She placed a plate on the table.
Salt pork.
Beans.
Biscuits.
But somehow the beans contained onions and herbs. The pork had been glazed with molasses. The biscuits were golden and steaming.
Judson sat.
He ate one bite.
Then another.
Then he devoured everything without speaking.
Winifred watched him.
“Well?”
He wiped his mouth.
“Edible.”
She smiled sweetly.
“I shall alert the newspapers.”
The next night he came home twenty minutes earlier.
Three nights later, forty minutes.
Within two weeks, Judson McIntyre—who had spent eleven winters eating whenever hunger forced him to—was arranging his entire trapping route so he could be home by supper.
He never admitted it.
Winifred never mentioned it.
She simply began setting two places.
By Christmas, the cabin had changed.
There were curtains made from the least damaged portion of an old flour sack.
A braided rug covered the worst crack in the floor.
Judson’s shirts had buttons again.
His socks no longer contained holes large enough to lose toes through.
A sprig of pine stood in a jar beside the window.
And the cabin smelled of cinnamon.
Judson entered on Christmas Eve carrying a rabbit.
He stopped.
Winifred had baked a small apple pie.
He stared at it.
“Where’d you get apples?”
“I preserved two from Silver Creek.”
“You’ve been saving them?”
“Yes.”
“For what?”
She looked at him as if the answer were obvious.
“Christmas.”
Judson removed his hat.
He had forgotten it was Christmas.
On the table beside his plate lay a small parcel wrapped in brown paper.
He frowned.
“What is that?”
“Open it.”
Inside was a pair of wool-lined gloves.
Judson touched them.
“You made these?”
“At night.”
He stared at her hands.
There were blisters across her palms now.
Cracks near her knuckles.
The hands of a woman who hauled water, split kindling, scrubbed floors, kneaded dough, and learned to survive.
He swallowed.
“I didn’t get you anything.”
“I know.”
The words weren’t cruel.
That somehow made them worse.
That night Judson lay awake listening to the wind.
Across the room, Winifred slept behind the curtain he had hung to give her privacy.
They had been married three weeks.
He had never touched her.
He told himself it was because theirs was an arrangement.
But the truth was uglier.
He had rejected her before knowing her.
And now, each day, she gave him another reason to despise the man he had been at the depot.
The mountain changed people slowly.
Winter changed them faster.
By January, Winifred could split kindling.
By February, she could load Judson’s shotgun.
She learned to recognize cougar tracks.
She learned never to leave wet boots near the door.
She learned how snow sounded when an avalanche was forming.
