Chapter 14 Western Canada, 1842
The world aches with silence as Maren Billings steps off the creaking plank onto the mud-choked earth of her new life in Canada’s Western territory.
The ship shrinks behind her. The wind off the lake drags her skirts tight as a bandage.
She clutches her valise and the well-creased letter to her breast, heart thudding with dread and a stubborn flicker of hope.
“Chosen for her robust constitution,” it reads, “common sense and hearty manners.” It does not say the rest. No family.
Barely a dowry. Unremarkable, but for her willingness to disappear to the colonies.
She tries not to let the bitterness rise.
There is no dock, only a congregation of men in buckskins and women in home-sewn wool.
Their faces are hungry and reserved. The trees loom in smoky tangles behind them—strange, wild things, relentlessly green and full of damp shadows.
Even the mist smells unwashed. She tries to stand tall.
Her shoes sink with each step, swallowing her city posture whole.
Harrison Cole is the only one who doesn’t look away when their eyes meet.
She feels a pulse of uncertainty as she tries to read his expression.
He seems older than promised, all angles and hollows under his scruff.
His eyes are the color of mossy stone and wide, even in skepticism.
He says, “Miss Billings,” and tips his hat, his voice low and careful, as if afraid of startling her—and his carefulness makes her feel both nervous and oddly reassured.
“Mr. Cole,” she replies, attempting a curtsy; her boot sticks and she pitches forward, cheeks burning with embarrassment. The men snicker. Harrison offers a steadying hand, calloused and huge. His grip is so warm she nearly flinches, startled by the unexpected comfort and the intimacy of his touch.
“I hope you like bread,” he says, deadpan—and only then does she see the panic flickering beneath his stoicism, a nervousness he’s trying to hide. She laughs—too brightly, desperate to ease both their anxieties, but it cuts the tension. He lets her go, relief ghosting across his features.
They are married three days later. There is no church; the preacher is a pocked man called Smalls who reads from a damp prayer book while Harrison fidgets beside her. The only witnesses are the cluster of settlers, her letter-writer (Mrs. Avery, regarding her with a certain pity), and the trees.
On their first night, the roof leaks. Every time the rain spatters her forehead, she startles, trapped between giggles and tears.
Harrison lights a tallow candle, inspects the drip, and says, “I built this house with no right angles, but plenty of love.” She watches him crouch, fixing the leak with a scrap of hide, and wonders if she can learn to love a man who speaks only when there is reason.
Time stretches like a long corridor of chores and small victories.
Her hands harden. She blisters, then heals, then blisters again.
Harrison teaches her to chop wood. She is awkward at first, but she likes the violence of it.
They burn everything they touch: bread, fingers, firewood, the shreds of their old selves.
At night, he tells her stories. Only then does his voice open, hesitant and shy, as if her laughter might burn him too.
She learns he left a brother behind. He loves the taste of the river after a thaw.
But he hated the city, not enough to wish it gone from his bones.
He will not kiss her unless she invites him. Even then, it is gentle, almost polite.
Winter descends like an executioner, early and pitiless.
They burrow in animal silence, counting flour jars and boiling creek water, worry flickering in their eyes.
Her cough starts as a pinprick and grows, each breath filling her with dread.
Harrison concocts a paste from willow bark, jaw tight with concern, but she can still taste the mud.
She tries not to let him see her tremble, fearing what her weakness might mean for them both.
One night, she wakes in his arms, shaking so hard she thinks her ribs will crack.
He wraps them in every blanket, pulls her to the hearth, rocking her as if she were a child.
His heart beats frantically and tetherless against her back.
He begins to hum—a sound so out of place she nearly cries from its intimacy.
“Tell me about the spring,” she begs, dizzy and bitter with fever.
He describes the color of ice breaking on the river, the way the first snowdrops spear through rot, how fox kits cry for their mothers.
She closes her eyes, greedy for all she will not see, a longing sharp and aching in her chest. Harrison keeps talking, voice rough with something unsaid, until it blends with the wind outside, and she is only bone and memory, hollowed by loss.
In the morning, there is only cold. He carries her into the day, wraps her in his coat, and lays her under the pine tree that served as their altar.
The earth is frozen, but his hands are patient.
Neighbors watch him dig and dig, until he is nothing but a dark smear against the brightness of the snow.
Time collapses. When the thaw comes, wildflowers stab through the dirt above her heart, and Harrison lies beside her in the grass, face turned to the sky, adrift in grief and hope as he waits for the world to come alive again.