Chapter Six
Albert woke before dawn with one small foot pressed into his ribs and another resting across his thigh.
For a moment, he did not know where he was.
Then Tommy sighed against his shoulder, Clara shifted at his side, and the stove popped softly in the dark.
Albert stared up at the low ceiling of Dorothy’s cabin and remembered.
He was married. He lived here now. The thought was too large for the floor beneath him and the two children pinning him in place.
He eased himself free inch by inch, holding his breath when Clara frowned in her sleep and when Tommy muttered something about swimming boots. By the time Albert stood, his back ached, his arm had gone numb, and his heart felt oddly full.
He meant to make breakfast quietly. That was the first mistake.
The second was believing biscuits were simple because Dorothy made them look that way.
By the time gray light touched the window, Albert had flour on his sleeves, dough stuck to his fingers, and a pan of hard little lumps that looked more useful for repairing the roof than feeding children.
Tommy woke first and came to the table rubbing one eye. “Are those rocks?”
“Biscuits,” Albert said with dignity.
Tommy took one, bit down, and chewed with heroic determination. “They crunch good.”
Clara sat up and peered at the pan. “Mama’s biscuits do not sound when you bite them.”
Albert considered the pan. “That is because your mama makes eating biscuits. I appear to have made warning biscuits.”
“What do they warn?” Tommy asked, taking another brave bite.
“Mostly teeth,” Albert said.
Dorothy laughed softly from behind the curtain, and Albert decided any biscuit that brought that sound into the morning could not be counted a complete failure.
Dorothy lay still behind the curtain longer than she needed to, listening to Albert move awkwardly through her kitchen as if every spoon and pan held a question he was afraid to ask too loudly.
Part of her wanted to rise and rescue the biscuits before they became weapons.
Another part wanted to let him try. This was his home now too, and she could not keep every task clutched in her own hands simply because she knew how to do it best.
Later that morning, Albert took Dorothy and the children to gather the rest of his belongings from his old cabin. Clara held Dorothy’s hand, Tommy marched ahead with a stick, and Grace slept against Dorothy’s shoulder, bundled deep against the cold.
Albert’s cabin stood farther from the center of Yeti, set back near a stand of black spruce. It was neat because there had been so little in it to disturb. A cot, a trunk, a shelf, a stove, and a table barely large enough for one man’s plate.
Dorothy looked around. “Should we live here instead?”
Albert shook his head. “It is smaller than yours, farther from Ella and Belle, and too quiet for children.”
“Too quiet?” Dorothy asked.
Tommy struck the wall with his stick, and dust shook loose from a corner. Albert looked at him. “For example, this cabin would not survive that boy for a week.”
“My children have survived smaller places than this,” Dorothy said, though she still looked uncertain.
“They should not have to survive if we can help them live better,” Albert said. “Your cabin is close to the women who love you. That matters more than my convenience.”
Dorothy tried to smile, but the thought behind his answer touched her. He would not uproot the children merely to make his own life easier. He was fitting himself into their home instead of forcing them into his.
Making room for Albert proved harder than marrying him.
His shirts needed a place. His tools needed a place.
His shaving things, spare socks, extra bootlaces, and the small box of letters from his family needed places as well.
The cabin had survived scarcity by keeping little because there had been little to keep.
Now abundance of any sort felt like a puzzle.
Albert solved part of the trouble by building upward.
He set boards along one wall and turned them into shelves sturdy enough to hold his shirts, Dorothy’s sewing basket, Clara’s treasured bits of ribbon, and Tommy’s collection of stones that were apparently too important to leave outside where stones belonged.
Then he built a storage chest from spare boards Everett had sent over.
It stood beneath the new shelves and served as a bench when the lid was shut.
Tommy climbed onto it three times before the hinges were even fixed, and Clara declared it a fine place to sit if one wished to think serious thoughts.
“Do all these tools truly need to be inside?” Dorothy asked, holding up a small plane.
“Only if you want repairs done before spring,” Albert said.
Dorothy looked toward the crooked shelf. “Then the tools may stay. But Tommy’s stones need to stop multiplying.”
Dorothy watched Albert fit his few possessions into the corners of her life and realized the cabin was not the only thing being rearranged. Her habits had to make room for him too. So did her silences, her worries, and the careful ways she had learned to take up as little space as possible.
