Chapter 11 #2
The answer sounded so obvious that Martha felt foolish for asking.
Later, when the light began thinning toward afternoon, Jonas finally agreed they should return.
Reuben loaded the empty baskets into the sleigh while Tobias checked the harness. Nell wrapped more bread than Martha needed in cloth and insisted they take it with them.
Annie had fallen asleep.
Martha smiled at her warmly and slipped out, saying a quiet goodbye as she went.
On the road, the cabin disappeared behind them more slowly than Martha expected. Smoke remained visible between the trees for nearly half a mile.
Jonas sat beside her with the reins loose in his gloved hands.
“You like them,” he said.
Martha tucked the buffalo robe around her knees. “Very much.”
“I thought you might.”
She watched the road ahead for a while.
“Why do you worry about them so much?”
Jonas’s eyes stayed on the gelding.
“I brought them there.”
“You guided them. That isn’t the same as being responsible for every choice they make afterward.”
“No.”
His answer suggested he knew the distinction and ignored it anyway.
The sleigh moved through a stand of fir where snow lay untouched between the trunks.
Jonas took his time before continuing.
“When Reuben and Tobias were young, there were winters when I didn’t know if we had enough to make it through. I knew how to hunt. I knew the country. We had shelter. Even then, some years were close.”
Martha looked toward him.
He spoke calmly, but she heard the memory beneath the words.
“People in town knew you were struggling?”
“They knew.”
“And no one helped?”
“Some did. Not many.”
Jonas guided the gelding around a drift.
“We learned not to expect it. Reuben learned that lesson faster than Tobias.”
Martha thought of Reuben’s suspicion when she first rode into the yard.
It made more sense now.
Jonas rubbed one thumb along the reins. “The Dalrymples remind me of us in ways I don’t like. Not because they’re the same, but because they came into winter without enough and thought determination would carry them through.”
“So you decided to make sure it did.”
He glanced at her, and she saw something flash there—a look of passion, she thought.
“If I can prevent a family from living through something I already know how to prevent, why wouldn’t I?”
Martha had no answer.
The simplicity of it moved her more than any grand declaration could have.
They rode for another stretch before she asked a question that had been on her mind. “Will you tell me more stories about your brothers when they were young?”
Jonas smiled at once and continued to smile as he described Reuben building what he called a fort behind the barn when he was fourteen.
It had been three crooked walls and part of a roof made from stolen fence boards.
Tobias, nine at the time, had moved into it immediately and refused to sleep in the house for three nights.
“You let him?”
“The first night.”
“What changed?”
“It snowed through the roof.”
Martha laughed.
Jonas told her how he had found both boys wrapped in blankets inside the collapsing structure the next morning, furious that he would not let them repair it before breakfast.
The story left an ache in Martha she had not expected.
“I always wanted siblings.”
Jonas looked toward her.
“The orphanage was full of children, but that isn’t the same.” She watched the trees pass beyond the sleigh. “People came and went. You learned not to become too attached.”
“Did you?”
Martha was quiet for a moment.
She remembered small hands slipping into hers beneath a table, whispered conversations after the lamps had been turned down, and waking to find an empty bed where someone she had known the day before had slept.
Children were taken in. Children were sent away.
Sometimes they disappeared from her life without even a goodbye.
“No,” she said at last.
Her answer made him smile faintly.
Martha folded her hands beneath the robe.
“I tried,” she admitted. “It never worked.”
She had always told herself that caring less would make losing people easier. It never had.
The farther they traveled, the closer they came to Willow Crossing.
With it returned everything Martha had managed not to think about for several hours.
The butcher’s account.
The west wing.
Guests waiting for clean linen.
Silas.
The freedom of the open road narrowed with every mile.
She stared at the gelding’s ears.
“Do you ever think about leaving?”
Jonas gave her a questioning look.
“Everything,” Martha said. “Just riding somewhere no one knows you.”
He was quiet long enough that she thought he might dismiss the question.
“More often than I should.”
Martha turned toward him.
Jonas watched the road.
“I never quite know where I’m supposed to fit. Willow Crossing doesn’t want us too close. My father’s people have their own reasons for seeing us as different. Sometimes it seems easier to go far enough that belonging stops being a question.”
The honesty surprised her.
“I feel that way too.”
Her admission came softly.
The inn appeared in her mind as it had the first day she and Amos saw it: grand despite the peeling paint, full of rooms waiting to become theirs.
“It was my dream once,” she said. “The inn. Having somewhere permanent.”
Jonas listened without interrupting.
“Now there are days when it feels like something I’m carrying because I don’t know how to put it down. Amos loved that place. Giving up on it feels like giving up on him.”
The words left her more exposed than she intended.
Jonas did not tell her she was wrong.
He only shifted slightly toward her.
“You don’t have to carry all of it alone.”
Martha looked at him.
“I meant what I said,” he continued. “I can help with the repairs. Whatever can be done before spring, I’ll do.”
The town came into view ahead, smoke rising above the roofs.
Martha should have felt trapped by the sight.
Instead, something in her chest loosened.
Perhaps friendship did not have to arrive with promises or obligations.
Perhaps it could begin with someone simply deciding to stay long enough to help.
But she wondered, would this town allow a widow to be friends with an unmarried man?
They had kept a close enough eye on her since Amos had died and always seemed to have plenty to say.
She looked toward Jonas. She had enjoyed their day together more than she had enjoyed anything in a very long time.
For the first time since Amos died, Willow Crossing did not feel quite so lonely, and for the moment at least, that feeling might be worth the cost of whatever gossip was to come.