If You Believe

If You Believe Plot Summary

Introduction

The shotgun butt cracked against his jaw like thunder, sending Mad Dog Stone sprawling into the purple dahlias. Blood filled his mouth as he stared up at the tall, severe woman looming over him, her brown dress fluttering in the autumn wind like funeral shrouds. This wasn't the welcome he'd expected when answering the job advertisement for a handyman at Professor Throckmorton's apple farm. Mariah Throckmorton stood rigid as a fence post, the smoking shotgun still clutched in her white-knuckled hands. For fifteen years, she'd hidden behind the white picket fence of her father's farm, sealed away from a world that had once broken her heart and buried her dreams. No drifter—especially not one with laughing gray eyes and a devil's smile—would threaten her carefully constructed sanctuary. But Mad Dog Stone wasn't just any wanderer. He was a man who'd spent his life running from everything that mattered, and she was a woman who'd forgotten how to run toward anything at all.

Chapter 1: The Drifter and the Recluse: Colliding Worlds

Mad Dog picked himself up from the flower bed, wiping blood from his split lip. The autumn air carried the scent of ripe apples and dying leaves, but all he could focus on was the woman before him. Tall and angular in her shapeless brown dress, she held that shotgun like she knew how to use it. Her dark hair was pulled back so tight it seemed to stretch her pale skin taut across sharp cheekbones. "You must be the welcoming committee," he drawled, tasting copper. "Charming." Professor Erasmus Throckmorton emerged from behind the house, wiping dirt from his gnarled hands. The old man's blue eyes twinkled with amusement as he surveyed the scene. His white hair stuck up in tufts, and his clothes bore the stains of a man more interested in fossils than fashion. "Mariah, dear, that's rather excessive, even for you," Rass said mildly. "Mr. Stone, I presume? I'm delighted you answered my advertisement." Mariah's mouth dropped open. "You hired him?" "Eight dollars a week plus room and board," Mad Dog confirmed, never taking his eyes off the woman who'd tried to brain him. Something about her fierce protectiveness intrigued him. Most women who encountered a man like him either cowered or threw themselves at him. This one had tried to knock his block off. Rass nodded toward the small whitewashed bunkhouse. "That'll be your quarters. Mariah handles the work assignments." He paused, studying his daughter's rigid posture. "We've been alone here too long, my dear. A bit of disruption might do us good." Mariah's grip tightened on the shotgun. "I won't have it, Rass. I won't let you bring this stranger into our home." But even as she spoke, Mad Dog saw something flicker in her maple-syrup eyes. Fear, yes, but something else too. Longing, perhaps, or recognition. He'd spent enough time with skittish creatures to recognize the signs. That evening, Mariah grudgingly allowed him to eat at their table. She sat stiff-backed across from him, passing dishes with the enthusiasm of a woman handling dead rats. But Mad Dog caught her watching him when she thought he wasn't looking, her gaze lingering on his hands, his mouth, the open collar of his shirt. "So, Mr. Stone," Rass said between bites of sauerbraten, "where do you call home?" Mad Dog shrugged. "Nowhere. Everywhere. Depends on the day." Mariah's fork clinked against her plate. "How wonderfully rootless of you." Her voice dripped acid, but he heard the pain underneath. This wasn't a woman who disapproved of wanderers—this was a woman who'd been hurt by one.

