The great hands capable of splitting wood with one swing.
Yet every time she became frightened, he moved away instead of closer.
Her first husband had been physically smaller.
That had never made her safer.
She looked toward the blanket he had arranged near the fireplace for himself.
Then toward the wide bed across the cabin.
He had repaired the frame before her arrival.
She knew because the wood beneath it was newer than the rest of the cabin furniture.
At first she assumed the reinforcement was because of her size.
She weighed close to two hundred kilograms.
There was no polite way to pretend otherwise.
For most of her adult life, people had spoken about her body as though she were not standing inside it.
Doctors who had barely looked at her face.
Dressmakers who sighed before taking measurements.
Relatives who described meals as moral tests.
Strangers who watched what she put on her plate.
Her first husband had been the worst.
He had praised her beauty during courtship because he enjoyed possessing something other men noticed.
After marriage, admiration became humiliation.
He told her she should be grateful any man desired her.
He criticized the width of chairs after she sat in them as though furniture had become evidence against her.
He insisted she eat before guests arrived so nobody would see her with food.
He chose dresses designed to disguise her shape, then mocked her when no dress could.
Toward the end of their marriage, he barely touched her except when reminding her that marriage gave him rights.
She had learned to associate desire with debt.
Kindness with purchase.
A husband paying her debts should have terrified her more than anything.
Instead, this man stood before her holding an old ribbon and looking as though he was the one afraid.
She wiped one tear angrily.
“You knew who I was before you wrote to me.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“A trader brought newspapers through the mountains last spring.”
He swallowed.
“Your husband’s death was mentioned.”
Her expression tightened automatically.
The mountain man saw.
“I’m sorry.”
She shook her head.
“You don’t have to be.”
The honesty surprised him.
She looked toward the fire.
“I grieved what I thought marriage was supposed to have been.”
“Not the man it actually became.”
He said nothing.
She continued:
“You saw my name?”
“Yes.”
“And then you offered marriage.”
“Yes.”
“Because I fed you bread once?”
“No.”
The answer came quickly.
She looked back.
He folded the ribbon carefully inside his hand.