He nodded.
“Of course,” she said.
Clara shifted beneath the quilt, and Ruth sat beside her. Jonah remained near the door, watching the two of them in the lamplight.
For the first time, he understood that Ruth was not trying to replace Anne.
She was building a new kind of love, one that could coexist with the old.
And he had nearly driven her away because he was too afraid to let it begin.
Winter settled over the ranch with a severity that made the distance between the house and the nearest town feel immense.
Snow covered the fields, and the hills turned white beneath a pale sky. The creek froze along its edges, and the cattle gathered near the sheltered pasture. Jonah rose before dawn each morning to break ice in the troughs and check the animals. Ruth learned to keep the kitchen stove burning through the night, to store kindling beneath the back porch, and to recognize the sound of the wind that meant a storm was approaching.
The house became a place of warm lamps, wool blankets, baking bread, and the soft scrape of Ruth’s chair beside the fire.
On the first heavy snowfall, Jonah returned from the barn with snow caught in his hair and shoulders.
Ruth stood by the stove, stirring a pot of soup.
“You’re frozen.”
“I’ve been colder.”
“That does not make you less frozen.”
He smiled.
She took his coat and hung it near the stove. When she turned back, he was watching her.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“You are looking at me as if I have grown another head.”
“I was thinking how much I like coming home.”
The spoon paused in her hand.
Jonah stepped closer.
“I used to think the ranch was enough. The work, the land, Clara, the house. I believed that if I kept everything running, I would be all right.”
“And now?”
“Now I find myself looking forward to supper.”
Ruth’s smile widened.
“Because of my cooking?”
“Because you’re here.”
She set the spoon down.
He reached for her waist, and she rested her hands against his chest.
“Then perhaps I should make something special tonight.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I know.”
He bent to kiss her, and she rose on her toes to meet him.
The kiss was warmer than the kitchen, softer than the wool blanket folded over the chair. When they parted, Jonah rested his forehead against hers.
“I love you,” he said.
Ruth’s breath caught.
He had said it before, once in a letter and once in the darkness after their first night together, but hearing it in the ordinary light of the kitchen felt different. There was no desperation in it, no attempt to repair a wound. It was simply the truth.
“I love you, too,” she whispered.
His eyes closed.
For a moment he held her without speaking.
Then Clara’s voice came from the doorway.
“Are you kissing again?”