“I have.”
He wanted to ask about her past, but the exhaustion in her face warned him not to turn the evening into an interrogation.
Instead, he said, “You can stay here as long as you need. We’ll discuss the rest when the storm passes.”
Margaret’s fingers tightened around the cup.
“As a guest?”
“As a guest. If you want work, we’ll agree on wages. If you want to leave, I’ll see you safely to the station.”
“And if I want to stay?”
He met her eyes.
“Then we’ll talk about that too.”
She nodded slowly.
“Thank you, Eli.”
He stood, but before he could leave, she spoke again.
“May I ask you something?”
“Yes.”
“Did you love your wife very much?”
The question was so simple that it hurt.
“Yes,” he said. “More than I knew how to say.”
Margaret’s eyes remained steady.
“Then I will never ask you to love me in the same way.”
He could not answer.
She rose, carrying her cup to the basin. “Good night, Eli.”
“Good night, Margaret.”
He watched her walk down the hall, then turned toward the hearth.
Anne’s letter lay folded beside the lamp.
He picked it up again and read the final lines, though he knew them already.
If Margaret and you come to love one another, I will be glad. If you do not, then I will still be glad if Clara grows up knowing that a woman may choose her own life and that a man may honor that choice.
He sat in Anne’s chair until the fire burned low.
For the first time since her death, he did not feel that he was sitting beside an absence.
He felt that he was listening.
Christmas morning arrived beneath a pale, frozen sky.
The blizzard had passed during the night, leaving the ranch buried beneath drifts that reached the lower rails of the corral. The barn roof carried a thick white mantle, and the distant hills looked like enormous sleeping animals. Smoke rose from the chimney in a straight gray column, disappearing into the cold air.
Eli woke before dawn, as he always did.
For several moments he lay still, listening to the unfamiliar sounds of another adult moving quietly in the guest room. He had grown accustomed to the cabin’s silence, so even the soft creak of a floorboard seemed significant.
He dressed, pulled on his boots, and went to the kitchen.
Margaret was already awake.
She stood at the stove, her dark hair pinned back, wearing the plain dress she had traveled in. A small pot simmered over the flame, and the room smelled of coffee and cinnamon.
“You needn’t have risen so early,” he said.
“I’m used to it.”
“Today is Christmas.”
“I know.”