15. Mandy
Mandy
She woke to cold air on her face and the smell of Andrew on the coat folded beneath her head.
The bed beside her was empty.
For one second the emptiness frightened her. Then the stove door opened across the room, iron scraping iron, and she saw him crouched in front of it with no shirt on, feeding kindling into the ash.
The fire had gone out in the night. The cabin had surrendered every degree they had made.
Andrew worked as if the dead stove had offended him personally. Gray ran through the hair on his chest and down the center of it. The scar low on his ribs showed when he reached for another split piece. She had found it with her fingers in the dark and had not asked.
She watched him until he felt it.
“You’re awake,” he said.
“How do you know?”
“Your breathing changed.”
“That remains unsettling.”
He shut the stove door. The new flame caught behind the grate.
“You left a warm bed,” she said.
“Fire was out.”
“So you threw yourself naked into the frozen wilderness and rebuilt civilization.”
“I crossed eight feet of floor.”
“Shirtless.”
“My shirt is under you.”
She looked down. The flannel he had taken off the night before was tangled beneath the coat serving as her pillow.
“That explains the draft.”
He came back to bed and sat on the edge. One knee gave the small hitch she had learned to notice and never mentioned.
The cold had roughened his face overnight. His hair stood up at the back from her hands.
He looked at her with the serious attention of a man about to decide something.
“Don’t,” she said.
“Don’t what?”
“Turn last night into a problem before I’ve had coffee.”
“There is no coffee.”
“That is the first real problem we’ve had.”
His mouth moved.
She pushed herself upright and wrapped the Pendleton around her shoulders. “Was it a mistake?”
“No.”
The answer arrived without hesitation.
She had not known until then how much of her had been waiting for it.
“Good,” she said. “Because I have made spectacular mistakes. I know their texture. Last night was not one.”
“No.”
“And the truck?”
His eyes narrowed slightly.
“The truck was deeply irresponsible,” she said. “It was also excellent.”
“It was cramped.”
“You complained very little.”
“I was occupied.”
She grinned. “You laughed.”
“I have laughed before.”
“Not where I could hear you.”
He looked at the stove.
She put one bare foot against his thigh under the blanket. He flinched.
“Christ, woman.”
“Romance is alive.”
He caught her ankle before she could pull it back and rubbed warmth into the arch with both hands. His thumbs worked the cold out slowly, the same hands that had soaked and bandaged her feet the night she arrived.
The tenderness went through her more cleanly than desire had.
He felt her go quiet and looked up.
“Still cold?”
“No.”
She touched his face.
He turned into her palm a fraction before he remembered not to.
Mandy leaned forward and kissed him.
The kiss stayed soft. No dark turnout. No urgency. No wall to cross. His hand rested around her ankle and hers remained at his jaw.
When she drew back, he looked less guarded than she had ever seen him in daylight.
“You should put on a shirt,” she said.
“You are wearing it.”
“I am wearing nothing under it.”
His eyes changed.
She smiled. “There you are.”
Breakfast was pears from a can and hot water with a little rye in it because Andrew claimed that made the water useful.
“It makes the rye worse,” Mandy said.
“It makes the water better.”
“That is not the same accomplishment.”
They ate with one spoon at the table while the stove recovered. Outside, snow filled the window and showed no interest in stopping.
When the room was warm enough to dress, they pulled on yesterday’s clothes and went out to the horses.
Junebug came to the rail and put her nose against Mandy’s chest. The mare’s breath warmed the canvas coat.
“I know,” Mandy said. “The accommodations were primitive.”
The buckskin watched Andrew break the ice on the bucket and appeared to agree.
The cattle had pawed down to grass under the lee timber. They stood dark against the white, steaming and chewing, annoyed by the weather but otherwise fine.
Andrew pointed out a red cow with a white face standing a little apart.
“That’s a hard pull,” he said. “Front feet came one at a time. Tore her up. I didn’t think we would keep her.”
Mandy watched the cow favor one back leg.
“That’s Lucky’s mother.”
