The blood on Abigail Mercer’s knuckles disappeared almost as soon as it touched the wash water.
That was the cruel thing about laundry.
A person could bleed into a tub all afternoon, and within seconds the evidence was gone.
Abigail knelt behind the Willow Creek Boarding House with her sleeves rolled above her elbows and her faded brown dress tucked beneath her knees. The Colorado sun beat down on the narrow dirt alley, turning the walls of the boarding house into a wooden oven. Steam rose from the galvanized tubs around her. Wet sheets hung from ropes overhead, blocking what little breeze came between the buildings.
She had been scrubbing since sunrise.
Her hands had stopped hurting sometime before noon.
Now they simply felt numb.
“Again.”
Abigail’s shoulders tightened.
Behind her stood Martha Mercer.
Her mother.
Martha was forty-six but looked older, her face hardened by years of anger, disappointment, and cheap liquor. She held a wooden laundry paddle in one hand and a glass bottle wrapped in brown paper in the other.
Abigail stared down at the shirt stretched across the washboard.
“I already washed it twice.”
The instant the words escaped her mouth, she regretted them.
Martha’s eyes narrowed.
“What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s what I thought.”
The paddle came down across Abigail’s shoulder.
Pain exploded through her back.
She fell forward into the washtub, catching herself on both hands. Dirty water splashed over the front of her dress.
She didn’t cry out.
She had learned that lesson years ago.
Crying made Martha angrier.
Arguing made her crueler.
Running had never been possible because Abigail had nowhere to run.
“Look at you,” Martha muttered. “Can’t wash a shirt without ruining your dress.”
Abigail slowly sat upright.
Water dripped from the end of her braid.
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re always sorry.”
Martha took another drink.
“Your father was sorry too.”
Abigail’s jaw tightened.
She knew what came next.
Martha had repeated the same words so often that Abigail could have spoken them herself.
“He was weak,” Martha said. “Weak enough to walk out and leave me with you.”
Abigail lowered her eyes.
Her father had disappeared when she was nine.
She remembered very little except rough hands that had never struck her, a quiet laugh, and the smell of pine smoke on his coat. Whether he had abandoned them because he was weak, as Martha claimed, or because he could no longer survive living beneath the same roof, Abigail had never known.
Martha had made sure she hated him anyway.
“You’re just like him,” Martha continued. “Soft. Useless.”
The paddle lifted again.
Then heavy boots crunched against gravel.
Martha froze.
Abigail remained kneeling.
People sometimes passed the alley. Most kept walking.
Willow Creek was a small mountain town, and everyone knew Martha Mercer had a temper.
Everyone also knew interfering with Martha usually meant becoming the target of it.
A deep voice came from the alley entrance.
“Sounds like quite a disturbance.”
Martha lowered the paddle.
Abigail slowly looked over her shoulder.
The man standing there was impossible to mistake.
Cole Bennett.
The mountain man.
He came into Willow Creek once every four or five weeks, usually alone and usually before sunrise. He traded pelts, bought flour, salt, coffee, lamp oil, and ammunition, then disappeared back toward the mountains before anyone could learn much about him.
Children whispered stories about Cole.
Some claimed he had killed a grizzly with a hunting knife.
Others said he had once survived three weeks beneath ten feet of snow.
Men in the saloon insisted he had been a soldier, a lawman, an outlaw, or all three.
Abigail suspected most of those stories were nonsense.
Still, even she had noticed him.
He was tall enough to make the alley seem smaller, with broad shoulders beneath a weathered brown coat. Dark hair fell untidily across his forehead. A short beard covered a hard jaw darkened by the sun. A revolver rested at his hip, though his hand was nowhere near it.
A heavy burlap sack was slung across one shoulder.
Martha straightened.
“Mind your own business, Bennett.”
Cole’s gaze moved from Martha to Abigail.
Abigail instinctively looked away.
She knew the expressions people wore when they saw her.
Pity.
Discomfort.
Sometimes amusement.
Sometimes judgment.