Chapter 2: Ghosts of the Past: Secrets Unburied

The next morning, Mariah assigned him to crack walnuts. It was backbreaking, finger-destroying work, designed to send him packing within hours. Instead, Mad Dog cracked walnuts until his hands bled and his back screamed, then asked for more. "Stubborn as a Missouri mule," Mariah muttered, inspecting his mangled efforts. Green shell fragments clung to the brown meat like barnacles. "These are barely edible." "I didn't say I was good at it," Mad Dog replied. "I said I'd do it." Something shifted in her expression—surprise, perhaps even respect. She turned away quickly, but not before he glimpsed the vulnerability she tried so hard to hide. That afternoon, he found her standing at her bedroom window, staring out at the farm with tears she couldn't shed glistening in her eyes. The sight hit him like a punch to the gut. He'd known plenty of broken women in his travels, but none who fought so hard to appear whole. During their evening cloud-watching ritual—a Throckmorton family tradition—Mad Dog lay with his head touching Mariah's and Rass's, forming a circle in the grass. Above them, clouds drifted across the autumn sky like ships seeking harbor. "I see a little boy in a bowler hat," Mariah said softly, her voice catching slightly. Mad Dog squeezed her hand. He didn't know why—the gesture was pure instinct. But when she squeezed back, something clicked into place inside his chest. Later that night, she came to him in the bunkhouse. She stood in the doorway like a brown ghost, her hair finally freed from its prison of pins. In the lamplight, it cascaded around her shoulders in waves of mahogany fire. "I want you," she whispered. And Mad Dog Stone, who'd bedded more women than he could count and forgotten every single one, knew he was looking at the woman who would haunt him for the rest of his life.

Chapter 3: Breaking Barriers: Walls Begin to Crumble

Their first night together burned away fifteen years of Mariah's carefully constructed armor. Mad Dog's hands mapped her body like a cartographer discovering new worlds, and she responded with a passion that surprised them both. She'd only known one man before—a lying actor who'd left her pregnant and alone—but with Mad Dog, she discovered the difference between having sex and making love. "Is it always like that?" she asked afterward, her head pillowed on his chest. "No," he said honestly. "It's almost never like that." In the days that followed, they created a secret world between them. Mad Dog continued his farm work—picking apples with Mariah's obsessive color-coding system, mucking out pig stalls that left him reeking for hours. But the nights belonged to them alone. Mariah began to change. She let her hair down more often, smiled at Mad Dog's crude jokes, even laughed when he called her cooking "better than horse feed." The brown dresses gave way to colors—blues and greens that brought out the gold flecks in her eyes. But the white picket fence remained. Every morning, Mad Dog watched her freeze when she approached the gate, her face going pale, her breathing shallow. Whatever had driven her to this farm had built walls she couldn't cross. One evening, as they sat on the porch swing, Rass broached the subject directly. "You could leave this place, you know, Mariah. The fence doesn't have locks." Her face went white. "I don't want to leave." "Can't," Mad Dog said quietly. "There's a difference." Mariah's eyes flashed with anger and shame. She bolted from the swing and disappeared into the house, leaving the two men in uncomfortable silence. That night, she came to Mad Dog's bed shaking and desperate, making love to him with a ferocity that left them both breathless and raw. But when morning came, the fence still stood, and Mariah still couldn't cross it.

Chapter 4: Family Found: The Boy Who Stayed

Jake Vanderstay arrived on a cold October morning, emerging from the barn like a ghost made flesh. Thin as a rail and dirty as a chimney sweep, the fifteen-year-old boy had copper hair and green eyes that held too much sorrow for his age. "He answered my advertisement," Rass explained, though Mad Dog suspected there was more to the story. "He'll be my assistant, cataloging fossils." Mariah's reaction to Jake was immediate and visceral. The boy's resemblance to someone from her past was unmistakable—the shape of his face, the color of his hair. Mad Dog watched her struggle with emotions she couldn't name, saw her fight the urge to mother this lost child. "You can call me Mariah," she told Jake gently, cutting his shaggy hair in the kitchen while he sat perfectly still, tears of gratitude sliding down his cheeks. "My mama used to cut it along my collar," he whispered. "She liked it a little long." Jake settled into their makeshift family like a missing puzzle piece. He helped with chores, laughed at Mad Dog's stories, and brought out a tenderness in Mariah that broke Mad Dog's heart to witness. Here was a woman born to be a mother, denied that joy by cruel circumstance. But Jake carried secrets of his own. Mad Dog caught him watching sometimes, studying Mad Dog's face with an intensity that bordered on hunger. The boy flinched whenever Mad Dog mentioned children, grew quiet when the conversation turned to fathers and sons. One evening, Jake asked Mad Dog to teach him to fight. They sparred in the yard, Jake taking punches with the stoicism of someone accustomed to pain. When Mariah tried to intervene, Mad Dog stopped her. "He needs to learn," he said simply. "Life's gonna hit him whether he knows how to hit back or not." As winter approached, their small family grew closer. They shared meals and stories, played cards by lamplight, found comfort in each other's company. Mad Dog began to understand what he'd been running from all these years—not freedom, but connection. Not adventure, but love.

