By the second week of snow, our world had become very small.
Cabin.
Barn.
Woodpile.
Creek.
Trees.
Everything beyond that disappeared beneath white.
I should have felt trapped.
Strangely, I felt less trapped on Hollis Croft’s mountain than I ever had in Ruth’s house.
At Ruth’s, every kindness had a price.
Eat supper? Work for it.
Wear Emiline’s old dress? Be grateful.
Sleep beside the stove where it was warmer? Remember whose roof you were under.
With Hollis, work was still expected.
But payment came without humiliation.
At the end of my first month, he placed eight silver dollars on the table.
I stared at them.
“What?”
“My wages.”
“I know.”
“You’re looking at them funny.”
No one had ever paid me for working.
Ruth used to say family did not keep accounts.
Of course, Ruth kept careful accounts whenever I owed her something.
I picked up one coin.
“It’s really mine?”
Hollis frowned.
“Who else would it belong to?”
I almost said Ruth.
Instead, I closed my hand around the money.
“Thank you.”
“You earned it.”
Those three words affected me more than they should have.
Winter settled deeper.
I learned the mountain.
I learned which side of the cabin collected dangerous ice.
I learned snow had different sounds depending on temperature.
I learned Hollis could predict storms from pain in his leg.
I learned he carved small animals from scrap wood when he could not sleep.
He learned I talked to chickens when nobody was listening.
He caught me one morning.
“You know they don’t understand you.”
I looked at the red hen in my arms.
“She understands more than most people I know.”
“I believe that.”
I glared.
He smiled.
Actually smiled.
It changed his whole face.
Hollis Croft was not handsome in the polished way traveling salesmen were handsome.
His nose had been broken.
There was a thin scar through one eyebrow.
His beard was usually uneven because he trimmed it with shears.
But when he smiled, he looked younger.
Almost gentle.
That became dangerous.
Not him.
My feelings.
I began noticing little things.
The way he left the larger portion of meat on my plate.
The way he knocked before entering the cabin if I was inside alone.
The way he turned his back when I loosened my hair at night.
The way he never complained when his leg hurt badly enough to make his hands shake.
That last part angered me.
“You need to stop pretending.”
We were stacking firewood one afternoon.
“Pretending what?”
“That it doesn’t hurt.”
“It always hurts.”
His answer stopped me.
I lowered the log I was carrying.
“Always?”
“Some days more.”
“Since the tree fell?”
He nodded.
I had assumed he had pain.
I had not understood he lived inside it every hour.
“Why don’t you use a cane?”
“I do sometimes.”
“I’ve never seen one.”
“Because it’s in the shed.”
“That isn’t using it.”
He rolled his eyes.
I went to the shed.
“Sarah.”
I found the cane.
“Hollis.”
“Put that back.”
“No.”
“I don’t need it.”
“You almost fall every time there’s ice.”
“I know how to walk.”
“You know how to limp stubbornly.”
“That a professional diagnosis?”
“Yes.”
He took the cane from me.
For one second our hands touched.
Neither of us moved.
Then he stepped backward.
“Fine.”
I tried to sound normal.
“Fine.”
He used the cane after that.
Not every day.
Enough.
There were other changes.
One evening he handed me a book.
I turned it over.
The cover was worn.
The Complete Household Physician.
“What’s this?”
“Saw how you handled the mare.”
“That was common sense.”
“And when I had fever.”
“Also common sense.”
“You read well?”
“Yes.”
“Then learn more.”
I opened the book.
There were chapters on broken bones, childbirth, burns, herbs, infections.
“Where did you get it?”
“Doctor left it after my accident.”
I looked at him.
“The doctor you threatened?”
“I did not threaten him.”
“So that story isn’t true?”
“I told him if he cut my leg off, I’d throw him through his own window.”
I stared.
“That sounds like a threat.”
“He was on the first floor.”
I laughed so hard coffee came out my nose.
Hollis laughed harder.
For several minutes, we were not a traded girl and a lonely mountain man.
We were simply two people laughing in a warm cabin while snow buried the world outside.
Then January came.
With it came the worst pain Hollis had experienced since his injury.
I woke one night to a crash.
He was on the cabin floor.
A plate had shattered beside him.
“Hollis!”
His injured leg had locked completely.
His face was slick with sweat.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t touch the knee.”
I crouched beside him.
“What happened?”
“Cold.”
“Let me help.”
“No.”
I snapped.
“You don’t get to be proud on the floor.”
His eyes opened.
For a moment anger burned there.
Then it died.
“All right.”
I heated water.
Wrapped cloth around the joint.
Used what I had learned from the physician’s book.
The muscles above his knee were hard as rope.
I worked slowly.
His breathing changed when I pressed the wrong place.
“Sorry.”
“You’re helping.”
“Doesn’t feel like it.”
“It does.”
Hours passed.
Just before dawn, the joint loosened enough for him to move.
He stayed on the floor against the bed.
I sat beside him.
“Tell me what happened when the tree fell.”
His face went still.
“You know.”
“I know the town version.”
“That’s enough.”
“No.”
He looked at me.
I waited.
Eventually he spoke.
