Gidrick woke before dawn expecting to find Adelaide still asleep.
Instead, he smelled biscuits.
He stepped into the main room and stopped.
Adelaide stood at the table with flour on her cheek, sleeves rolled above her elbows, kneading dough with steady hands.
A skillet of bacon hissed beside the stove.
Coffee steamed in the pot.
She glanced at him.
“Morning.”
Gidrick looked toward the windows.
The sky outside was still black.
“What time did you get up?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“The clock stopped.”
Gidrick glanced at the mantel clock.
She was right.
It had stopped sometime during the night.
Adelaide nodded toward the stove.
“I guessed by the fire.”
“You didn’t have to cook.”
“Yes, I did.”
“No.”
She dusted flour from her hands.
“You said I could stay if I worked. I’m working.”
“That doesn’t mean you need to prove something before sunrise.”
Adelaide looked directly at him.
“Doesn’t it?”
Gidrick had no answer.
He pulled on his coat and headed toward the barn.
Ten minutes later, the cabin door opened behind him.
Adelaide emerged carrying two metal buckets.
Gidrick stared.
“What are you doing?”
“Water.”
“The spring is downhill.”
“I know.”
“You don’t know the trail.”
“You showed me where it was last night.”
“I pointed through a window.”
“That was enough.”
“It’s icy.”
“So I’ll walk carefully.”
He nearly told her to go back inside.
Then he remembered her promise.
Give me the winter.
Fine.
If she wanted to prove herself, he would let the mountain test her.
He regretted that decision fifteen minutes later.
Adelaide slipped twice going down the trail.
Both times she caught herself.
At the spring, she broke through the surface ice with a small iron bar.
She filled both buckets.
Then she started back uphill.
Gidrick expected her to stop halfway.
She did.
But only long enough to adjust her grip.
By the time she reached the cabin, her face was red, her breath came hard, and her arms trembled.
She set both buckets inside.
Gidrick crossed his arms.
“That was one trip.”
Adelaide straightened.
“How many do you usually make?”
“Three.”
She turned around.
Gidrick stared after her.
“You’re going again?”
She did not look back.
“Unless you’ve decided the livestock no longer drinks.”
That became the pattern.
Adelaide worked.
And Gidrick watched.
She hauled water.
She fed chickens.
She learned which horses kicked and which mule bit.
She gathered eggs.
She cleaned the cabin until soot no longer darkened the walls.
She repaired two torn blankets.
She baked bread.
She turned cheap venison into stew that tasted better than anything Gidrick had eaten in years.
When he chopped wood, she stacked it.
When he repaired fencing, she carried tools.
When one of the goats developed an infected hoof, Adelaide sat on the barn floor for nearly an hour cleaning it.
Gidrick began waiting for her to complain.
She never did.
Instead, her hands cracked.
Then bled.
One evening, Gidrick noticed blood on the handle of the axe.
He found Adelaide beside the shed wrapping a strip of cloth around her palm.
“You split your hand.”
“It’ll close.”
“Let me see.”
“No.”
“Adelaide.”
She looked at him.
It was the first time he had used her given name without sounding irritated.
She slowly opened her hand.
A blister had torn across the center of her palm.
Gidrick’s mouth tightened.
“You’ve been using the axe wrong.”
“Then show me the right way.”
“I could just chop the wood.”
She wrapped the cloth again.
“Then you’ll say I can’t.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You thought it.”
Gidrick leaned against the shed.
“You always this stubborn?”
“I had to be.”
Something about the way she said it kept him from asking more.
The days shortened.
Snow deepened.
Harland Ridge disappeared beneath storms.
Adelaide learned the mountain.
She learned how snow sounded different before a heavy fall.
How chickens grew restless before wind.
How to check the chimney for ice.
How to keep a lantern burning low enough to save oil.
How to pack wool inside window cracks.
Gidrick noticed all of it.
He also noticed things he tried not to notice.
Adelaide humming while kneading bread.
The way loose curls escaped her hair by afternoon.
The warmth she brought into rooms that had felt empty for years.
Her laugh the first time the mule stole an apple from her apron.
The way she talked to animals as if they were unreasonable relatives.
He noticed.
Then reminded himself not to.
A month passed.
The marriage remained exactly as he had promised.
Adelaide slept by the stove.
Gidrick slept alone.
They worked together.
Ate together.
Sometimes talked.
But there was a line between them neither crossed.
Adelaide believed that line was disgust.
She did not know that Gidrick sometimes lay awake listening to her breathe because another sound still haunted him.
Coughing.
Weak.
Fading.
Abigail had sounded like that during her last night alive.
Gidrick had buried his first wife in frozen ground with his own hands.
He had never forgiven the mountain.
And he had never forgiven himself.
Then Silas Boone came to the cabin.
Silas was a trapper from the eastern ridge, with a yellow beard, crooked teeth, and the kind of humor that was only funny when directed at someone weaker.
He arrived near noon leading a pack mule.
Gidrick met him outside.
“Road bad?”
“Road’s gone.”
Silas laughed.
“Saw smoke. Figured I’d warm myself before heading back.”
Gidrick hesitated.
Then opened the door.
Adelaide stood near the stove stirring beans.
She turned.
“Company?”
Silas stepped inside.
His eyes landed on her.
Then widened.
For half a second, Gidrick saw the insult forming before Silas opened his mouth.
“Well, damn.”
Adelaide became still.
Silas grinned at Gidrick.
“So it’s true. You actually went and got yourself a mail-order bride.”