Chapter 5: Loss and Letting Go: Rass's Final Journey

The stroke came without warning. Rass collapsed in the yard one afternoon, his body crumpling like a discarded scarecrow. By the time Mad Dog carried him to the doctor, the old professor was locked in a coma from which he would never truly wake. "Maybe a week," Doc Sherman said quietly. "Maybe a day." Mariah sat vigil at her father's bedside, reading poetry and talking to him about nothing and everything. Her voice never wavered, her hands never shook, but Mad Dog saw the terror in her eyes. Rass was her anchor, her reason for staying hidden. Without him, she'd be truly alone. When Rass briefly stirred, asking to see the night sky one last time, Mad Dog carried him to the porch swing. Father and daughter sat together in the gathering dusk, speaking the words that needed saying. "I love you, Boo," Rass whispered, using the childhood nickname he'd abandoned years before. "I love you too, Daddy," Mariah replied, the words torn from her throat. That night, Rass died peacefully in his sleep. Mariah didn't cry—she never cried—but something inside her died with him. She became a ghost of herself, moving through the house like a sleepwalker, eating nothing, feeling less. Mad Dog tried everything to reach her. He cooked meals she wouldn't touch, offered comfort she couldn't accept. Jake brought her flowers she barely acknowledged. The farm fell into a hush of grief that threatened to swallow them all. Finally, Mad Dog made a desperate choice. He showed up at the house with a bottle of tequila and a challenge. "I have the cure for apathy," he announced. Mariah looked at him with dull, lifeless eyes. "Drinking won't bring him back." "No," Mad Dog agreed. "But maybe it'll help you say goodbye."

Chapter 6: Freedom's Cost: The Choice to Leave

The tequila worked its magic slowly. Mariah drank with the grimness of a woman taking medicine, each swallow burning away another layer of her rigid control. Mad Dog led her to the family graveyard, where her parents and her infant son lay beneath the old oak tree. Thomas. The baby she'd borne at sixteen, alone and abandoned by his faithless father. The child who'd lived only hours, taking Mariah's dreams of motherhood with him to the grave. "Talk to him," Mad Dog urged. "Say what you couldn't say." And finally, blessedly, Mariah cried. She wept for her parents, for her lost child, for all the words left unspoken and all the love she'd kept locked away. Mad Dog held her through it all, his own tears falling into her hair. But the next morning brought reality crashing back. Mad Dog stood in the bunkhouse, packing his few belongings while Mariah watched from the doorway. "Were you going to say goodbye?" she asked. He couldn't answer. They both knew he was a man who'd never made a commitment he couldn't break, never stayed anywhere long enough to matter. The farm, the family they'd built—it was all temporary. It had to be. "I'm not the man for you, Mariah," he said finally. "You deserve someone who'll promise to love you forever and keep that promise." "Would it help if I told you I loved you?" The words hung between them like a blade. Her eyes flashed with anger. "No, Matt. That wouldn't help at all." Before she could slap him—and he saw the impulse in her raised hand—he walked away. Behind him, he heard Jake's quiet revelation: the boy was his son, the child of a long-ago lover who'd died believing Mad Dog would never return. Mad Dog left them both, father and son saying goodbye in the shadow of the woman they both loved.

