When she eventually returned to the city, he accompanied her wagon to the railway station. He handed her a narrow wooden box he'd made himself. Inside lay a set of small sewing tools with polished handles, each shaped to fit comfortably in her hands. The box smelled of fresh cedar.
"I thought you might need something from the mountains that wasn't snow," he said.
She looked at the craftsmanship. Every edge had been smoothed; every tool rested securely in a fitted compartment. "You made this?"
"My father taught me a little."
She smiled through tears. "Then I shall have to send you something beautiful enough to repay it."
He shook his head. "You don't owe me anything."
The whistle sounded. She had only a moment left, and a thousand things she wanted to say. At last she asked, "Will you write?"
He looked almost relieved. "If you'll answer."
"Try me."
He offered his hand. She took it. Neither released quickly enough for a simple farewell, and by the time she reached her carriage window, she knew she would never again call that journey merely a business trip.
They wrote throughout the autumn. His letters arrived in a large, deliberate hand, reporting cattle births, broken fence rails, weather shifts, and small victories with the irrigation maps. Hers told him about bridal commissions, employees, difficult customers, and the strange pleasure of returning to an active workroom while longing for a quiet mountain porch. Sometimes he tucked a pressed leaf inside an envelope. Sometimes she enclosed a sketch of a gown or a joke hidden between ledger figures.
Their letters grew more personal. He confessed he had begun keeping her favorite tea on the kitchen shelf although she was hundreds of miles away. She admitted she'd placed his cedar box on her desk where every visiting customer could see it. He described a sunrise on the western ridge and wrote that he wished she could have stood beside him. She answered that perhaps she would, if he were brave enough to invite her back without pretending he needed another accountant.
His next letter contained only a few lines before the page filled with hurried explanation. He had missed her. He admired her. He feared it would be selfish to ask her to exchange a prosperous life for an uncertain ranch. Yet if she wanted a home with him, he wanted to build one she would never regret choosing.