Chapter 10 #3
Jonas tightened one hand around the reins as the gelding negotiated a shallow dip in the road. He heard enough in her words to know there was more behind them, but he did not ask for it.
“I’m glad you had that,” he said.
Martha looked at him then. The openness in her face lasted only a moment before she turned back toward the snow-covered country.
Jonas shifted the conversation before she could regret having said so much. “Reuben would tell you I was a terrible brother when we were young.”
That brought her gaze back immediately. “Would he be telling the truth?”
“Only if he left out everything he did to deserve it.”
Her laugh came easily. “That sounds promising.”
Jonas smiled. “One winter, when he was about fifteen, he decided the roof needed repairing. I told him it could wait until the snow cleared. He decided that meant I lacked ambition.”
“What did he do?”
“He climbed up there while I was in the barn.”
Martha was already smiling. “Reasonable.”
“Tobias followed him because Tobias followed Reuben anywhere if there was any chance of disaster.”
The gelding settled into a steady pace, and Jonas relaxed his grip on the reins. “I came around the side of the house just in time to see Reuben lose his footing. He slid straight off the roof and disappeared into a snowbank.”
Martha covered her mouth with one gloved hand, laughing. “Was he hurt?”
“His pride was destroyed.”
“That can be a serious injury at the age of fifteen.”
“It nearly killed him.” Jonas could still see Reuben’s furious face emerging from the snow. “Then Tobias laughed so hard that he lost his own footing and fell off the ladder.”
Martha’s laughter grew louder. “You’re lying.”
“I wish I were. I had one brother buried to his shoulders in snow and the other sitting beside him blaming him for everything.”
“And you didn’t laugh?”
“Not until I knew neither had broken anything.”
“So you did laugh.”
“Eventually.”
The memory warmed him more than he expected. He told her about other things after that, little pieces of childhood he rarely had reason to revisit. Reuben had talked enough for all three brothers and could turn any chore into an argument.
Tobias had been quieter, forever wandering off to watch some animal or investigate anything mechanical enough to interest him. More than once Jonas had gone looking for a missing tool only to discover Tobias had taken it apart and put it back together to understand how it worked.
Martha listened with an ease that made the stories come more freely.
“You sound as though you enjoyed raising them,” she said.
Jonas gave her a sideways look. “Enjoyed may be generous.”
“But you did.”
He smiled. “Sometimes.”
The road opened ahead of them, the trees thinning enough to reveal a broad stretch of white country. Martha watched it for a moment before asking, “Is that why you all still live together?”
“Partly.”
“I wondered why your place is so far from Willow Crossing.”
The question changed the shape of the conversation.
Jonas looked toward the distant tree line. He could have answered simply. The land was good. The cattle did well there. He had said all of those things before because they were true enough.
Instead, he said, “Distance makes certain things easier.”
Martha waited.
Jonas rolled one shoulder beneath his coat. “People in Willow Crossing are more comfortable with us when we come in for supplies and leave again.”
Her brow furrowed. “Because of your father?”
“Because of us.”
The gelding’s harness gave a quiet jingle as it carried them onward.
Martha turned slightly toward him. “So you live that far out because people in town don’t want you nearby?”
“Not entirely.” Jonas gave the horse a little more rein as the road leveled. “Our father chose the land. It put us within reach of Willow Crossing without being part of it.”
“And within reach of his people too?”
Jonas glanced at her, surprised she had remembered enough from their earlier conversations to understand.
“Yes.”
Martha looked back over the open country. “That sounds as though you’re always halfway between one place and something else.”
A humorless breath escaped him. “Sometimes it feels exactly like that.”
She was quiet for several moments. Snow sifted from a pine branch as they passed beneath it, scattering in a fine powder beside the sleigh.
“That must get tiring,” she said. There was no pity in her voice, only recognition.
Jonas looked at her and wondered, not for the first time, what had taught Martha Bellamy to understand loneliness so quickly.
The road turned then near Miller's Creek, they were close now, close enough to see the smoke from the clearing.
Then the Dalrymple plot appeared through the trees.
The miserable canvas shelter he remembered had changed. Timber had been stacked beside it, and a rough but sturdy structure now stood against the weather, its roof pitched enough to shed snow. Freshly split wood rose in a neat pile near the fire.
Two men were working beside the building.
Jonas recognized them before either looked up.
Reuben saw the sleigh and dropped the board in his hands.
Tobias turned at the sound.
For a second, both brothers stared.
Then they came running across the snow toward Jonas.