“Worked livestock.”
“Thomas told people I was his ward.”
“Then when I turned twenty-one, he married me.”
Silas opened his eyes.
“Did you want to?”
Clara stared toward the mountains.
“No.”
That one word contained six years.
Silas looked away.
Not because he did not care.
Because anger had entered his face so visibly he did not want her to mistake it as anger toward her.
Clara noticed that too.
“Afterward, he treated marriage like a business arrangement.”
Silas’s voice was rough.
“What does that mean?”
Clara looked at him.
“You’re old enough to know.”
His jaw tightened.
She continued.
“He never asked what I wanted.”
“About anything.”
“Not supper.”
“Not money.”
“Not the bed.”
Silas’s eyes dropped.
Clara hated how exposed she suddenly felt.
She turned.
“That was more than you needed to know.”
Silas said:
“Clara.”
She stopped.
“If a man touches you and does not care whether you want him to, the fact he married you first does not make it kindness.”
Clara looked back.
No man had ever said that to her.
Silas’s voice softened.
“You know that, right?”
Her eyes burned.
“I do now.”
He nodded once.
No pity.
She was grateful.
He picked up the axe.
Clara stopped him.
“Silas.”
“Yes?”
“What about you?”
He looked toward her.
“What about me?”
“You ask a great many questions for a man who answers none.”
He smiled slightly.
“Fair.”
“Were you married?”
“No.”
“Engaged?”
“No.”
“Loved anyone?”
Silas became very interested in the axe blade.
Clara smiled.
“That is a yes.”
He sighed.
“Once.”
“What happened?”
“She married somebody smarter.”
Clara laughed.
“I find that impossible.”
“Cruel woman.”
“Who?”
“Schoolteacher’s daughter in Wyoming.”
“Pretty?”
“Very.”
“You still love her?”
“No.”
The answer came easily.
Clara nodded.
“What happened?”
Silas looked toward the distant ridge.
“I was twenty-three.”
“She wanted a farm.”
“Children.”
“A church every Sunday.”
“I wanted to see what was beyond the next mountain.”
Clara waited.
“She asked me to choose.”
“I rode away.”
“Regret it?”
Silas thought.
“No.”
“Does that make me terrible?”
“No.”
Clara smiled faintly.
“It makes you honest.”
He looked at her.
“You’ve never met a man my size and called him honest that quickly.”
Clara laughed.
“You are strangely proud of being enormous.”
Silas spread both arms.
“It has practical advantages.”
“For lifting stubborn widows from snow?”
“Among other things.”
His eyes held hers one second too long.
Something warm passed through Clara.
She stepped back.
Silas noticed.
Did not follow.
Again, choice.
Again, space.
Every moment with him seemed to quietly rewrite something Thomas had taught her.
The doctor arrived on the fourth day.
Clara did not send for him.
Silas had.
He had ridden to the main road at dawn once the snowpack hardened enough for travel, found a ranch hand headed toward Silver Creek, and paid him to carry a message.
Clara discovered this only when the doctor knocked.