“No.”
“Then?”
“Wanting it.”
He understood.
Clara continued.
“Benjamin died.”
“I know.”
“I thought if I loved carefully, it would hurt less.”
“Did it?”
“No.”
Caleb stared at flames.
“My mother died when I was sixteen.”
“Fever.”
“My father left for Ohio two years later.”
“Never saw him again.”
“I decided if nobody belonged to me, nobody could leave.”
Clara turned.
“That sounds lonely.”
“It was peaceful.”
“Not same.”
“No.”
He smiled.
“You’ve ruined it.”
She almost laughed.
They sat.
After a while, Caleb said:
“I cannot promise I won’t die.”
Clara’s eyes burned.
“Terrible courtship.”
“I can promise not to disappear because I’m scared.”
She looked at him.
“That is better.”
He took her hand.
No kiss.
Not yet.
The storm continued in cycles.
Three days clear.
Two snow.
Wind.
Ice.
January arrived.
The pass remained closed.
Men began cutting a narrow trail by hand.
Progress measured in yards.
Food stores fell.
Clara adapted meals.
Bean stew thickened with cornmeal.
Dried apple porridge.
Rabbit soup.
Dumplings.
The chickens produced a few eggs despite cold.
Those eggs went to children and sick people.
Clara saved shells.
Ground them.
Fed hens.
Nothing wasted.
One night a young woman went into labor.
Her husband panicked.
The midwife lived across frozen creek.
Caleb crossed with rope.
Brought her back.
Clara boiled water.
Held lantern.
A girl was born before dawn.
The mother named her Hope.
Clara privately thought the name too obvious.
She said nothing.
Two weeks later, fever spread.
Not deadly initially.
Cough.
Chills.
Seven children sick.
Then Reverend Hale.
Then three adults.
Clara’s pantry included dried willow bark, mint, thyme, and honey.
Caleb had more honey in his cache.
The settlement rationed.
The fever passed.
Nobody died.
That felt miraculous.
Then someone did.
An elderly man named Amos Reed, seventy-eight, whose heart had been weak for years.
He died quietly in sleep.
The settlement buried him in frozen ground by fire-heated picks.
Winter took something.
It always did.
Clara stood beside grave.
Caleb’s hand hovered near hers.
She reached first.
That night, she cried.