“Because you’re asking questions I can’t answer yet.”
Jack’s expression hardened.
“Yet?”
Clara walked toward the window.
Snow covered the pasture. Beyond the corral, the mountains vanished behind white clouds.
“You don’t know me, Mr. Turner.”
“Exactly.”
“And I don’t expect you to trust me.”
“You walked barefoot through a storm to save my daughter.”
Clara closed her eyes.
“That doesn’t mean you should trust me.”
Jack studied the bruises on her wrist.
“Are you running from someone?”
Silence.
“Clara.”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
She shook her head.
Jack glanced toward the cradle.
“Does whoever you’re running from put Lily in danger?”
Clara answered immediately.
“No.”
The certainty mattered.
Jack waited.
Then he said, “Stay until she’s strong.”
Clara turned.
“I can’t promise how long that will take.”
“I don’t care.”
“You might when you know everything.”
Jack’s jaw tightened.
“Whatever your secret is, my baby was dying twelve hours ago. Right now she’s sleeping because of you.”
He pointed toward the spare room.
“You can have the bed.”
Clara stared at him.
“No man had offered her anything without asking a price in a very long time.”
Jack did not know this.
He only saw tears gather suddenly in her eyes.
“You’ll stay?” he asked.
Clara looked toward Lily.
“Yes.”
Then almost inaudibly:
“Until she doesn’t need me anymore.”
Lily changed quickly.
Within three days, her cries grew stronger.
Within five, she began gripping Jack’s finger again.
By the end of the week, she had gained enough weight that Doc Harland removed his spectacles, weighed her twice, and muttered that perhaps he had finally witnessed a prayer being answered properly.
Clara stood near the stove during the examination.
The doctor glanced at her several times.
Jack noticed.
“You know Miss Vale?”
Harland hesitated.
“No.”
Clara’s shoulders relaxed.
Too quickly.
The old doctor looked at her again.
“Though you remind me of someone.”
Clara dropped a spoon.
Metal struck the floor.
Jack looked between them.
“Who?”
Harland rubbed his chin.
“Can’t place it.”
Clara bent to retrieve the spoon.
“I have an ordinary face.”
The doctor chuckled.
“No, ma’am. That’s exactly why it bothers me.”
After he left, Jack found Clara scrubbing the same clean plate for nearly ten minutes.
“You lied.”
She kept scrubbing.
“About what?”
“Something.”
“Very specific accusation.”
“Doc recognized you.”
“No, he didn’t.”
“But you were afraid he would.”
Her hands stopped.
Jack stepped closer.
“Why?”
Clara placed the plate down.
“I told you I’m running from something.”
“You said someone.”
“Sometimes they’re the same thing.”
She walked away.
Jack let her.
For now.
Because every evening he watched Lily grow stronger.
And because slowly, against his own will, the cabin began feeling alive again.
Clara opened curtains Mary had kept open.
She kneaded biscuits badly and laughed when the first batch emerged hard enough to hammer fence posts.
She talked to Lily constantly.
She sang.
She even argued with Jack.
Mary had always hated arguments.
Clara seemed to collect them.
“You cannot keep eating cold beans.”
“I’ve survived on worse.”
“That is not a defense.”
“It is if I survived.”
“No. It merely proves your stomach has poor judgment.”
Jack almost smiled.
Clara saw it.
The smile disappeared immediately from both their faces.
That was how grief worked.
Joy felt like betrayal when it arrived too soon.
One evening Jack entered carrying firewood and found Clara standing before Mary’s photograph.
The portrait had been taken three years earlier in Denver.