“Yes.”
“She doesn’t know he lived.”
“No.”
“She doesn’t know he’s at home bullying everybody for a bottle.”
“No.”
The cow looked at them, decided they had no feed, and returned to chewing.
“That is heartbreaking,” Mandy said. “And she could not care less.”
“Cows do not carry much.”
He looked at Mandy then.
“You carry too much.”
She held his gaze. “Are you comparing me to a cow?”
“A survivor.”
“That was a careful recovery.”
“It was accurate.”
She took his gloved hand and held it for the walk back to the cabin.
He looked down at their joined hands once. He did not let go.
The days lost their edges.
The storm closed the trail and turned the cabin into the whole available world. They fed the horses, broke the ice, checked the cattle, brought wood in, and came back cold enough that the stove felt personal.
Andrew showed her how to bank a fire. She got it wrong the first night and woke at three to a dead stove.
The second night she used too much wood and made the cabin hot enough that they slept without the Pendleton.
The third night the coals held until morning.
Andrew opened the stove, saw the red glow under the ash, and nodded.
“That is all?” she asked.
“It held.”
“I expected a certificate.”
“You may have the empty bean label.”
“I want it signed.”
He found a pencil in the shelf drawer and wrote, FIRE HELD, A. STEVENS, across the back.
She tucked it into the pocket of her coat.
He watched her do it and looked away.
They learned the limits of the shelf. Andrew could prepare beans, peaches, pears, and oats. He considered heating the can a cooking method and the addition of salt a recipe.
Mandy attempted to improve the beans with dried onion and something in an unlabeled jar.
Andrew watched from the table.
“What is that?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“You put it in the food.”
“That is how discovery works.”
“That is how poisoning works.”
She tasted the spoon and held it toward him.
He refused.
She held it there.
He tasted.
“Well?”
“It is food.”
“Your praise overwhelms me.”
He came behind her to reach for the salt. His hand settled at her waist without thought.
Both of them noticed.
Neither moved.
His palm was warm through the flannel. Mandy leaned back against his chest. He lowered his mouth to the place behind her ear.
The beans began to stick.
“You are burning dinner,” he said.
“You started it.”
“You were experimenting.”
“You put your hand on me.”
“It was in the way.”
“My waist?”
“The salt.”
She turned in his arms and kissed him.
The spoon hit the table.
The beans burned.
They ate peaches afterward.
They lay down one afternoon intending to rest for twenty minutes.
Mandy put her cold feet between Andrew’s calves.
He opened one eye. “No.”
“They are already there.”
“Remove them.”
“You are warmer.”
“That is not a legal claim.”
She moved one foot higher.
He caught her around the waist and rolled her beneath him.
She laughed. “That is an abuse of authority.”
“You have misused my body for heating.”
“Your body has many talents.”
“Name two.”
She reached between them.
Andrew’s argument ended.
There was no urgency this time. No fear waiting at the edge of it. They kissed lazily under the Pendleton while snow moved against the window, and Mandy learned that Andrew could be teased past dignity if she was patient.
He learned she liked his mouth on her when she had nowhere else to be.
Afterward, she slept with her face against his chest and woke to his fingers moving through her hair.
He had stopped when he realized she was awake.
“Keep going,” she said.
He did.
The storm gave her something more dangerous than desire: ease.
She found out that Andrew hummed when he believed she was asleep.
Low and tuneless. The same four notes repeated without ever becoming a song.
She did not tell him.
He found out she talked to the stove when it would not draw properly.
She denied it.
At night, they did not always reach for one another. Sometimes they lay under the same blanket and listened to the weather. Those nights taught her more than the others.
Andrew’s silence had once felt cold. In the cabin, he could sit across from her for an hour without filling the room. He let a question remain unanswered and anger finish before he tried to touch it.
One night the anger came.
She had been thinking about Preston. About the years she had spent believing the flatness in her body was a defect of her own.
He had always known what she wanted before she spoke.
