That's why I answered your advertisement. Not because I needed a roof. Because I figured maybe somewhere far enough away I could learn how to be a person again. Someone who takes up space. Someone who gets seen.
Silas was quiet for a long moment. The fire burned. The wind keened outside. I see you. Clara's hands went still.
The way you move the wood so I don't have to reach. The way you heat the coffee three times before I get home. He shook his head. I've been trying not to. But I see you.
She looked up then, met his eyes across the fire-lit space. He didn't look away. Why'd you answer my ad? He asked. The truth.
Why'd you post one? A long silence. Figured I needed help around the place. He said finally. And I figured I needed a place.
That all? She held his gaze, held his That's all I'm willing to say tonight. Something that might have been a smile ghosted across his face. Fair enough. He bent down, picked up the knife from where it had fallen, slid it into the sheath at his belt.
Coffee tomorrow morning, he said. I'll wait for it. Before I go out. You always wait. I know.
He moved toward the ladder, put his hand on the rung. I'm just saying so you know I mean to. He climbed to the loft. The rungs creaked under his weight. Clara sat alone by the fire, the mending forgotten in her lap.
Her hands were trembling, not from cold, not from fear, from something else, something she hadn't felt in so long she'd almost forgotten its name. She thought about the box under the ladder, the photograph, the ring, the letter, all the pieces of a life that had ended 12 years ago, kept in the dark, taken out only in dreams. He hadn't asked her to replace it, hadn't asked her to fill the space Eliza had left. He just said he saw her, saw. She banked the fire, turned down the lamp, and went to her room.
The bed was cold, same as always. But tonight, she didn't mind. She lay in the dark, listening to the wind, to the creak of the cabin settling, to the silence from the loft above. Tomorrow, she would make coffee. He would wait.
And maybe that was where it started. Not with declarations or promises, just with small things, ordinary things. The quiet acts of two people learning to share a space. She was almost asleep when she heard him moving in the loft. Not settling into bed, getting up.
Footsteps crossing the boards, then the creak of the ladder. Clara lay still, listening. His boots hit the floor. The door opened, letting in a blast of cold air, then closed again. She sat up in the dark.
Through that window, she could see his shape moving across the snow toward the ridge, toward the fence line he'd been worried about all the week. The one where the posts had started to lean. It was past midnight. The temperature had dropped to something brutal. The kind of cold that killed.
And Silas Cade was walking out into it alone. Clara pulled on her boots without lacing them, grabbed her coat from the peg, and ran. The cold hit her like a wall. She gasped, the air searing her lungs, and pushed forward through the snow. His tracks led toward the ridge, dark holes in the white, already filling with new powder as the wind picked up.
She followed them. The trail wound upward through the pines, and she lost sight of the cabin within minutes. The moon was hidden behind clouds, and she moved by feel more than sight. Her hands reaching out to brush the rough bark of trees as she passed. She found him a quarter mile from the cabin.
He was lying at the base of a rocky outcrop, half buried in snow and loose stone, the ridge had given way. She could see the raw brown scar where the rocks had broken free. The tumble of debris that had carried him down. His right leg was pinned between two boulders, bent at an angle that made her stomach lurch. His face was gray.
His lips had gone blue. But his eyes opened when she called his name. Clara. The word came out cracked, barely a whisper. Shouldn't be out here.
She was already on her knees beside him, pulling off her gloves, pressing her fingers to his throat. His pulse was there, thready, slow, but there. His skin was ice against her fingertips. Your leg. She said.
I know. She looked at the boulders. One was the size of a wash tub. The other smaller, but wedged tight. She braced her shoulder against the larger one and pushed.
Nothing. She tried again, digging her boots into the snow, straining until her vision swam. The rock shifted half an inch. Again. Silas said through gritted teeth.
When I count. She nodded. One, two, three. She shoved with everything she had. He pulled.
A sound came out of him, low, animal, terrible. And then his leg was free, dragging through the gap. And the boulder settled back with a grinding thump. Clara sat back on her heels, panting. Her arms shook.
Her chest burned. Can you stand? No. She looked at his leg. Even through the heavy canvas of his trousers, she could see the wrongness of it, the unnatural angle below the knee, the fabric darkening with blood.
"I'll have to drag you, Clara. I'll have to drag you." She said again. She got behind him, hooked her arms under his shoulders, and pulled. The first few feet were the hardest, breaking through the crusted snow, finding a rhythm. Silas made no sound, but she felt his body go rigid with each jolt, his breath coming in short, sharp gasps.