Chapter Two
Ella woke before David did, though she did not know how long she had been awake before she opened her eyes.
The cabin was dim and gray with morning, the kind of gray that made the walls seem farther away than they had been by lamplight.
For a moment, she lay still beneath the blanket, listening.
David’s breathing came slow and even from the pallet near the stove. The fire had settled low, but not out.
She remembered where she was before fear could make a question of it. David Sanders’s cabin. Her husband’s cabin. Her cabin now, too, though the thought didn’t feel quite right.
Carefully, so the bed would not creak, she pushed back the blanket and set her feet on the cold floor. The first thing she did was make the bed. Not because anyone had told her to, and not because David would expect it. She needed order in her life, and making the bed provided that order.
After that, she stood in the center of the cabin and began to count.
Not aloud. Never aloud. She counted with her eyes and placed each number where it belonged inside her mind.
Half a sack of flour, less than she would have liked if the weather turned bad.
One crock of beans, nearly full. Enough coffee for perhaps three weeks if David drank one cup in the morning and one at supper, less if he carried some to the mill.
Salt. Pepper. A twist of dried herbs tied in brown paper.
Two onions beginning to soften near the top.
Six potatoes in a crate beneath the table, one already sprouting.
She opened the stove door and found the coals still red beneath the ash.
Good. That meant breakfast could be made without wasting kindling.
She hated waste. The wood stacked beside the stove would last the morning but not the evening.
The bucket beneath the washstand was half full.
The towel near it had dried stiff. His shirt, folded on the chair by the wall, needed mending at one cuff and laundering at the collar.
Her own clothes from the journey needed washing more urgently than that, but David would go to work in his shirt today, and the tear would worsen if it waited.
Order was not only where things sat. Order was knowing what must be done first so nothing else became harder.
She put on her dress and braided her hair with quick, practiced fingers.
By the time David stirred, she had coaxed the fire higher, set water to warm, sliced the bad spot from an onion, and decided that potatoes would stretch the beans better than flour would.
Flour could be bread. Bread could become supper, breakfast, or a quick meal to eat between chopping down trees.
Potatoes were only potatoes, and sprouted ones were best used before they stopped being food and became plants.
David pushed himself up on one elbow and blinked toward the stove. His hair was flattened on one side, and the sight of it startled Ella so badly that she looked away at once. Husbands, it seemed, woke up looking less like strangers and more like ordinary men.
“You’re up early,” he said, his voice rough from sleep.
Ella lifted one shoulder. “There were things to do.”
He looked around the cabin then, not quickly enough to make her feel inspected, but with the slow surprise of a man recognizing his own home after someone had made it more sensible.
The kettle was nearer the stove instead of tucked behind the flour sack.
The tin cups were stacked where a hand could reach them without moving the plates.
His work gloves, which had been on the table the night before, now hung from the peg by the door where the damp would not touch the breadboard.
“I can find my coffee,” he said after a moment.
She froze with the knife in her hand. “Was it wrong?” She knew some people hated change, and though the changes were small, she now worried she shouldn’t have made them.
“No.” David sat up fully and reached for his boots. “That’s the thing. It’s where it should have been all along.”
Ella lowered her gaze to the onion. “It was in the way of the plates.”
“It was,” he agreed.
She did not know how to respond to that, so she put the onion into the pan.
Breakfast was plain, but it came together without hurry. David washed at the basin while she stirred potatoes and beans together with the last of the lard. When he reached for his work shirt, she noticed his fingers pause at the torn cuff.
“I can mend that tonight,” she said.
He glanced at her, surprised. “I didn’t ask.”
“It will tear more if you wear it twice.”
“It will,” he said.
She waited for him to say more. Men often did, in Ella’s experience. They turned ordinary observations into corrections or commands. David only put the shirt on carefully and buttoned it with a faint, thoughtful frown.
They ate at the table with the morning growing brighter beyond the window. David took two bites before he stopped and looked at the shelf behind her.
“I don’t mean to stare,” he said. “It’s only that I’ve lived here three years, and this is the first morning I haven’t had to move something before sitting down.”
