After recovery, she told him.
He denied everything.
“Fever.”
“Truth.”
“Medical nonsense.”
“You also said you hated my turnip soup.”
He went silent.
“Ah.”
“I knew it.”
“Fever.”
She laughed.
The years that followed felt borrowed.
Perhaps all years are.
At seventy-four, Clara still woke earlier than Ethan.
One summer morning she sat porch watching sunrise.
Ethan emerged carrying coffee.
He moved slowly now.
Sat beside.
“Cold?”
“No.”
He handed cup.
They watched light reach Blackwood Pass.
Clara said:
“Do you regret answering advertisement?”
Ethan considered.
“Yes.”
She turned sharply.
He smiled.
“I should have written more romantic one.”
She hit his arm.
He laughed.
“Do you?”
“Regret?”
“Yes.”
Clara looked toward mountains.
“I regret being afraid so long.”
Ethan shook head.
“Fear kept you alive.”
“Sometimes.”
“Sometimes it kept me from living.”
He nodded.
“Fair.”
She rested head on his shoulder.
“Do you remember first night?”
“I was hoping age might erase it.”
“Can you make me tremble tonight, Ethan?”
He groaned.
“You are seventy.”
“And?”
“Nothing.”
“Wise.”
They laughed.
Then Clara became quiet.
“I thought you were terrifying.”
“I know.”
“You were terrified of me.”
“Correct.”
“Funny.”
“What?”
“How wrong appearances are.”
Ethan took her hand.
“Not always.”
“You did make me tremble.”
His eyebrows rose.
Clara smiled.
“Not the way I expected.”
“Good.”
“You made me tremble because I wanted something.”
“A future.”
“With you.”
Ethan squeezed her fingers.
“I was scared too.”
“Of what?”
“That once you learned who I really was, you’d leave.”
Clara lifted her head.
“Who were you?”
“Lonely.”
The honesty still reached her after all those years.
She kissed his cheek.
“Not anymore.”
Ethan Blackwood died at eighty-one.
Not in storm.
Not hunting.
Not defending land.
He died in bed with Clara beside him.
His last coherent sentence was:
“Door locked?”
Clara laughed through tears.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
He looked toward her.
“Stay?”
She held his hand.
“I stay.”
Exactly the promise from first night.
He died before dawn.
Clara lived six more years.
She moved from cabin only once, during winter when Samuel insisted.
Returned every spring.
She kept Ethan’s coat near door.
Not because she thought he would wear it.
Because memory deserves objects sometimes.
At eighty-six, Hope found her mother sitting beside old stove holding a photograph.
Young Clara.