Gwendolyn"S Choice
Copyright© 2026 by Megumi Kashuahara
Chapter 4
The first morning, Gwen was up before dawn.
Ethan found her in the barn, already mucking stalls. She didn’t ask permission. Didn’t wait to be told what to do. Just grabbed a pitchfork and started working.
When he appeared in the doorway, she stopped and looked at him with those fierce amber eyes—half expecting him to tell her to stop, to go back to the house, to stay out of the way.
“Coffee’s on if you want it,” was all he said.
Then he walked to the corral to check the horses.
Gwen stared after him for a moment. Then she went back to work.
By the third day, Tom had stopped looking at her like she might steal the silverware and run.
He’d watched her handle a spooked gelding that morning—a young horse that had thrown Jesse twice already. Tom expected her to get trampled or to give up.
Instead, Gwen approached the animal with a kind of careful wildness that matched its own. She didn’t try to force it. Didn’t yank or hit or shout. She just stood there, waiting, until the horse’s breathing slowed and its eyes stopped rolling.
Then she touched its neck. Soft. Gentle.
The horse let her.
Tom scratched his jaw and said nothing. But later, when Ethan asked how the day went, Tom muttered, “She’s got a way with the animals.”
“Yeah,” Ethan said. “She does.”
By the end of the first week, Jesse stopped being afraid of her.
She’d caught him watching her rope a calf one afternoon—clean throw, perfect loop, like she’d been doing it her whole life.
“How’d you learn that?” Jesse asked, forgetting to be scared.
Gwen glanced at him. “Didn’t. Just did it.”
“You’re better than me.”
“Most things are.”
Jesse blinked. Then he laughed—surprised and a little nervous. Gwen didn’t smile, but something in her face softened just a fraction.
After that, Jesse started asking her questions. Small ones. Practical ones. She didn’t always answer, but when she did, he listened.
Two weeks in, Gwen carried a hundred-pound feed sack from the wagon to the barn without stopping to rest.
Tom, who’d been about to help her, just stood there with his mouth open.
“She ain’t human,” Jesse whispered.
“She’s tougher than both of you combined,” Ethan said mildly. “Now get back to work.”
But he watched her too—the way she moved with economy and grace, the way she never complained, never slowed, never asked for help.
She worked like someone who expected to be thrown out if she stopped being useful.
At night, she still slept in the barn.
Ethan didn’t push. He left the upstairs room open, left a lantern burning in the window so she’d know she was welcome. But he didn’t ask her to come inside.
Sometimes, late at night, he heard her pacing in the hayloft. Restless. Wrestling with something she wouldn’t name.
He never went to her. Never called up to check on her.
He just let her know, in quiet ways, that he was there if she needed him.
Three weeks in, something shifted.
They were mending fence on the north pasture—Ethan, Gwen, and Tom. The work was hot, dusty, and tedious. Tom was complaining about the heat. Ethan was working in silence.
Gwen spoke without looking up from the wire she was twisting. “You talk too much, old man.”
Tom stopped mid-sentence. Stared at her.
Then he laughed—a real laugh, surprised out of him. “Well, hell. She’s got opinions.”
Gwen didn’t smile. But her shoulders relaxed just a little.
Ethan caught her eye across the fence post. She looked away quickly, but not before he saw it—the smallest crack in her armor.
That evening, when Ethan set supper on the table, Gwen appeared in the doorway without being called.
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