That was where her hands began to shake.
The front door opened.
Cold air swept across the floor.
Her husband stepped inside carrying a heavy bundle of firewood beneath one arm.
He was forty-four now, with silver beginning to appear in his thick dark beard. His shoulders remained broad, his hands strong, and his pale-blue eyes just as intense as they had been on the night she first saw him beneath the snow-covered porch.
He wore a dark wool shirt beneath a heavy fur-lined coat.
Snow clung to his hair.
He set the wood beside the hearth.
Then stopped.
He knew her expressions better than anyone alive.
"Sweetheart?"
She did not answer immediately.
He crossed the room.
"What's wrong?"
She looked up.
His eyes moved to the letter.
He recognized the handwriting on the envelope.
His jaw tightened.
"Your father?"
She nodded.
The mountain man slowly removed his gloves.
"What does he want?"
She swallowed.
"To see me."
He remained still.
"Why?"
Her eyes filled.
"He's dying."
For a long moment, the room was silent except for the crackling fire.
The mountain man pulled out a chair and sat beside her.
He did not touch the letter.
Did not demand to read it.
He simply waited.
Finally she handed it to him.
"Please."
He accepted the pages.
The letter was written in uneven script, very different from the sharp, authoritative handwriting her father once used in business correspondence.
The older man described a serious illness.
He claimed his health had declined over the previous year.
He had sold the St. Louis house.
His sister, the aunt who had once tightened the cruel corset around his daughter's body, had moved away.
Most of his former business associates no longer visited.
The fortune he had spent years trying to protect had largely disappeared through legal costs, debts, and poor decisions.
He now lived in a small rented room above a dry-goods store.
Near the end, he wrote:
I have spent my life believing that keeping control meant keeping my family safe. I know now that I used control because I was frightened of losing what I wanted.
The mountain man's expression did not soften.
He continued reading.
I wronged you. I took what should have been yours to decide. I let others ridicule you because it made you easier to keep dependent on me. I do not ask you to excuse it.
The man glanced toward his wife.
She stared into the fire.
He returned to the letter.