Having his things among hers made the marriage feel suddenly real in a way the vows had not.
Albert’s shirts hanging near her apron, his tools on the shelf beside her sewing basket, his bootlaces in a box Clara opened three times out of curiosity—all of it seemed ordinary, and ordinary frightened her because it could become precious before she noticed.
While sorting one of Albert’s boxes, Dorothy found a small wooden horse wrapped in an old handkerchief.
It was smoother than Tommy’s little horse, worn from the care with which Albert had handled it during the past several months.
One leg was a little uneven, and the mane had been carved with patient, careful cuts.
“Henry made that,” Albert said from behind her.
Dorothy turned it gently in her hands. “For you?”
Albert nodded. “Months ago. I told him no grown man needed a wooden horse. He said every man needed one thing that reminded him not to become dull.” He shook his head.
“Henry always did think a man ought to have something useless and cheerful. He said useful things kept a body alive, but foolish things reminded him why.”
Dorothy ran her thumb over the uneven carved mane. “He never told me he made you this.”
“He likely feared you would ask him to carve one properly,” Albert said. “This was one of his early attempts.”
Dorothy smiled, but tears stung her eyes.
She had feared Albert would crowd Henry’s memory out of the cabin.
Instead, here was proof that Albert had carried part of Henry with him before either of them imagined this marriage.
He had not come to replace her first husband.
He had come carrying his own grief, his own memories, and one foolish little horse he had kept wrapped carefully since Henry gave it to him.
“We should put it where the children can see it,” she said.
Albert’s throat worked. “Henry would like that.”
The next afternoon, Tommy ran into the cabin with snow on his mittens and shouted, “Papa, look!”
Albert froze with one hand on the storage chest.
Tommy did not seem to notice. He held up a lump of snow that had somehow formed into what he believed was a bear. “It has ears.”
Albert looked from the melting snow bear to Tommy’s bright face. Papa. The word had come so easily from the boy, as if it had been waiting behind his teeth and slipped out the moment it found room. Albert’s chest tightened until breathing took effort.
Dorothy stood near the stove with Grace on her hip. She had heard it too. Her eyes met Albert’s, and he saw the same question there that had risen in him. Was it too soon? Was it wrong?
Albert crouched in front of Tommy. “That is a fine bear. And Tommy?”
“What?” Tommy asked.
“You may call me Albert if that feels better. Or Mr. Albert. Or Papa Albert, if you are sure. You do not have to decide today.”
Tommy frowned as if Albert had made breakfast unnecessarily complicated again. “But you live here.”
“I do.” Albert’s voice softened. “And I mean to stay.”
Clara had been listening from the new bench; her hands folded in her lap like a small judge considering a serious matter. “We already have Papa in heaven,” she said.
Albert nodded. “Yes, you do.”
Clara looked toward Henry’s carved horse on the shelf, then back at Albert. “Then I can have Papa in heaven and Papa Albert at home.”
Dorothy pressed her lips together, but a tear slipped free anyway. She had feared the new name would erase Henry. Instead, Clara had simply made room for both men in the only way a child could—plainly, practically, and with more grace than most grown people managed.
Albert bowed his head for a moment. “That would be an honor, Clara.”
Later, after Tommy’s snow bear had melted into a puddle near the door and Clara had gone back to arranging stones on the new chest, Dorothy found Albert stacking kindling beside the stove.
“You handled that gently,” she said.
Albert set one piece of kindling into the box and kept his eyes on his hands. “I did not want to take anything that was Henry’s.”
Dorothy leaned her hip against the table, Grace warm and heavy against her shoulder. “You are not taking him from them. Clara made that plain enough.”
“Children can make room faster than grown people,” Albert said.
“Maybe because they do not ask permission from yesterday before they love what is in front of them.” The words surprised Dorothy as much as they seemed to surprise Albert. She looked down at Grace to hide the heat rising in her face. “I only mean they are honest about needing you.”
Albert turned then. “And you?”
Dorothy’s breath caught. The question was quiet, but it filled the small cabin more completely than Tommy’s shouting ever had. “I am trying to learn how,” she said. “Needing someone still feels dangerous.”