His fingers were red. Stiff. He looked at the stove. At the kettle still sitting there. Steam rising from the spout.
You didn't have to wait up. I wasn't waiting. Her voice came out steadier than expected. Just not sleepy. Mhm.
He crossed to the stove. She saw it then. In the slight hitch in his step. The way his right shoulder dropped lower than the left. He was hurting.
Had been hurting. Maybe for longer than tonight. She poured hot water into a tin cup. Added the coffee she'd ground that afternoon. Held it out.
He took it. His fingers brushed hers. And both of them went still. The cup was warm. She'd kept it warm.
Three times now. Silas looked at her, really looked, for the first time since the station. His eyes were dark, unreadable, but something in them shifted, a crack in the surface, thin as a hair. He drank, long and slow, letting the heat work into him. Coffee's good, he said.
It's been on the stove a while. I know. The wind howled outside. Inside, the fire crackled, and he sat down at the table. She brought the stew she'd kept warm, ladled it into a bowl, set it in front of him, made her own plate and sat across.
The tablecloth spread between them like it had been every night. They ate in silence, but it was different now. The quiet had edges before, sharp ones. Tonight, it felt more like breathing room. When he finished, Silas didn't stand right away.
He sat there, turning the empty cup in his hands, watching the fire through the stove's small window. Tomorrow, he said, I'll bring more wood in. Stack it by the door, so you don't have to go out to the shed. Clara looked up. You don't have to.
I know. Another silence, but this one held something. He stood, rinsed his cup and bowl, set them on the shelf, then paused at the foot of the ladder. Coffee, he said, not quite looking at her. In the morning, you'll make some.
I always do. I know. He put his hand on the ladder rung. I just I'll wait for it before I go out. She nodded.
Didn't trust her voice. He climbed. The loft creaked as he settled. Clara sat alone at the table. The fire burning low.
She should go to bed. Should stop reading meaning into small things. Coffee. Wood by the door. A man saying he'd wait.
But she didn't move. Not yet. Outside the storm raged. Inside something had shifted. That night she woke to a sound from the loft.
Not footsteps. Not the creak of boards. Something else. A voice. Low.
Broken. Speaking in sleep. A name. Clara lay still in her narrow bed. Staring at the ceiling.
The voice came again. Ragged. Raw. The sound of a man caught in a dream he couldn't escape. Eliza.
The name hung in the dark. A woman's name. Spoken like a wound torn open. Then silence. The wind.
The settling of logs in the stove. Clara didn't move. Didn't breathe. She lay there until the gray light of dawn crept through the window. Thinking about that name.
About the empty cabin when she'd arrived. The precision of everything in its place. The way he'd looked at her mother's tablecloth that first night. Like he'd seen a ghost. In the morning she didn't ask.
She rose before dawn, same as always, built the fire, ground the coffee, left two cups on the table. When Silas came down, his face was drawn, his eyes hollow. He sat without speaking. Clara poured his coffee, then poured a second cup and set it beside his plate. He looked at it, looked at her.
"Figured you might want extra this morning," she said. "Cold night." Something moved behind his eyes. Not suspicion, something else. He wrapped both hands around the first cup and drank. Neither of them mentioned the name.
But that evening, when Clara went to the woodshed, she found the heavy logs had been moved, restacked. The biggest ones now sat at chest height, easy to grab without bending, without straining. She stood there in the cold, her breath pluming white, and stared at the neat rows. He hadn't said anything, hadn't asked if she needed help. He'd just done it.
She carried an armload of wood back to the cabin, her mind turning. The stacking, the coffee, the way he waited for her to sit before he ate. Small things, things a person did without thinking, or things a person did because they were thinking too much and didn't know how to say it. That night, after supper, Clara pulled out her paper and ink.