Cole showed none of them.
His eyes settled on the red marks along her forearms and the blood at her knuckles.
“She looks ready to fall over,” he said.
Martha snorted.
“She falls when I tell her to.”
Something changed in Cole’s face.
Not much.
A slight tightening around the mouth.
He lowered the sack from his shoulder.
“She your daughter or your mule?”
Martha stepped closer.
“You looking for trouble?”
“No.”
“Then keep walking.”
Cole didn’t move.
Abigail’s heartbeat quickened.
She wished he would leave.
Not because she wanted him gone.
Because every second he stood there was another reason Martha would punish her after he left.
Martha seemed to read the fear on Abigail’s face.
A smile curled at one corner of her mouth.
“You see?” she said to Cole. “Girl knows her place.”
Cole looked at Abigail again.
“How old are you?”
Martha answered for her.
“Old enough to work.”
Cole’s gaze remained on Abigail.
She swallowed.
“Twenty-two.”
His eyebrows shifted slightly.
Twenty-two.
Old enough to understand that other women her age had husbands, children, homes, jobs, lives.
Abigail had a washboard and a locked bedroom door.
Cole reached inside his coat.
Martha’s hand moved toward the paddle.
Instead of drawing his revolver, Cole pulled out a worn leather pouch.
He tossed it at Martha’s feet.
The pouch landed in the dirt.
Martha frowned.
“What’s that?”
“Open it.”
She picked it up.
Three gold coins dropped into her palm.
Martha stared.
Even Abigail forgot to breathe.
Three gold coins represented more money than Abigail had seen in one place in years.
Martha’s suspicion immediately turned to interest.
“For what?”
Cole nodded toward Abigail.
“For her.”
Abigail went completely still.
Martha looked at him.
Then at the coins.
Then back at him.
A laugh escaped her.
“You want this scrawny thing?”
Abigail’s face burned.
Cole never looked away from Martha.
“I ain’t buying beauty.”
“What are you buying?”
“Peace.”
Martha rolled one coin between her fingers.
“You got a cabin full of dirty clothes up there?”
“Probably.”
“Need somebody cooking?”
“Wouldn’t hurt.”
Martha smiled wider.
Abigail felt sick.
Of course.
She understood now.
Cole lived alone.
He wanted someone to work.
Someone who couldn’t refuse.
Someone no one would miss.
Martha tossed the leather pouch once in her palm.
“You take her, she’s your problem.”
Cole’s jaw hardened.
“That mean you’re agreeing?”
“For three gold pieces?”
Martha looked Abigail up and down as if evaluating livestock.
“You’re paying too much.”
Abigail’s stomach twisted.
Cole turned his eyes toward her.
“Get your things.”
For one irrational second, Abigail expected Martha to protest.
She didn’t.
Instead, her mother stepped aside.
That hurt worse than the paddle.
Twenty-two years.
Three coins.
That was the price of being rid of her.
Abigail rose slowly.
Her knees shook.
Cole waited.
She went inside the boarding house and climbed the narrow stairs to the room she had occupied since she was sixteen.
There was almost nothing there.
A mattress stuffed with straw.
A cracked mirror.
One extra dress too damaged to wear outside the house.
A comb with several missing teeth.
And the gray wool shawl that had once belonged to her grandmother.
Abigail wrapped the shawl around her shoulders.
She stared at the room.
She had dreamed about leaving it hundreds of times.
In those dreams, freedom had always felt like sunlight.
This felt like walking toward an execution.
She returned downstairs.
Martha stood near the back door counting the coins.
She didn’t look up.
Abigail waited.
Part of her wanted one word.
A goodbye.
A warning.
Anything.
Martha slipped the coins into her dress.
“Well?”
Abigail swallowed.
“Goodbye, Mama.”
Martha glanced at her.
“If Bennett brings you back, don’t expect me to refund him.”
Cole’s expression turned cold.
Abigail hurried past before tears could betray her.
Neither spoke as they left Willow Creek.