“My brother was with me.”
I had never heard about a brother.
“What was his name?”
“Daniel.”
“What happened?”
“We were cutting above North Ridge. Wind shifted. Tree split.”
His eyes were on the stove, but I knew he was seeing another winter.
“Daniel jumped clear. I didn’t.”
“He left you?”
Hollis swallowed.
“He thought I was dead.”
“But you weren’t.”
“No.”
“Did he get help?”
Silence.
That was answer enough.
“Why not?”
“He was scared.”
“You were his brother.”
“He was twenty-one.”
“So?”
Hollis looked at me.
“So sometimes people fail us, Sarah.”
There was no bitterness in his voice.
That almost made it worse.
“How long before he returned?”
“He didn’t.”
“What?”
“A trapping party found me.”
I stared.
“What happened to Daniel?”
“Left Montana.”
I thought of Ruth.
Of Emiline watching me through glass.
“Did you forgive him?”
“No.”
The honesty surprised me.
“Do you hate him?”
“Sometimes.”
That answer surprised me more.
“People like stories where hurt turns into forgiveness neatly,” Hollis said. “Real life ain’t always neat.”
I looked at my hands.
“Do you hate Ruth?”
“Yes.”
He glanced at me.
I expected judgment.
Instead he said, “Fair.”
I smiled despite myself.
After a while, Hollis asked, “You ever think about your father?”
“Every day.”
“What was he like?”
The question hurt.
But it was a good hurt.
“My father smelled like cedar chips and tobacco. He sang badly. He could fix anything except his own debts.”
Hollis listened.
“He married Ruth after my mother died. I was eleven. At first she was kind.”
“What changed?”
“My father got sick.”
I stared at the fire.
“Then he died.”
“How?”
“Lung fever.”
Hollis nodded.
“Ruth said his debts became hers. Then she said feeding me was charity.”
“They weren’t all his debts.”
I turned.
“What?”
Hollis’s face changed.
“What did you say?”
He hesitated.
Too long.
“Hollis.”
“Nothing.”
“You said they weren’t all his debts.”
He tried to stand.
His leg failed.
“Sit down.”
“Sarah—”
“What do you know?”
His jaw tightened.
“I knew your father a little.”
My heart began beating faster.
“You knew him?”
“Traded hides with him.”
“You never told me.”
“Didn’t know if it mattered.”
“What about the debts?”
Hollis looked toward the window.
“Your father owed money when he died. But not as much as Ruth claimed.”
Cold crawled through me.
“How do you know?”
“Because I helped pay part of it.”
The room seemed to tilt.
“You what?”
“He once helped me through a bad season. I paid him back after he died.”
“How much?”
“Seventy dollars.”
Seventy dollars was more than I had seen in one place in my life.
“When?”
“Two years ago.”
I could barely breathe.
“Ruth told me we still owed nearly two hundred.”
Hollis’s expression darkened.
“That ain’t possible unless she borrowed again.”
I stood.
My mind raced backward through years.
Meals skipped because of debt.
Dresses patched because of debt.
Wages from laundry work handed to Ruth because of debt.
My father’s horse sold.
His tools sold.
My mother’s silver hair comb sold.
Everything explained by debt.
“Hollis.”
He looked at me.
“Did Ruth know you paid?”
“Yes.”
Something broke inside me.
Not loudly.
Quietly.
Like lake ice cracking miles away.
“She knew.”
“Yes.”
I went into my room and shut the door.
I did not cry immediately.
I sat on the bed.
Then I opened my wooden box.
My mother’s three buttons lay inside.
For eight years, Ruth had taught me to feel indebted simply for existing.
And maybe half of what she called sacrifice had been a lie.
A knock sounded.
“Sarah?”
I said nothing.
“I should’ve told you.”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
I opened the door.
Hollis stood with his cane.
“You knew for weeks.”
“I knew about the payment. I didn’t know what she told you.”
“You still should’ve said something.”
“Yes.”
No excuse.
No argument.
That made anger difficult.
I wiped my eyes.
“I’m tired of people deciding what truth I can handle.”
His face tightened.
“You’re right.”
I stepped into the main room.
“I want to go down when the pass opens.”
Hollis’s expression changed almost invisibly.
But I saw it.
Pain.
Not in his leg.
“All right.”
“I want to ask Ruth myself.”
“All right.”
“And I want whatever records you have.”
“I’ll give them to you.”
He could have asked me to stay.
He did not.
That night, I understood something that scared me.
Part of me wanted him to.
Two months later, spring arrived.
Snow began sliding from the roof.
Creeks cracked free beneath ice.
The road opened.
And on the first morning Hollis said the wagon could safely descend, we spotted a rider coming up the mountain.
Not one rider.
Three.
Ruth was in the first wagon.
Emiline sat beside her.
And behind them rode a man I recognized immediately.
Silas Vane.
The wealthiest mill owner in the valley.
A widower twice my age who had once offered Ruth fifty dollars for the right to marry me.
My stomach dropped.
Hollis came out of the barn carrying his rifle.
“What are they doing here?”
I already knew.
Ruth had sold me once.
Now she had come to sell me again.
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