Chapter 2 - The Weight of Seven Winters
The afternoon shadows lengthened across the clearing, stretching long, skeletal fingers of blue pine across the mud and the broken wagon.
Caleb hadn't moved from the spot where the truth had hit him. His massive hands still gripped the barrel of the Winchester, his knuckles white beneath layers of weather-roughened skin. Ten yards away, Clara—for that was the name he had whispered into the dark so many times it felt like a prayer—sat on an overturned wooden crate she had dragged from the back of the wagon.
Lily had fallen asleep half an hour earlier, curled up on a folded horse blanket near the warm ashes of a small fire Caleb had silently built. Her thumb was tucked securely in her mouth, her rhythmic breathing the only soft sound in the wilderness.
Clara kept her eyes on her boots. The mud had dried into a crust around the hem of her gray skirt. The silver chain remained tucked safely out of sight inside her collar now, but its absence felt louder than its jingle.
"Who raised her?" Caleb asked.
His voice was lower now, stripped of the defensive gravel. The question hung in the cold air between them like smoke.
Clara lifted her head. Her eyes, red-rimmed from crying, met his with a tired defiance.
"I did," she said. "In a small town three valleys over, working the wash-tubs for the mining camp and later sewing for the mercantile. I called myself Clara Miller. Nobody asked questions as long as my work was clean and I kept to myself."
"Why come back here?" Caleb's gaze swept over the ruined wagon, the snapped hickory axle, and the meager bundle of belongings tied with fraying hemp rope to the sideboard. "If you stayed hidden for seven years, why cross the ridge now?"
Clara let out a bitter, humorless laugh that ended in a dry cough. "Because hiding isn't living, Caleb. The mines played out six months ago. The town dried up. The landlord raised the rent on the shack three times in as many months, and when I told him I couldn't pay in gold he didn't have, he... well, let's just say a lone woman with a child doesn't keep a roof over her head for long without a man's name or a heavy purse."
She gestured vaguely toward the valley behind them, the direction of the lowlands.
"I heard talk at the mercantile before we left. They said the old timber claims on this side of the mountain were opening up again. They said the valley was too short-handed to care about old ghost stories from seven years ago. I thought... I thought maybe we could make it across to the abandoned homestead near the creek before winter set in."
Caleb looked at the snapped axle again. "That wagon wouldn't have made another mile even on flat ground. The wood is dry-rotted through. One good rut and the whole bed would have buckled."
"I know that now," Clara muttered, pressing the heels of her hands against her eyes. "I'm not a carpenter, Caleb. I took what I could buy for two dollars from a drunk teamster who was heading south."
A heavy silence settled between them again, but it was different from the silence of before. It was charged with the awkward, agonizing friction of two people who had shared a life, lost it to fire and blood, and now found themselves ghosts standing in each other's presence.
Caleb turned his gaze toward the dark forest. "The wagon stays here," he said abruptly. "Unload the trunks and the sack of flour. You and the girl are coming up to the cabin."
Clara stiffened. She dropped her hands and stared at him, her back straightening instantly. "I didn't come asking for charity, Caleb Mercer. I told you why I'm here. We can pitch the canvas lean-to by the creek until I can rig some poles for a shelter—"
"The creek floods when the high snow starts melting next week," Caleb interrupted, his tone flat and unyielding. "You want to drown the girl in her sleep, stay by the water. Otherwise, you pack what matters and you start walking."
Before Clara could form a sharp retort, Caleb turned his back on her, walked over to the wagon with steps that made the soft earth barely sigh, and effortlessly hoisted a heavy pine trunk onto his massive shoulder as if it were a bag of feathers.
May you like
Clara watched him stride up the narrow, winding trail toward the trees without looking back to see if she was following. She bit her lower lip, cast a worried glance down at sleeping Lily, and then looked up at the darkening ridge where the mountain swallowed the dying light.
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