Chapter Two #2
As he worked, he noticed the places Dorothy had already tried to mend the cabin herself.
A strip of cloth stuffed into a crack near the floor.
A broken chair leg braced with twine. A tin cup set beneath a leak where melting frost must drip when the stove was hot enough.
She had not been waiting helplessly. She had been fighting alone.
The thought settled heavily in Albert’s chest. He had pictured Dorothy surrounded by women, fussed over by neighbors, protected by Yeti because no decent town would let Henry Peabody’s widow suffer.
But he had never come to see whether the picture was true.
He had preferred imagination because imagination did not ask anything of him.
Watching Albert notice each poor repair made Dorothy feel as if he were reading pages from a diary she had never meant anyone to see.
She had been proud of those little fixes yesterday.
Proud that the chair still held, proud that the worst crack was stuffed, proud that she had caught the drip before it ruined Clara’s blanket.
Under Albert’s eyes, every bit of cleverness looked like poverty instead.
By the time he had tightened the hinge and wedged a strip of scrap cloth into the worst of the gap, the cabin felt no warmer, but the draft had less bite. Dorothy thanked him stiffly, as if gratitude cost her something. Albert understood that it did.
He was late to the mill, and Everett noticed the moment Albert walked into the yard.
“You’re never late,” Everett said.
“I was at Dorothy’s,” Albert said. “Brought supplies. Fixed her door some. She needs wood.”
Everett’s expression changed from surprise to understanding. “Take from the scrap pile. Anything short enough to cut for her stove. Take an ax if you need one.”
Albert nodded. “I’ll pay for it.”
“You’ll do no such thing.” Everett looked toward the mill, then back at Albert. “Belle’s been worried about Dorothy for months. Ella too. They bring what Dorothy will accept and pretend it is extra. But pride can make a locked door out of an open one.”
“She has reason for pride,” Albert said.
“She does,” Everett agreed. “But pride won’t keep those children warm.”
After the day’s work was finished, Albert loaded scrap wood into a handcart and cut the longer pieces down behind the mill.
Every swing of the ax brought Henry back to him.
Henry laughing because Albert had split a crooked log and called it useful.
Henry wiping sawdust from his face with the back of one hand.
Henry talking about Dorothy’s biscuits and Clara’s questions and Tommy’s new tooth.
Albert had thought avoiding those memories kept grief from swallowing him. He understood now that hiding from Henry’s family had protected only himself. Dorothy had not been spared by his absence. The children had not been warmed by it. Henry had not been honored by it.
He pulled the loaded cart to Dorothy’s cabin as dusk settled low and cold over Yeti. This time, when he knocked, Clara opened the door and smiled before remembering she was supposed to wait for her mother.
“Mr. Albert brought wood!” she called.
Dorothy came from the stove with Grace in her arms. “Albert, you didn’t have to—” She paused for a moment as he came in with another armful. “You can’t keep doing this.”
“I can keep carrying wood.”
“That isn’t what I mean.” She followed him to the door, Grace tucked close. “If people see you here morning and night, they’ll talk.”
Albert paused with one hand on the latch. “Let them talk about me, then. They should have been talking to me before now.”
Dorothy’s mouth tightened. “I don’t want pity.”
“Good,” Albert said. “I’m not very good at pity. I’m better at chopping wood.”
Dorothy almost smiled at that, which irritated her because she did not want to smile at Albert Travis.
She wanted to stay properly angry with him.
Anger was easier than remembering how often Henry had come home with stories about Albert’s steady hands and dry humor.
Anger was easier than admitting that the sound of wood landing in the box made her want to weep with gratitude.
“I said I would.” He carried in armload after armload until the wood box was full and rounded over the top. Then he stacked more outside the cabin wall where Dorothy could reach it without walking far through the snow.
When he finished, Dorothy stood beside the table with her hands wrapped around a tin cup. “I have coffee. It’s not much, but you’re welcome to some.”
Albert saw the small paper twist of coffee near the shelf, tied carefully as if it were worth more than gold. She had been saving it for company instead of drinking it herself. “No, thank you,” he said. “I had some at the mill.”
“You don’t have to refuse everything I offer,” Dorothy said softly.
Albert glanced at the carefully tied coffee and then at her thin hands around the cup. “And you don’t have to offer the last of what you have just to prove you still can.”
Her eyes met his then, and for a moment neither of them looked away.
Dorothy looked away first because she could not bear the kindness in his eyes.
It was not pity exactly. Pity looked down.
Albert looked straight at her, as if he saw the fight in her as clearly as he saw the empty shelves.
That frightened her more than pity would have.
Pity could be refused. Being understood was harder to turn away.
Clara looked from her mother to Albert. “Will you stay for supper?”
Dorothy’s eyes widened. “Clara, Mr. Travis is busy.”
Albert looked at the pot on the stove and knew there would not be enough. “I can stay a few minutes,” he said.
Supper was thin cornmeal mush, stretched with more water than meal. Dorothy served the children first, giving Clara and Tommy the largest portions and cooling a small spoonful at a time for Grace. Then she scraped a bit into a bowl for Albert and less into one for herself.
“I’m not very hungry,” Dorothy said when Clara looked at her bowl.
The lie tasted bitter even though she had said it for the children’s sake.
Dorothy could feel the hollowness under her ribs and the weakness in her arms from nursing Grace, but she kept her spoon still.
There had been a time when she and Henry had laughed over second helpings.
Now she measured love in spoonfuls and gave the biggest ones away.
Albert knew a lie when hunger shaped it. He also knew better than to strip the last of Dorothy’s dignity from her in front of her children. He ate slowly, praised the meal, and talked with Tommy about sled runners until Clara stopped watching her mother’s bowl.
He noticed, too, that Dorothy waited until the children were nearly finished before lifting her own spoon.
She took small bites, more concerned with whether Tommy wanted another spoonful than whether she had enough.
Henry would have seen it. Henry would have put his own bowl in front of her and made a joke until she ate.
Albert sat with a bowl he did not deserve and wished for one moment he could hear his friend scold him.
After supper, he thanked Dorothy as if she had set a feast before him, then stepped out into the cold with his jaw clenched so tight it ached.