“I buried him.”

Her voice cracked.

“I stood in the rain and buried him.”

Silas said nothing.

“I sold my wedding silver to pay the undertaker.”

Still nothing.

“I apologized to people he owed. I let women in town look at this child as though it had already inherited its father’s sins.”

Her shoulders shook.

Silas moved closer.

This time, when his hand touched her back, Lydia didn’t tell him to stop.

His palm was enormous.

Warm.

Steady.

“I don’t know why he did it,” Silas said.

Lydia wiped her face.

“But you’re going to help me find out.”

Silas looked toward the iron box.

“Yes.”

The mountain kept them trapped for eleven days.

And in eleven days, Lydia learned more about Silas Croft than most people in Hollow Creek probably knew.

He liked coffee strong enough to dissolve a horseshoe.

He hated onions.

He could skin a rabbit in less than three minutes but somehow ruined biscuits even when Lydia stood beside him giving instructions.

He spoke rarely, but when he did, he meant every word.

And despite his roughness, he never once treated Lydia’s pregnancy as weakness.

He simply adjusted the world around it.

He moved the heaviest cooking pots lower so she wouldn’t have to reach.

He placed an extra blanket beneath her mattress without mentioning it.

He chopped enough firewood each morning that she would never need to step outside.

When he returned from checking traps, he always knocked before entering his own cabin.

Lydia noticed everything.

She pretended not to.

Something else changed too.

The cabin began to feel alive.

Dried herbs hung beside the stove.

Fresh bread replaced burned meat.

Lydia scrubbed the soot from the windows until pale winter sunlight poured across the floor.

One evening Silas came inside, stopped, and stared.

“What?”

Lydia looked around.

The table was clean.

Soup steamed from two bowls.

A small sprig of winter pine sat inside an empty bottle near the window.

“Nothing,” he said.

But he kept staring.

“You hate it.”

“No.”

“You look alarmed.”

Silas slowly removed his hat.

“I forgot the place could look like this.”

“Like what?”

He looked at her.

“Like somebody lives here.”

Lydia’s chest tightened.

She turned back to the stove.

That night, she woke from a nightmare shouting Daniel’s name.

Silas was beside the bunk almost immediately.

Lydia sat upright, breathing hard.

“Sorry.”

“You’re fine.”

“I woke you.”

“I wasn’t sleeping.”

“You never sleep.”

“I sleep.”

“You brood horizontally.”

Silas almost smiled.

Then he noticed her hand pressed against her belly.

“Baby?”

“Moving.”

Silas backed away.

The reaction was so quick Lydia noticed.

“Are you frightened of children?”

“No.”

“You look frightened.”

He turned toward the fire.

For a long time he said nothing.

Then:

“My wife was pregnant.”

Lydia froze.

Silas had never mentioned a wife.

“What happened?”

“Her name was Ruth.”

His voice sounded different.

Older.

“She was seven months along when the fever came. Doctor was across the pass. Blizzard hit.”

Lydia understood before he finished.

“Oh, Silas.”

“I tried to get her down the mountain.”

He stared into the embers.

“Horse broke a leg. Took me nearly eighteen hours to get her home.”

His hands tightened.

“She died before daylight.”

“The baby?”

Silas shook his head.

Lydia closed her eyes.

Suddenly his reaction the day she arrived made terrible sense.

The pregnant belly.

The snow.

The isolated cabin.

A woman depending on him.

He had lived this nightmare before.

“You couldn’t have stopped it.”

Silas’s face hardened.

“Everybody says that when they weren’t there.”