Chapter 6
By late morning, Jonas had grown tired of looking at the same four walls.
The ground-floor chamber where Eliza had settled him after supper was warm, clean, and close enough to the kitchen that he could smell every loaf of bread removed from the oven.
It was also small enough that five slow circuits with his eyes accounted for nearly everything in it: a washstand, a narrow bed, a pine chest, a chair with one repaired spindle, and a framed landscape print hung slightly crooked above the mantel.
Rest might have been easier if he believed it served a purpose.
Instead, every hour he remained in bed was another hour his brothers did not know where he was. Martha had taken his letter and map before sunrise, but the eastern road was buried beneath fresh snow, and she had never been to the homestead.
Reuben could be suspicious when suspicion accomplished nothing. Tobias might understand sooner, though understanding did not guarantee they would reach the Dalrymples before dark.
Jonas pushed the blankets aside in a rush of agitation.
Pain pulled through his thigh as soon as he shifted his weight. It was no longer the sharp tear that had followed him out of the river. This ache sat deeper, steady and hot beneath the bandage.
He waited for it to ease, then lowered his uninjured foot to the floor.
Percy appeared in the doorway carrying an armful of split wood. He stopped so abruptly that one piece slid free and struck the boards near his boot.
“Martha said you weren’t to stand.”
Jonas gripped the bedpost. “Martha isn’t here.”
Percy deposited the wood beside the hearth without taking his eyes from Jonas. He had been checking the room every half hour, though each visit came with a new excuse. First he had needed to inspect the fire. Then he had brought water, another blanket, and a spoon Jonas had not requested.
Jonas tested his injured leg. The floor seemed stable beneath him, but the room shifted when he straightened.
Percy stepped closer. “You’re going to fall.”
“Not if you help.”
The boy considered the proposal. His gaze moved toward the open door, where sounds from the inn carried down the passage: chairs scraping, dishes clattering, and someone laughing near the front desk.
“If Martha finds out, she’ll blame me.”
“I’ll tell her I forced you.”
“She won’t believe that.”
Jonas suspected the boy was right.
Percy studied him for another moment, then pulled the wooden chair closer. “Sit while I find something.”
He disappeared before Jonas could ask what he intended to find.
Jonas lowered himself carefully. By the time Percy returned, the pain had settled into a heavy pulse.
The boy carried a stout walking stick polished smooth from years of use. “This belonged to a guest who left it behind.”
“Did the guest stop needing it?”
“He stopped paying his bill.”
Jonas accepted the stick.
Percy moved to his injured side, bracing himself as though he expected to support Jonas’s full weight. He was too slight for that, but the seriousness on his face kept Jonas from saying so.
They moved into the passage one slow step at a time.
He took his first real look at the inn. Lamps still burned in the darker corners, but winter light reached through the front windows and showed every worn edge the evening concealed.
The runner along the hall had faded where countless boots had passed over it.
Steam from the kitchen carried the smells of yeast, onions, and coffee.
Jonas rested at the end of the passage, one hand against the wall.
“You should go back,” Percy whispered.
“I’ve only come twenty feet.”
“That’s why you should go back now.”
Jonas looked toward the common room.
A fire burned in a broad stone hearth at the far end.
Four men sat around a table playing cards, while two older women occupied chairs near the window with sewing baskets at their feet.
A miner Jonas had seen in town once leaned over a checkerboard with a travelling salesman.
Coffee cups, newspapers, and a spittoon occupied the spaces between them.
The room was full without being crowded. It was also the only place in the inn where Jonas could sit among other people without requiring anyone to wait on him.
He adjusted his grip on the stick. “Keep moving.”
Percy sighed with the exhaustion of a man three times his age.
Their arrival interrupted the card game.
One of the men looked up first. His gaze traveled from Jonas’s face to his braid, then to the walking stick and bandaged leg. The others followed. Conversation thinned until only the fire and the small clicks of the checker pieces remained.
Jonas recognized two of them. Daniel Frost owned a hardware shop near the livery. The man beside him had once refused to let Tobias drink from the water barrel outside his store because customers might object.
Jonas continued toward an empty chair near the hearth.
Percy helped him lower himself, then arranged a footstool beneath his injured leg.
“You need anything?” the boy asked.
“A book, if you have one.”
