Eli looked offended. “I make excellent gingerbread.”
“You make excellent bricks,” Clara corrected.
Margaret laughed again.
The sound traveled through the cabin, settling into corners that had held only silence for years.
After breakfast, Eli bundled Clara in her wool coat and took her outside to see the snow. Margaret remained in the doorway, wrapped in the cream scarf, watching them cross the yard.
Clara ran in circles until her boots sank too deeply, then fell backward into a drift, laughing. Eli pulled her up and brushed snow from her sleeves. She seized his hand and dragged him toward the fence, where she wanted to build a snowman.
Margaret watched them with a tender ache.
She had spent much of her life around children who were not her own. At St. Agnes, she had learned how to soothe a frightened infant, coax a stubborn child into eating, and tell stories to those who woke crying in the night. She had loved them all, but she had never belonged to any of them.
Anne had been different.
Anne had seen her not as a helper or a charitable project, but as a person whose life mattered. They had met in a crowded room at the home, where Margaret was mending a torn sleeve and Anne was reading aloud to a little boy who refused to sleep. Anne had sat beside her afterward, asked about her family, and listened without impatience.
Over time, they had exchanged letters. Anne wrote about the ranch, the mountains, and Eli’s habit of working through supper. Margaret wrote about the city, the children, and the difficulty of saving money on a small wage. Their friendship had grown quietly, with neither woman imagining that it would become the bridge between one life and another.
When Anne’s final letter arrived, Margaret had read it until the words blurred.
She had promised to come.
But she had also known that the request might place her in a position she had spent years avoiding: dependent on another person’s goodwill.
She had accepted Eli’s proposal because she believed marriage might give her a secure place in the world. She had told herself that a practical marriage could be honorable, provided both parties understood its terms.
Yet when she saw him in the doorway, with his tired eyes and the child’s hand gripping his suspenders, she had felt something she had not planned for.
Attraction.
Not the bright, reckless kind described in the novels she read by candlelight, but a quieter, more dangerous warmth. She had noticed his broad shoulders, the roughness of his hands, the way he instinctively moved between his daughter and the storm. She had noticed the grief in his face and the care with which he held himself together.
And she had feared that if she let herself want him, she would lose the freedom to leave.
The snow creaked beneath her boots as she stepped outside.
Clara spotted her immediately.
“Miss Margaret! Come build a snowman!”
Margaret glanced at Eli.
He stood beside the child, his cheeks red from the cold, a faint smile at the corners of his mouth.
“If you’re willing,” he said.
She joined them.
Clara insisted that the snowman needed a hat, a scarf, and a name. Eli contributed an old wool cap. Margaret tied a strip of red cloth around its neck. Clara declared it to be “Mr. Christmas,” then announced that he needed a wife.
Eli raised an eyebrow. “Does he?”
“Of course. Everyone needs someone.”
Margaret’s hands paused.
Clara looked between them, pleased with her own wisdom.
Eli cleared his throat. “Let’s finish his face.”
They used two stones for eyes, a crooked twig for a nose, and a row of pebbles for a mouth. When Clara stepped back to admire their work, she clasped her hands.
“He looks happy.”
“He looks like he’s missing a tooth,” Eli said.
“That’s because he’s smiling,” Clara answered.
Margaret looked at the snowman and thought of Anne.
For a moment, she imagined the other woman standing beside them, laughing at Clara’s solemn instructions, brushing snow from her sleeves. The image hurt, but not in the same way it once had. It seemed less like a wound and more like a memory allowed to breathe.
Clara suddenly reached for Margaret’s hand.
“Can we go inside now? My fingers are cold.”