Silas’s eyes returned to her.
“You sure?”
“No.”
He smiled.
Clara pointed at him.
“That expression is exactly why I’m not sure.”
“What expression?”
“You know.”
“I genuinely don’t.”
“Annoying.”
He laughed.
She walked away before she smiled too.
Silas remained three days.
The road remained buried.
Snow stopped, but temperatures fell hard at night.
The barn became his temporary home.
Clara refused to let him sleep inside.
Not because she believed he would hurt her.
Because she did not yet know what to do with the possibility that he would not.
Silas respected it.
Every evening he ate supper with them.
Then returned outside without argument.
During daylight, he worked.
Not because Clara asked.
Because he seemed incapable of watching broken things remain broken.
He repaired the chicken enclosure.
Rehung the sagging barn door.
Patched a leak over Jake’s room.
Split enough wood to last weeks.
Clara finally confronted him.
“You don’t owe me this much.”
Silas drove the axe into a stump.
“Probably not.”
“Then stop.”
“No.”
She stared.
“You have an impressive understanding of gratitude.”
“I’m not doing it from gratitude.”
“Then why?”
Silas looked at her.
The answer seemed to arrive too quickly, because he swallowed it.
“Nothing else to do.”
Clara narrowed her eyes.
“Liar.”
He smiled.
“You’re getting good at reading me.”
“I had practice being married.”
The smile disappeared.
Silas leaned against the axe.
“You loved him?”
The question surprised her.
Clara looked toward the cabin.
Thomas Whitmore.
Her husband for three years.
Dead three months.
She thought about what answer respectable widows gave.
Then chose truth.
“No.”
Silas did not react with judgment.
That made honesty easier.
“I tried.”
Clara continued.
“I thought love came after marriage.”
“My aunt said affection grew from obedience.”
Silas’s face changed.
“What?”
Clara immediately regretted saying too much.
“Nothing.”
“No.”
His voice became quiet.
“Say that again.”
She looked at him.
“My aunt believed wives learned love by obeying their husbands.”
Silas’s jaw hardened.
“And yours?”
“Thomas believed something similar.”
Silas said nothing.
Clara wrapped her shawl tighter.
“He never beat me.”
Silas’s expression became strange.
“I did not ask.”
“I know.”
She looked toward the snow.
“That’s what women say, isn’t it?”
“He never beat me.”
“As though that should make everything else acceptable.”
Silas lowered his gaze.
Clara continued before courage disappeared.
“Thomas bought this place before marrying me.”
“My aunt and uncle had six children.”
“They said they could not keep me after my parents died.”
“Thomas offered them money.”
Silas became completely still.
“How much?”
Clara laughed without humor.
“Two hundred dollars.”
The axe handle creaked beneath his grip.
Clara noticed.
“I was eighteen.”
Silas looked at her.
“You said you were married three years.”
“I was twenty-one when the ceremony finally happened.”
“What were you doing here before?”
The question was gentle.
The answer was not.
“Working.”
Silas’s eyes closed briefly.
He understood enough.
Clara continued.
“I cooked.”
“Cleaned.”
“Kept accounts.”