The boy glanced at the card players, who had resumed their game without resuming their conversation. “I’ll fetch one for you.”
He disappeared toward the front desk.
Jonas settled against the chair. The heat from the fire reached his boots, easing the cold that lingered in his bones even after a night beneath blankets.
Across the room, Daniel Frost placed a card on the table.
“Thought the Numas kept east of town,” he said.
The comment was addressed to his companions, though he spoke loudly enough for Jonas to hear.
The merchant beside him studied his cards. “Maybe the snow drove him in.”
“Or trouble.”
A third man chuckled.
Jonas looked toward the fire.
He had spent years pretending not to hear such conversations. Silence sometimes denied men the argument they wanted. More often, it allowed them to mistake restraint for submission.
Today he lacked the strength for either outcome.
He could return to the small room and spare himself the stares, but doing so would give the room back to people who believed his presence required explanation.
Jonas adjusted in his seat and remained where he was.
The card game continued.
A few minutes later, the women near the window began speaking in lowered voices. Their whispers carried better than they intended.
“Edwin Pike was seen leaving yesterday.”
“I heard she refused him.”
“She refused the blacksmith last autumn too.”
The first woman drew her needle through a square of blue cloth. “A widow should consider what is practical.”
Jonas turned a page in the newspaper someone had left on the table beside him as he waited for Percy to return. He had not yet begun reading it.
The second woman lowered her voice further. “She has a young boy in the stable, an unmarried girl living in, and now a strange man sleeping downstairs.”
“He’s injured.”
“That isn’t what people will remember.”
Jonas kept his attention on the print.
The article concerned mining claims farther south, but the words refused to settle into meaning.
He had expected the people of Willow Crossing to speak about him. Martha had warned him, without saying so directly, that the town treated any difference as an invitation to judgment.
He had not expected to hear her examined with the same casual cruelty.
The women discussed the west wing next. One had heard the foundation was shifting. The other believed Martha had no money for repairs and should accept Edwin’s offer before the inn became worthless.
Neither seemed concerned that Martha might not want the man.
Daniel Frost entered the conversation without leaving the card table. “A husband would keep the place respectable.”
One of the women frowned. “Amos Bellamy kept it respectable.”
“He kept it standing.”
The men laughed.
Jonas lowered the newspaper.
Daniel noticed.
Their gazes met across the room.
“What?” Daniel asked.
Jonas folded the paper once along its original crease. “Nothing.”
The answer disappointed him.
Daniel shifted in his chair and returned to his cards.
Percy came back carrying three books against his chest. He looked from Jonas to the card table, sensing the change in the room even if he had not heard what caused it.
“I found these,” he said.
Jonas examined the choices. One was a collection of sermons, another a damaged school geography, and the third a novel with a cracked leather spine.
He took the novel.
Percy leaned closer. “Are they bothering you?”
“No.”
The boy followed his gaze toward Daniel Frost.
Jonas lowered his voice. “And you will not start anything.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You were thinking about it.”
Percy looked offended by the accusation, which confirmed it.
“Eliza needs help carrying water,” Jonas said.
“She didn’t tell me that.”
“She will.”
Percy hesitated before leaving. “Call if you need something.”
“I will.”
Jonas opened the book.
The first pages had come loose from the binding, and someone had written a name inside the cover in faded ink. The story began with a ship leaving Liverpool beneath storm clouds.
At first, Jonas read only to avoid listening. After several pages, the room began to fade around him.
Reading had been one of the few luxuries available when he was growing up. Books cost money they rarely had, but a railway foreman once gave Jonas a crate of damaged volumes no store would sell. Some lacked covers.
Others ended before the final chapter. Jonas read all of them, then read them aloud during winter evenings while his brothers repaired harnesses or shelled dried beans.
Books allowed a man to leave without abandoning anyone.
As guests came and went, nearly everyone looked at Jonas.
Some stared openly. Others glanced and turned away when he caught them.
He stopped caring.
The ship in the book reached Boston. Its hero lost his money, accepted work in a warehouse, and made a series of poor decisions Jonas could have warned him against. Jonas read through the midday meal, accepting a bowl of stew from Eliza without closing the book.
“You’re supposed to be resting,” she said as she placed the tray beside him.
“I’m sitting.”
“You crossed half the inn.”