The letter to her sister was half finished, sitting in the drawer for a week now. She wrote by lamplight, her hand moving in those same even strokes, precise, practiced, the penmanship of someone trained to documents and legal filings from the loft. No sound. But she could feel him up there, awake, listening. She wondered how much he'd seen, how much he'd guessed.
And she wondered then for the first time if maybe she wasn't the only one in this cabin keeping secrets. November settled into the mountains like something that meant to stay. Clara learned to read the weather now, the way clouds massed along the ridge before a storm, the particular quality of light that meant snow by nightfall. She learned to read other things, too, things that didn't announce themselves. Silas moved differently on cold mornings.
She noticed it first at breakfast, the way he reached for his coffee with his left hand instead of his right. Then at the door, the slight hesitation before he pulled on his coat, his jaw tightening as he worked his arm through the sleeve. She didn't ask. He wouldn't have answered. But she watched.
The cabin had its own rhythms now. She rose before dawn, built the fire, ground the coffee. He came down when the first gray light touched the window. They ate together, biscuits and bacon, eggs when the hens were laying, and the silence between them had softened into something almost comfortable. Almost.
One morning, she watched him cross to the woodshed through the frost-covered window. His right shoulder dropped with each step. When he bent to lift a log, his whole body shifted, compensating, avoiding. She turned back to the dishes. That afternoon, while he was out checking the fence line, Clara went to the shed.
The wood was stacked the way he'd left it, heavy rounds piled wherever they'd landed. Some high, some low, no order to it. She stood there in the cold, studying the mess, her breath clouding white. Then she started moving things. It took her the better part of 2 hours.
The heaviest pieces went to chest height, where a person could slide them out without reaching up or bending down. The medium logs below, the kindling in a basket by the door. Her back ached when she finished. Her fingers were raw, splinters buried under the skin. She washed her hands in the bucket inside, watching the water turn gray with sawdust.
She didn't mention it at supper. Silas came in as the light was failing, snow dusting his shoulders. He hung his coat on the left peg, sat down to the stew she'd made. They ate in the usual quiet. After, he went out to bring in wood for the night.
Clara kept her eyes on her, mending one of his shirts, the sleeve torn at the seam. The needle moved through fabric while she listened. He'd stopped. She could tell by the silence from the shed. No footsteps, no logs being stacked.
When he came back in, his arms full of wood, he didn't look at her. He built up the fire, arranged the logs in the stove with that same careful precision he brought to everything. Then he straightened. You moved the wood pile. It was a mess.
It was fine. Well, she pulled the thread through, snipped it with her teeth. Now it's better. A long pause. She felt his eyes on her, but didn't look up.
I reckon it is. He said finally. He sat down by the fire with a piece of wood and his knife. The scraping sound filled the cabin rhythmic, steady, almost peaceful. Clara finished the shirt, started on a stocking worn through at the heel.
The silence between them held, but it held differently now. Later, when she rose to bank the fire, her chair wobbled beneath her, the same wobble it had had since she arrived. One leg shorter than the others. She'd gotten used to it. In the morning, the wobble was gone.
She sat down at breakfast and felt the chair hold steady, solid. She ran her hand under the seat and felt fresh-cut wood where he'd fitted a piece to level the leg. Silas was already eating, his eyes on his plate. Chair's fixed, she said. It was crooked.
It was fine. He didn't look up. Well, now it's better. Something caught in her throat. She swallowed it down, reached for her coffee.
They ate in silence. The days grew shorter. The cold deepened. Clara found herself marking time not by the calendar, but by smaller things, the way Silas had started waiting for her to pour her own coffee before he drank his, the way he brought the water bucket in each evening so she wouldn't have to haul it in the morning cold. One night, with the fire burning low and the wind pressing against the walls, she asked the question she'd been carrying.
This land, how long have you had it? The knife paused over the wood he was carving. 12 years. Savings. Everything from before that.
Clara let the words sit. 12 years. Everything from before. She knew about befores. She had her own things traded away, left behind, buried in Ohio.
"That's a long time." She said. "To be up here alone." He didn't answer right away. The knife resumed its work. Curling thin strips of wood onto the floor. "Long enough." He said finally.
She went back to her mending. The fire popped. Outside an owl called somewhere in the dark. "We'll need more flour before the month's out." She said. "And salt." "The barrel's running low." "I'll ride down next week." "If the weather holds." We.
She'd said it without thinking. And he'd answered the same way. Not I'll ride down. But the weather holds. Our supplies.
Our needs. She didn't point it out. Neither did he. But something had shifted. Like ice beginning to crack on a frozen river.
Not breaking yet. Just the first faint lines spreading across the surface. The next morning Silas was up before her. She found him at the stove when she came out. Struggling with the coffee pot one-handed.
His right arm hung at his side. The shoulder clearly worse today. "I can do that." She said. "I've got it." "You don't." She crossed the room and took the pot from his hand. He let her.