Chapter One #2
David was sitting at the table when she finished the beans that she’d seasoned carefully. She liked her food more on the spicy side than most, so she hoped she hadn’t overdone it with the pepper.
David rose when she brought the pot to the table, pulled out the second chair, and waited until she sat before he returned to his own seat. Ella was surprised that a lumberman in Alaska would have the trappings of a gentleman. It didn’t seem to work in her mind.
He took his first bite with the solemn care of a man approaching a contract. Ella watched his face before she could stop herself. His brow lifted. For one awful moment, she thought she had ruined the meal.
“That has some bite to it,” he said.
Ella’s fingers tightened around her spoon. “Too much?” The words slipped out before she thought about them.
David looked at her over the rim of his cup. “No, ma’am. I like food that reminds a man he’s alive.”
She did not know whether that was a compliment, but his second bite came quickly enough to reassure her. He ate as if he meant it. The small knot beneath her breastbone loosened another fraction.
For a while, there was only the sound of spoons against tin plates, the stove settling, and the wind. Ella found the quiet less frightening than she had expected. In Beckham, quiet had often meant someone was waiting for her to explain herself. Here, it seemed simply to be quiet.
“I go to the mill most mornings,” David said at last. “Some days I’m gone until after dark. Other days, I’m close enough to come in for lunch. If you’re not here to cook for me, I’ll cook for myself. I know you’ll have business with your friends.”
Ella looked down at her plate. She could feel the shape of an answer but not the words for it.
He seemed to understand that silence was not refusal. “Mrs. Johnson runs the mercantile. If you need anything and I’m not here, she’s the one to turn to.”
“Thank you,” she said.
It was not much, but David received it as if it were. “You’re welcome.”
After supper, Ella rose to clear the table. David rose too, and for one foolish second she thought they were going to argue over plates like strangers trying to prove which of them was kinder. Instead, he carried his own plate to the washstand and set it beside hers.
“I can wash,” she told him, more quickly than she had meant to.
“I know.” He reached for the kettle. “I can dry.”
She stood with a tin plate in her hands, unsure what to do with such a simple answer.
Her mother had never spoken of husbands who dried dishes.
Her mother had spoken of men who expected hot meals, mended shirts, full washbasins, and women who did not complain.
Perhaps David expected all those things too.
Perhaps he was only being polite because she was new and frightened.
Still, he took the towel from the peg and waited.
So Ella washed, and David dried. Their shoulders did not touch. He left little space between them, but not so little that she felt crowded.
When the last cup was put away, David looked toward the bed and then quickly away again. Color crept beneath his beard. Ella saw it and felt heat rise in her own face.
“I made a pallet near the stove,” he said, voice lower than before. “For me. You take the bed.”
Ella’s gaze darted to the corner beside the stove.
She had missed it before, hidden beneath a folded blanket and a bearskin worn thin at one edge.
A place for him, prepared before she ever crossed the threshold.
Before he knew whether she would speak to him.
Before he knew whether she would be grateful.
Something inside her chest ached in a new way.
“You don’t have to be afraid of me,” David said.
Ella looked at him then. Truly looked. Not at the set of his shoulders or the placement of his hands or the distance between him and the door, but at his face. He seemed as embarrassed as she was at the idea of spending their first night together as husband and wife.
“I’m trying not to be,” she said.
David’s smile was small. “That’s enough for tonight.”
He stepped outside to fetch more wood, leaving her alone with the lamp and the soft sounds of the fire.
Ella moved to the cleared shelf and opened her carpetbag.
She placed her comb there first, then her Bible.
Other than those small things, she had only her clothes.
The shelf looked different with her things on it.
When David returned, he set the logs by the stove and did not remark on her belongings, though his eyes touched the shelf and warmed.
“Morning comes early here,” he said. “But not so early you need to meet it before you’re ready.”
Ella nodded. She could hear Lula in her mind, bold as brass, saying that husbands ought to be handled firmly from the start.
Ella did not feel firm. She felt tired and raw and strange in her own skin.
But as David lowered the lamp and turned his back so she could prepare for bed, she felt something else too.
Not safety. Not yet.
But the possibility of it.
And in a place as far from Beckham as Yeti, Alaska, the possibility seemed like a great deal.