlie pressed their fists over their heart, and Etta finally repeated the gesture back to them.
Ranger had his fist over his heart, as did Ward and Ace. Everywhere Etta looked, in every face, she found love, forgiveness, and acceptance.
“And finally the dessert bar,” Bishop said, and Etta looked back to him on the ladder. “Dot’s going to go over that.” He started to get down from the ladder, and Etta turned sideways toward Holly Ann to let Dot by.
“You owe me so much for this,” she muttered to Etta, and sure enough, she got up on the ladder with the megaphone, her face the shade of a ripe tomato.
“We have all the fixin’s for s’mores,” she said. “But not just the regular kind. There are three types of chocolate. Two flavors of graham crackers. We have regular marshmallows and the ones dipped in toasted coconut. There are peanut butter cups, Rolos, and Whatchamacallits as well. So go wild on the candy bar s’mores.”
She grinned, clearly finding her stride. “We have starburst to roast, and about two tons of aluminum foil to make roasted banana boats. There are walnuts, chocolate chips, coconut, strawberries, marshmallows, and about six different toppings—caramel, chocolate, butterscotch. You know what toppings are.”
Dot didn’t pull the megaphone away from her mouth before she let her sigh out, and Etta grinned at her, a laugh actually starting to form down inside her stomach. She hadn’t laughed in so long.
“We have foil packets with personalized apple pies in them, courtesy of Jeremiah Walker. He says they take five minutes in the coals, and I daresay he brought a truckload, so don’t hold back with those.”
“Yeehaw!” someone yelled, and Etta searched for the Walker who’d done it. It wasn’t hard to find Wyatt Walker, especially with Micah giving him a nudge and Skyler shaking his head. Both Skyler and his wife, Mal, held a child in their arms, and that was quite the feat for Mal, who looked like she could deliver her third baby any moment now.
Jeremiah had five little humans either surrounding him or in his arms or his wife’s, and Rhett and Evelyn still just had their older boy and the triplets. They’d grown so much, it seemed, since Etta had seen them last, which had honestly only been about a month ago, at church.
She hadn’t been able to get herself to go listen to a sermon on the Sabbath Day, and not just because she didn’t want to see August there should he happen to go.
“Squire Ackerman put in two Dutch ovens of peach cobbler about a half an hour ago when he got here. He says they’ll be done in another thirty minutes, if you want to save room.” Dot looked down at her cards, but Etta’s attention got stolen by Micah and Simone Walker’s little girl.
She had to be close to two now, and she had the biggest, brownest eyes on the planet. Etta’s heart yearned for a girl like her, and she suddenly knew that while her siblings loved her, and everyone had gathered here for her, that she still wanted children of her own.
“Tripp and Liam Walker brought three flavors of ice cream to go with your apple pies or cobblers,” Dot read from her card, and Etta’s gaze drifted to the Walker twins. They stood next to Ollie, who had somehow gotten the Glover message, and he pressed his hand to his heart and lowered his head in acknowledgment of Etta.
He was such a kind boy, and she loved him so much. Next to him stood Squire, and when her eyes caught his, he reached up and tipped his hat. Beside him stood Pete Marshall, who ran the equine therapy programs out at Three Rivers, and Garth Ahlstrom, the foreman. Their families had grown up so much over the years, and Etta wasn’t surprised to find tall,