“I know.”
“You don't need to prove anything.”
“I know that too.”
He leaned against the table.
“Then why?”
“Because I prefer food that can be bitten.”
She made eggs, potatoes, and fresh biscuits from the last of the flour.
Elias watched.
Not critically.
Curiously.
When she reached for the cast-iron pot above the stove, he moved to help.
Clara stiffened before she could stop herself.
Elias froze.
Then stepped back.
The gesture hurt.
Not because he had done anything wrong.
Because she realized how often her body still expected danger.
“I'm sorry.”
he said.
“No.”
She shook her head.
“You were helping.”
“I moved too quickly.”
“You are allowed to move in your own house.”
“Our house.”
Clara paused.
Elias nodded toward the folded deed on the shelf.
“Our house.”
The words settled somewhere deep inside her.
That afternoon, the storm cleared.
The world outside was white.
Sunlight burned across the mountains.
Clara stepped onto the porch wearing the heavy wool coat Elias had ordered for her.
She had never seen country like it.
Baltimore had been crowded.
Noisy.
Ships.
Factories.
Horses.
Smoke.
People shouting in streets.
Here the silence had size.
It spread from the cabin across snow-covered meadow, through pines, up granite ridges until the entire world seemed paused.
Elias came out carrying an armload of firewood.
Clara stared toward the mountains.
“How far is the nearest neighbor?”
“Four miles.”
“The town?”
“Eleven.”
“What happens if something happens to you?”
“What kind of something?”
“You fall from a horse.”
“I try not to.”
“That is not a plan.”
He smiled.
“There is a signal mirror.”
“Where?”
“Above the door.”
“And if it's snowing?”
“A rifle.”
Clara looked at him.
“Firing it?”
“Three shots.”
“I don't use guns.”
“I can teach you.”
She shook her head.
“No.”
“All right.”
He accepted the answer too easily.
“You don't ask why?”
“If you want to tell me, you will.”
Clara looked at him.
Frederick had considered every silence a challenge.
Elias treated silence as property.
Something belonging to her until she chose to share it.
That frightened her less every day.
The first week taught Clara that Elias was not merely quiet.
He was astonishingly bad at conversation.
At breakfast he might say:
“Cold.”
Then nothing for twenty minutes.
At supper: