A woman who had been afraid of the storm.
A woman who had wondered whether she could survive.
A woman who had not yet met the man who would eventually become her home.
She looked at Gideon.
He was watching the fire.
Martha smiled.
Then she rested her head against his shoulder.
He lowered his cheek gently against her hair.
Neither spoke.
They didn't need to.
Outside, the wind moved through the trees.
Inside, the oven glowed.
And in the quiet warmth of their cabin, the two of them stood exactly where they had always belonged.
Together.
The snow did not leave quickly.
For three days it remained piled against the cabin walls, high enough that when Martha opened the front door, the world outside seemed smaller than it had the evening before. The pine trees stood beneath thick white branches, the fence posts were reduced to rounded humps, and the narrow path to the barn had disappeared completely.
But inside the cabin, life continued.
The fire in the stone oven burned low through the night, and each morning Martha stirred the embers back to life before she did anything else. Gideon would wake to the faint scrape of iron against stone and the soft clatter of wood being placed into the oven.
It had become one of the sounds of his life.
There had been a time when that sound meant survival.
Now it meant breakfast.
That morning, Martha stood at the kitchen table cutting thick slices of bread while Gideon sat near the window repairing a broken leather strap. His large hands worked slowly, the needle passing through the leather with the patience of someone who had spent half his life fixing things instead of replacing them.
Martha glanced at him.
"You've been staring at that strap for ten minutes."
"I've been thinking."
"That's usually dangerous."
He looked up.
A small smile appeared beneath his beard.
"About the barn."
Her knife stopped against the cutting board.
"What about it?"
"The north wall."
Martha sighed.
"I knew there was something."
"The snow is pressing against it."
"It has stood through worse."
"So have I."
"You've complained through worse."
"I have never complained."
She looked at him over her shoulder.
Gideon held her gaze for three seconds before lowering his eyes.
"Perhaps once."
Martha laughed.
The sound filled the kitchen and seemed to warm it more effectively than the oven.
But the north wall really was a problem.
By noon, they had both seen it.
The snow had piled almost to the lower edge of the barn roof, and when Gideon cleared a narrow passage toward the structure, he discovered that one of the supporting beams had shifted.
Not broken.
Not yet.
But shifted enough that the door no longer closed properly.
He stood in the snow, studying it.
Martha came up beside him carrying a shovel.
"You are not going inside alone."
"I wasn't planning to."
"You were thinking about it."
"I was thinking about looking."
"Looking is how you get yourself into trouble."
"I thought that was how you got yourself into trouble."
She planted the shovel into the snow.
"I married you. I know."
He looked at her.
For a moment neither spoke.
Then Gideon reached for the shovel.
"All right."
Martha tightened her grip.
"I said I know."
"I heard you."
"Then stop trying to take it."
He released it.
They worked together.
The snow came away in heavy slabs, revealing the dark wooden wall beneath. Every few minutes Gideon stopped to inspect the beam, while Martha cleared the ground around his boots.
They had done things this way for years.
Not because either one commanded the other.
Because they had learned that two people could carry more when neither insisted on carrying everything.
By midafternoon they had exposed enough of the barn to see the damage clearly.
The foundation beneath the north corner had settled.
Gideon crouched down.
"That's the problem."
Martha stood beside him.
"Can we fix it?"
"Yes."
"How?"
He looked toward the woods.
"Stone."
She followed his gaze.
"You want to rebuild the foundation in the middle of winter?"
"I want to keep the barn standing."
"Those are not the same thing."
"No."
She shook her head.
"You're impossible."
He stood and brushed snow from his knees.
"You've known that for twenty years."
"Twenty-one."
His expression changed.