He had arranged her pleasure the way he arranged dinner reservations and charitable pledges, then accepted her silence as confirmation.
Mandy got out of bed and stood at the window in Andrew’s flannel.
The glass gave back a faint shape and no view.
Behind her, Andrew woke.
“Mandy.”
“I’m fine.”
He pushed himself up on one elbow.
“I’m angry.”
“All right.”
She waited for him to ask at whom. He did not.
“I spent years thinking there was something wrong with me.”
The words came out toward the white window.
Andrew sat up fully.
“He never asked,” she said. “He decided. I thought that was the same as being known.”
Andrew’s face went still, but he did not close it against her.
“What do you need?” he asked.
The question stopped her.
She had been asked what she wanted to drink, what she wanted to wear, what flowers she preferred, and which approved charity she wanted to chair. Nobody had ever asked the question when the answer might inconvenience him.
“I don’t know.”
“All right.”
He stayed where he was.
The anger moved through her without being managed. After a while, she returned to the bed on her own.
She put her feet against him.
He pulled her close.
“I want to stay,” she said into the dark.
She had planned an entire method of not saying it.
The sentence walked out of her anyway.
Andrew’s arm lay across her waist. His breath changed once against the back of her neck.
She waited long enough to begin constructing a joke that could carry the words back.
“Then stay,” he said.
She turned in his arms.
“You don’t know what you’re agreeing to.”
“I know you.”
“You haven’t known me long.”
“I know you work before you complain. I know you finish what you start. I know you lie about being hungry and tell the truth when you are angry. I know Vinegar lets you touch his ears and Lucky hears your boots before he hears the bottle.”
Mandy’s throat tightened.
Andrew continued before she could interrupt.
“When we get down, we will work out the job properly. Wages. Your own account. The room if you want it. Another place if you don’t.”
She stared at him.
“You thought about this.”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Before the storm.”
“How long before?”
He considered. “Junebug.”
Her eyes burned.
“I don’t want charity.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want to become something else you own.”
His face changed.
“You will not.”
“You cannot promise that by wanting it.”
“No.” He took her hand and placed it flat on his chest. “I can tell you the terms. You decide whether they are good enough. You can change your mind.”
The heart beneath her palm beat steadily.
She wanted to tell him then.
Her father. The merger. Preston. The reward in the county. The man in the sheepskin coat. The possibility that somebody already knew the road.
The truth rose as far as her tongue.
“I have a life down there that will come looking,” she said.
“I know.”
“You don’t know.”
“Then tell me.”
He left the door open.
She could have walked through it.
The cabin was warm. Snow covered the trail. His hand held hers against his heart, and the world below felt far enough away to be a story that had happened to another woman.
“Later,” she said.
Andrew’s hand remained over hers.
“All right.”
The relief hurt.
“It can come looking,” he said. “The gate will be locked.”
No gate could hold against the money coming after her.
For that night, she let herself believe in his.
The light changed on the fifth morning.
Mandy woke before Andrew and saw a pale rectangle laid across the floorboards.
Sun.
Her stomach dropped.
The south window showed a sky scrubbed hard and blue. Snow lay perfect over Elk Park, every drift clean and settled, the storm finished with them.
Andrew was already awake. He stood at the window holding a cup of hot water, dressed except for his coat.
“Trail will set by noon,” he said. “We can ride clean tomorrow. Maybe sooner.”
“Or we could stay until spring.”
“The cattle have to come down.”
“They appear comfortable.”
“They have eaten the easy grass.”
“Ungrateful.”
“And Lucky needs feeding.”
She looked at him. “That was cruel.”
“It was accurate.”
She got out of bed and pulled on the too-big boots over two pairs of socks.
The cabin had held the best days of her life. Stove, table, narrow bed, three cups on hooks, two people with nowhere else to be. She looked at each part of it long enough to remember.
Andrew came over and put his hand along her face.
The cold from the window remained in his palm.
She leaned into it.
“In the morning,” she said.
“In the morning.”
Outside, the sun touched the trail home.