Chapter 7: Coming Home: The Courage to Return

Winter on the rails was a cold, bitter teacher. Mad Dog rode the freight cars from town to town, finding no work, no warmth, no peace. The notebook pages stayed blank. The tequila had lost its taste. Even the whores in Albuquerque couldn't touch the loneliness that gnawed at his bones. On Christmas night, in a smoky saloon that reeked of desperation, Mad Dog finally understood what he'd lost. Home wasn't a place—it was people who cared whether you lived or died. Family wasn't blood—it was choice. He'd made his choice, and it was the wrong one. The journey back to Lonesome Creek felt like swimming upstream against a current of his own making. Every mile brought doubt, every hour brought fear. What if Mariah had moved on? What if Jake had given up on the father who'd failed him? When the farm appeared in the distance, Mad Dog stopped and stared. The white picket fence was gone. Where it had stood, only snow remained, stretching unbroken toward the horizon. Jake found him first, tears of joy streaming down his face as he embraced the father who'd come home. "I knew you'd be back," the boy whispered. But Mariah was harder to win. She stood in the kitchen, beautiful in a blue dress scattered with yellow flowers, her hair caught up in Jake's faded pink ribbon. The shotgun was nowhere in sight, but her eyes held their own kind of weapon. "You're not back," she said coldly. "You're here. There's a difference." Mad Dog pulled out the tin ring he'd bought in Albuquerque, cheap and tarnished but honest in its simplicity. "I love you, Mariah, and I want to marry you. I got a job at the Lonesome Creek Ledger. I want us to be a real family." Her laugh was bitter as winter wind. "I can't trust you to stay." "I'll stay," he said, and meant it with every fiber of his being. "Have I ever lied to you?" The question hung between them like a bridge spanning years of hurt and hope. Slowly, inevitably, Mariah's walls began to crumble. She opened her arms to him, and Mad Dog stepped into the embrace that would define the rest of his life.

Summary

Spring returned to the Throckmorton farm with the sound of wedding bells and children's laughter. Mariah kept the name she'd been born to, but she gained the family she'd always dreamed of. Mad Dog hung up his wandering boots and discovered that freedom wasn't about having no ties—it was about choosing the ties that mattered. Jake finally had the father he'd searched for and the mother he'd found by accident. The farm prospered under their combined care, the apple trees heavy with fruit, the fields green with new growth. The white picket fence never returned. In its place, Mariah planted a garden that spread beyond the boundaries of her old fear, reaching toward a horizon that no longer held terror but promise. Sometimes, on quiet evenings, the three of them would lie in the grass and watch the clouds drift overhead, heads touching, hearts connected, finding in each other the home that had always been there, waiting for the courage to claim it. Love, they learned, wasn't about perfect people or perfect timing—it was about believing, even when belief seemed impossible, that some things were worth fighting for, worth staying for, worth building a life around.

About Author

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Kristin Hannah

Hannah synthesizes historical events with personal narratives to illuminate the often-overlooked stories of women. Her transition from law to literature underscores a dedication to exploring resilience and the human spirit through fiction. While her early career focused on historical romance, she soon evolved to tackle women’s fiction and historical fiction, emphasizing strong female protagonists. Her narratives, such as in "The Nightingale" and "The Great Alone", are marked by rich character development and emotional depth, intertwining personal dramas with broader historical contexts. This approach not only captivates readers but also fosters a deeper appreciation for the genre of historical fiction.\n\nFor readers, Kristin Hannah’s work offers a profound exploration of themes like love, loss, endurance, and recovery. Her books evoke strong emotional responses, drawing readers into the lives and struggles of her characters. By highlighting women's experiences during pivotal moments in history, her stories resonate with a diverse audience. "Firefly Lane", adapted into a Netflix series, exemplifies her ability to connect personal relationships with cultural touchstones. This bio showcases how her literature inspires reflection on personal and collective histories, cementing her status as a bestselling author dedicated to crafting narratives that honor the strength of the human spirit.

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