Ella’s spoon stilled. Praise made her feel uncomfortable.
“It needed doing,” she said.
“Most things that need doing don’t get done so neatly.”
She could think of nothing safe to say to that, so she reached for his cup and poured more coffee. He accepted it with a quiet thank-you and did not press the matter.
After David left for the mill, Ella worked in a manner that would have appeared slow to anyone watching, though it was not slow at all.
She washed the dishes, wiped the table, shook crumbs from the cloth, set beans to soak for supper, and measured flour in her palm to judge how many loaves it might become.
She did not need paper. Paper could be lost. Her memory was never lost.
She carried water, though the bucket pulled hard at her arm.
She brought in wood, stacking it by size to make it easier to grab, whether she wanted to start a fire or keep it going.
She set aside the softened onions, scrubbed the good potatoes, and put David’s clothing away, organizing it as she went.
By midmorning, the cabin was changed. There was no more space in it than before, but there was less confusion.
When it was time to walk to the mercantile to meet her friends, she wrapped a heel of bread and a small portion of beans in cloth, then hesitated. David had said some days he came home for lunch. He had not said this day. If he returned and she was gone, he could eat what she left on the table.
Only then did she put on her coat and go to the mercantile to meet with her friends.
She arrived shortly before the others and put a few things on the counter to purchase. She hadn’t talked to David about money, but she had enough of her own saved that she could buy a few things.
When she went to purchase the goods she’d chosen, Katie refused the money. Ella frowned. “You must be paid for your goods.”
“I will be. I’m starting an account for you. I think we’ll find you’ll be making money off things you do, and it’ll be easier for both of us if no actual money exchanges hands.”
Ella nodded. She wanted to argue, but that would mean having to explain to the other woman what was on her mind. She wasn’t comfortable enough to have an entire conversation yet, so she went along with her.
Belle met Ella, Lula, Josie, and Myrtle at the store, and they quickly set out for Maggie’s cabin, so they could discuss business and what was necessary for the survival of winter.
By the time Ella and her friends arrived, voices had already filled it. Sally was there, of course, standing close to the stove and talking with both hands. Maggie had a pencil tucked behind her ear and a ledger open on the table. Agnes sat listening to Sally, laughing and shaking her head.
“There you are,” Sally said, brightening when she saw Ella. “I was beginning to think no one else was coming.”
“Sit, if you like,” Maggie said. “Or stand. We’re only trying to sort ourselves before the whole town decides what we ought to be good for.”
That made several of the women laugh. Ella chose a place near the wall where she could see the table, the door, and the shelves without turning her head.
The purpose of the meeting, as Maggie explained it, was simple.
The women from Beckham would need to be useful if they meant to belong in Yeti.
Yeti was a timber town, and everything there supported the loggers.
The town had no shortage of labor, but it had very little comfort and even less organization.
“Laundry will pay,” Sally said. “Men hate doing it badly, but they hate doing it well even more.”
“Meals too,” Myrtle added. “Not fancy ones. Filling ones.”
“Mending,” Lula said. “But whoever wants that thankless job better enjoy being indoors all the time.”
The laughter came easier that time. Ella smiled because Lula expected her to, though no one seemed to notice whether she had.
Maggie wrote quickly. “All right. We have Sally’s garden, which has done a good job of producing much of what we’ll need for winter. I think Belle needs someone to hunt with her. We’ve doubled the number of families we have to feed overnight.”
Ella wasn’t surprised when Lula jumped at the chance to hunt. It was her favorite thing, and she wasn’t shy about it.
Belle wrinkled her nose. “We also need someone to take over foraging. Sally does some, but she has so much to do already with her garden.”
They discussed everything that needed to be done to make their little business venture thrive. They ate while they talked, deciding that Maggie would watch any children while the others worked, and they would all meet at Maggie’s cabin every day around noon.
Maggie looked up from her notes. “Do you plan to join us, Ella? You haven’t said a word since you came in.”
Every face turned toward her.