Checked shutters.
Fed the fire.
Each ordinary action made Clara more tense.
Eventually there was nothing left for him to do.
Silas stood.
She sat on the bed because he had told her it was hers.
The buffalo hide lay over her knees.
Her heart beat so loudly she could hear it.
Silas reached toward his belt.
A long hunting knife slid from its sheath.
Clara recoiled against the headboard.
Her hands clenched the fur.
Silas froze.
He looked at her.
Then at the knife.
Something like horror crossed his face.
He turned the blade immediately toward the floor.
Clara whispered:
“My father took your food.”
Her voice broke.
“Is this what you take from me?”
Silas did not move.
“No.”
The answer was so immediate that she almost did not understand.
He slowly lowered the knife.
Then reached inside his bearskin coat.
His left hand found a seam along the lining.
Clara watched.
Silas cut the stitches.
Not the coat exactly.
A hidden leather pouch had been sewn inside.
He pulled it free.
Then placed the knife on the table far from Clara.
Only then did he open the pouch.
Inside was an envelope.
Old.
Yellowed.
Wax cracked.
Silas held it as though it could break.
He walked to the table instead of the bed.
Set it beside the lantern.
Clara’s eyes moved to the handwriting.
Everything inside her stopped.
She knew that hand.
She had seen it on flour jars.
Birthday notes.
A Bible inscription.
Recipes.
A final half-finished letter discovered after the cholera took her mother.
Clara stood.
The fur slid from her knees.
“That…”
She crossed the room.
Her hand hovered above the envelope.
“That’s my mother.”
Silas nodded.
“Where did you get this?”
“She gave it to me.”
Clara looked at him so sharply her vision blurred.
“When?”
“Twelve years ago.”
Clara was twelve then.
Her mother was alive.
Her brothers too.
Before cholera.
Before grief turned Ephraim into a man who priced his daughter beside salt pork.
Clara touched the envelope.
“Why?”
Silas looked toward the frost-covered window.
Then back at her.
“She saved my life.”
Clara stared.
“I don’t understand.”
Silas’s throat moved.
“I got caught above Miller Ridge in an early storm.”
“Horse went down.”
“I broke two ribs and opened my leg on rock.”
“I made it as far as your family’s old cabin.”
Clara remembered the cabin.
They had lived five miles from Harlan’s Crossing then.
Small homestead.
Her mother kept chickens.
Her father repaired wagon wheels.
“I remember a stranger.”
Silas’s eyes sharpened.
“You saw me?”
Clara searched memory.
A man wrapped in blankets near stove.
Beard.
Blood? She remembered mother sending children into back room. Not details.
“I thought you were dying.”
“I was trying.”
Despite herself, Clara nearly smiled.
Silas continued.
“Your mother stitched me.”
“Fed me.”
“Kept fever down.”
“Your father was gone trapping.”
“When he came back, he wanted me out.”
Clara’s expression tightened.
“Even then?”
“He wasn’t cruel.”
“Just suspicious.”
“He had reason.”
“Your mother convinced him.”