“Apparently I can.”
“I cannot pay you.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“I won’t take charity.”
Silas looked past her.
His gaze settled briefly on the plate sitting on the table.
Two crumbs remained.
Then his eyes moved toward Peter.
Toward Jonah.
Finally back to Miriam.
“What exactly do you call feeding two children in February?”
Her face burned.
“I call it my responsibility.”
“Then consider me temporarily irresponsible.”
He placed the crate beside the other supplies.
Miriam stepped between him and the food.
“You rode through this storm to bring groceries to a woman you barely know?”
Silas’s expression changed.
Only slightly.
But Miriam saw it.
“No.”
That single word made her colder than the wind.
“Then why are you here?”
Silas looked toward Jonah.
The boy stared back.
Something passed through the rancher’s face.
Shock.
Pain.
Disbelief.
And then it vanished.
“I was passing.”
Miriam almost laughed.
“No one passes here.”
Silas lifted his eyes toward her.
“No.”
He said it quietly.
“They don’t.”
Behind them, one of the horses whinnied sharply.
Silas turned.
The animal stumbled in the drifts.
The storm had thickened so quickly that Miriam could no longer see the cottonwoods beyond the yard.
Silas swore under his breath.
Miriam knew what it meant.
Whatever suspicion she carried toward him, sending the man back into that darkness would be murder.
“You can put your horse in the lean-to.”
Silas looked at her.
“That an invitation?”
“It’s permission not to die.”
“Generous.”
“Don’t become accustomed to it.”
For the first time, something almost like amusement touched his face.
Then it disappeared.
Twenty minutes later, Silas Crowe sat beside Miriam Vale’s dying fire while her children ate their first full meal in weeks.
Miriam hated how quickly they devoured it.
Peter dipped cornbread into a bowl of beans and closed his eyes as he chewed.
Jonah tried to eat slowly.
Tried to maintain dignity.
But hunger defeated pride.
Miriam watched him scrape the bottom of his bowl.
Silas watched too.
He had eaten nothing.
“You should have some,” Miriam said reluctantly.
“I ate before I came.”
Jonah stopped chewing.
His eyes moved from Silas to his mother.
Miriam felt the lie instantly.
So did Jonah.
Silas noticed.
The faintest smile appeared beneath his beard.
“Sharp boy.”
“He gets that from his father,” Miriam replied.
Something in Silas went still.
“Isaac?”
The spoon slipped slightly in Miriam’s hand.
“You knew my husband?”
Silas did not answer immediately.
Jonah looked up.
“You knew Pa?”
Silas’s eyes shifted to him.
“Maybe.”
Miriam frowned.
“There isn’t any maybe about knowing a man.”
“There is when the man used more than one name.”
The cabin became silent.
Miriam stared at him.
“What did you say?”
Silas leaned back.
“I said I may have known him.”
“My husband’s name was Isaac Vale.”
