Now this stranger, this enormous bearded man who had appeared at the trading post carrying twenty silver dollars, claimed to know a woman she'd spent most of her life trying to remember.
"What was her name?" she whispered.
He told her.
The name she'd heard only in fragments of childhood conversations.
The name written on a faded Bible inside her father's locked cabinet.
The name that still hurt to say.
The mountain man continued.
"She found me half-frozen near the northern pass. I was seventeen. Didn't know enough to recognize a storm coming over the ridge."
He gave a faint smile.
"She dragged me into an old supply shed, wrapped me in blankets, and kept me awake until help arrived."
The young woman stared at him.
"She never told me."
"You were a baby."
He looked toward her.
"Your mother said something that winter I've never forgotten."
"What?"
The man hesitated.
Then answered quietly.
"She said nobody should be abandoned just because saving them is inconvenient."
The young woman's eyes filled.
That sounded like her mother.
At least the mother she remembered.
A woman who fed stray animals.
Who brought soup to sick neighbors.
Who once gave her own winter coat to a family whose house had burned.
She looked down at her loosened corset.
Then at the man's large hands.
"You remembered her all this time?"
"Every winter."
He walked toward the fireplace.
She watched him.
After several seconds, she asked, "And now what?"
He turned.
"What do you mean?"
"What happens to me?"
His expression softened.
"That's your decision."
She laughed bitterly.
"Don't be ridiculous. I'm in your cabin, miles from town, in the middle of winter."
"I know."
"You paid my father."
"Yes."
"And you expect me to believe I can simply leave?"
The mountain man nodded.
"When the pass is safe, I'll take you wherever you want."
She stared.
"Anywhere?"
"Anywhere I can get you safely."
She looked toward the door.
Then toward the snow-covered windows.
"You'd really let me go?"
He answered without hesitation.
"Yes."
Something inside her shifted.
She had spent so many years being unwanted, criticized, and treated like a burden that she barely knew what to do with the possibility of choosing her own future.
Then she looked at him again.
The broad shoulders.
The weathered face.
The long hair.
The powerful hands that had just cut her free without touching her.
And beneath the fear, she felt something else.
A warmth she hadn't expected.
Not trust yet.
Not love.
Something far more dangerous.
Curiosity.
She rose slowly from the chair, holding the loosened bodice securely against herself.
The mountain man turned his head away immediately.
She noticed.