Chapter Six #3
Albert held out his hands. “Then let me do one smaller thing badly or one useful thing well. Grace and I will both hope it is the second.”
Dorothy hesitated only a moment before passing Grace to him. The baby settled against his chest with a tired sigh, one small hand gripping his shirt. Albert held her as if she were not fragile exactly, but precious in a way that demanded both strength and care.
Dorothy watched him while she folded the cloth and set the last bowl aside.
She had once thought a man holding a baby was a useful sight.
Henry had made it beautiful. Albert made it something different—steady, patient, and unexpectedly tender.
He didn’t ask Henry’s memory to move aside. It simply stood near it.
When Grace finally slept, Albert crossed the room and placed her carefully in Dorothy’s arms. Their hands met beneath the baby’s warm weight and lingered longer than necessary.
For one breath, Albert forgot the curtain, the bedroll, the promise he had made not to demand anything from Dorothy.
He saw the softness in her eyes and the curve of her hand beneath his, and the want to kiss her rose so suddenly that it stole his good sense.
Then caution came back. He had promised safety.
He had promised not to press. Wanting did not give him the right to take.
He stepped back. “Good night, Dorothy.”
“Albert?” Dorothy said before she could lose courage.
He stopped at once. “Yes?”
She had no idea what she meant to ask. Why did you step away? Do you not want me? Are you being kind, or are you sorry you married me? None of those words would come. “Thank you for holding Grace,” she said instead.
Albert’s face softened. “You never have to thank me for holding one of the children.”
Dorothy shifted Grace higher in her arms. “Still, I do thank you. She is not your burden.”
Albert’s eyes lifted to hers. “No child in this cabin is a burden to me.”
The words were simple, but they landed in Dorothy like a hand laid carefully over a bruise. “You say things like that as if they cost you nothing.”
“They cost me truth,” Albert said. “That is all.”
Dorothy looked at him then, and the space between them changed. It was still only a few inches, filled with Grace’s sleeping weight and the faint smell of soap and woodsmoke, but it felt suddenly like a place both of them knew existed and neither knew how to cross.
“Albert,” she whispered, though she did not know whether she meant to ask him closer or warn him away.
His gaze dropped briefly to her mouth, then returned to her eyes with such restraint that it hurt worse than boldness would have. “I made you a promise,” he said.
“Not to touch me?” Dorothy asked before she could stop herself.
Albert’s breath caught. “Not to ask for more than you wanted to give.”
Dorothy had no answer for that because she did not know what she wanted, only that his stepping away made her feel colder than the room warranted.
Dorothy looked down at Grace so he would not see the hurt that surprised her.
She had not expected him to kiss her. She had not wanted to expect it.
Their marriage was practical, born of children and cold and need.
Yet when he withdrew so carefully, as if desire for her were something dangerous to be avoided, the ache beneath her ribs felt very much like disappointment.
Behind the curtain, Dorothy pressed her cheek to Grace’s soft hair and tried to steady herself.
She had told Albert she did not ask for rescue, and she had meant it.
She had not asked for romance either. Yet somewhere between his hard biscuits, careful hands, and quiet place on the floor, her heart had begun asking without permission.
That frightened her far more than loneliness had.
Loneliness was familiar. Hope was reckless.
“Good night,” she said, and slipped behind the curtain before her face betrayed her.
Albert stood in the dim room and stared at the curtain as it settled between them. He had done the honorable thing. He was nearly certain of it. The trouble was that honor felt like he didn’t care for her—and that turned honor into a lie, which was anything but honorable.
He lay down on his bedroll beside the stove, close enough to hear Dorothy settle Grace on the other side of the curtain.
The fabric hid almost nothing. He could hear the baby’s soft nursing sounds, Dorothy’s quiet breathing, the small rustle as she shifted beneath the quilt.
A few feet separated them. It might as well have been the whole Tanana frozen over and impossible to cross.
Dorothy lay awake too, staring into the darkness above the bed. She had married a man who was kind, careful, steady, and close enough that she could hear him breathe. The curtain between them was too thin to excuse the loneliness on either side of it.
Neither of them spoke. Neither of them slept for a long while. In the crowded little cabin, with children safe and warm around them, Albert and Dorothy lay only a few feet apart and wondered how belonging could feel so close and still so far away.