Cole’s horse carried most of the supplies, so they walked along the mountain trail.
At first Abigail kept six feet between them.
Then ten.
Cole noticed but said nothing.
The town disappeared behind the trees.
Aspens gave way to pine.
By late afternoon the road narrowed into a trail climbing steadily toward snow-covered peaks.
Abigail’s thin shoes slipped across loose stone.
Cole slowed whenever she fell behind.
He never told her to hurry.
That made her more nervous.
Cruelty she understood.
Silence was harder.
Every few minutes she glanced at the revolver on his hip.
Finally Cole stopped.
Abigail nearly walked into him.
“What?”
She immediately recoiled.
“Nothing.”
“You keep watching my gun.”
“I’m sorry.”
“That wasn’t an accusation.”
Her eyes dropped.
Cole studied her.
Then he unfastened the gun belt.
Abigail watched in confusion as he wrapped it around the saddle horn.
“You don’t have to—”
“Seems you’ll walk easier.”
He started forward again.
Abigail remained motionless for several seconds before following.
Near sunset, mountain wind swept down through the valley.
Abigail’s teeth began chattering.
She tried to hide it.
Cole noticed anyway.
He stopped beside a stand of pine trees and removed his heavy buffalo-hide coat.
Abigail backed away.
“No.”
He frowned.
“No what?”
“You’ll be cold.”
“I’ve got another layer.”
“I don’t need it.”
“You’re shaking hard enough to rattle your bones.”
“I’m fine.”
Cole gave her a long look.
Then he draped the coat over a low tree branch rather than trying to put it on her.
“I’m not dragging a frozen corpse home.”
He continued walking.
Abigail stared at the coat.
It was an odd sort of kindness.
One that left her a choice.
After several seconds, she picked it up and slipped it around her shoulders.
Warmth surrounded her instantly.
The coat smelled of wood smoke, leather, and pine.
She had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from crying.
It was nearly dark when the cabin appeared.
It stood alone in a clearing beneath towering pines, smoke curling from a stone chimney. Snow covered the distant mountains, silver beneath the rising moon.
Cole opened the door.
Warm air touched Abigail’s face.
Inside stood an iron stove, a rough wooden table, two chairs, shelves lined with jars, a narrow bed against one wall, and another small room behind a hanging curtain.
It wasn’t fancy.
It was cleaner than the boarding house.
And silent.
Cole carried the supplies inside.
Abigail remained near the door.
She waited for instructions.
Cole added wood to the stove and put a pot of coffee on.
Finally Abigail gathered enough courage to speak.
“What do you want me to do?”
Cole looked over.
Her hands were clasped tightly against her stomach.
“What?”
“You paid my mother.”
He became very still.
“So what do you want me to do?”
Understanding crossed his face.
For the first time since Willow Creek, Cole looked uncomfortable.
He turned toward the stove.
“Tonight?”
Abigail nodded.
“I want you to sleep.”
She blinked.
“That’s all?”
“That’s plenty.”
“But the dishes—”
“Tomorrow.”
“The washing?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Cooking?”
“I can fry bacon without burning down the mountain.”
Abigail stared at him.
Cole pointed toward the room behind the curtain.
“That’s yours.”
“Mine?”
“Door has a latch on the inside.”
Her throat tightened.
Cole busied himself with the coffee.
“You can lock it.”
Abigail didn’t know what to say.
That night she lay beneath two thick blankets in a bed softer than anything she had known since childhood.
She locked the door.
Cole never tried the handle.
Still, Abigail remained awake for hours.
She stared at the ceiling and listened.
The stove popped.
Wind moved across the roof.
Cole shifted once on the floor in front of the fire, where he had chosen to sleep instead of taking the second bed.
Abigail waited for kindness to reveal its price.
It never did.
Eventually exhaustion won.
For the first time in years, she slept without hearing her mother’s footsteps outside the door.
But even deep sleep could not undo twenty-two years of fear.
And the following morning, one tin bowl would show Cole exactly how deeply that fear had been carved into her.
---