Gidrick removed his gloves.
“Coffee’s hot.”
But Silas was still staring at Adelaide.
“This what Finch sent you?”
Adelaide’s hand tightened around the spoon.
Silas laughed.
“Hell, Cole. Looks like you bought yourself a winter hog instead of a wife.”
The room changed.
Adelaide did not move.
Silas kept chuckling.
Gidrick stared at him.
Something inside him said, Throw him out.
Another voice said, Don’t make this bigger.
He had known Silas for years.
Men said ugly things on the frontier.
Arguments became fistfights.
Fistfights became guns.
So Gidrick did what seemed easiest.
Nothing.
Adelaide turned slowly toward him.
Their eyes met.
She did not ask for protection.
She did not need rescuing.
But there was something in her expression that Gidrick would remember for the rest of his life.
Hope.
One small hope that her husband—even a husband who did not want her—would say that no one spoke to her that way in his home.
Gidrick remained silent.
The hope disappeared.
Adelaide set down the spoon.
“Excuse me.”
She walked toward the door.
Gidrick frowned.
“Where are you going?”
“For air.”
“It’s snowing.”
“I noticed.”
She grabbed her coat and stepped outside.
The door slammed.
Silas whistled.
“Touchy.”
Gidrick turned.
“Get out.”
Silas blinked.
“What?”
“I said get out.”
“You just invited me—”
“And now I’m telling you to leave.”
Silas stared at him.
Then laughed.
“All right. No need to get soft.”
Gidrick grabbed the front of his coat.
Silas stopped laughing.
“If you ever speak about my wife like that again,” Gidrick said quietly, “you’ll leave this mountain without your teeth.”
Silas swallowed.
“You didn’t say anything when she was standing here.”
The words hit exactly where they should have.
Gidrick released him.
Silas left.
Gidrick waited only long enough to grab his coat.
Then he went after Adelaide.
Her tracks led past the barn.
Into the trees.
Snow fell harder.
“Adelaide!”
No answer.
He followed the footprints down a narrow path between cedar trees.
He found her nearly half a mile away.
She was sitting beneath a cedar with her knees drawn up, face turned away.
At first Gidrick thought she was crying.
Then he saw what stood beside her.
A rough wooden cross.
The name carved into it had faded with weather.
ABIGAIL COLE.
Adelaide turned slowly.
Her eyes were red.
But the expression on her face had changed.
She was no longer only hurt.
She was confused.
“Who was Abigail?”
Gidrick stopped.
The snow seemed to absorb every sound.
Adelaide stood.
“Your wife?”
His throat tightened.
“Yes.”
“You never told me.”
“No.”
“What happened?”
Gidrick looked at the grave.
For almost three years he had avoided answering that question.
People in town knew only pieces.
A sickness.
A storm.
A burial.
But Adelaide deserved more than pieces now.
He looked at her.
“The mountain killed her.”
Adelaide frowned.
“How?”
Gidrick’s jaw clenched.
“She got sick during our second winter.”
He stared at the wooden cross.
“Nothing serious at first. A cough. Then fever.”
Adelaide listened silently.
“We had storms for nearly two weeks. Couldn’t get to town. Couldn’t bring the doctor up.”
His voice roughened.
“I tried everything I knew.”
Adelaide’s anger began shifting into something else.
Gidrick continued.
“She kept getting weaker.”
He closed his eyes briefly.
“One morning she stopped breathing.”
Adelaide looked toward the grave.
“How old was she?”
“Twenty-four.”
The number hurt every time.
Adelaide wrapped her coat tighter.
“And you buried her here.”
“Ground was frozen three feet down.”
His face tightened.
“Took me two days.”
A terrible understanding settled over Adelaide.
Gidrick’s obsession with strength.
His questions about hauling water.
His fear of winter.
His immediate rejection.
She had believed he looked at her body and saw only ugliness.
Maybe he had.
But that was not all he saw.
“You were afraid.”
Gidrick’s expression hardened instinctively.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“I wasn’t—”
“You thought I wouldn’t survive.”
He looked away.
Adelaide stepped closer.
“That’s why you wanted someone lean and strong.”
“I wanted someone the mountain couldn’t take.”
“The mountain can take anyone.”
“I know.”
The answer came so quietly that Adelaide almost missed it.
She studied him.
For the first time, she saw something beneath the hard man who had humiliated her at the station.
Not cruelty.
Not entirely.
Grief.
Old, untreated grief wrapped in anger.
But understanding did not erase what he had done.
Adelaide’s face hardened.
“You should have defended me.”
Gidrick looked at her.
“I know.”
“Not because I’m your wife.”
“I know.”
“Because no person deserves to be spoken to that way.”
“I know.”
“You waited until I left.”
“I know.”
The shame in his face was real.
Adelaide wiped at her eyes.
“I’ve spent a month trying to prove that I deserve to be here.”
“You don’t have to.”
“You made me believe I did.”
Gidrick had no defense.
Snow collected on his shoulders.
Adelaide looked again at Abigail’s grave.
Then she said, “I’m sorry you lost her.”
Gidrick’s eyes shifted toward the cross.
“So am I.”
“But I’m not Abigail.”
He looked back at her.
“No.”
“And I won’t spend this winter living in competition with a dead woman.”
Gidrick flinched.
Adelaide turned toward the cabin.
He followed.
That evening they barely spoke.
After supper, Gidrick went to the barn.
Adelaide remained inside.
For a long time she stared at the massive trunk near her cot.
Gidrick had mocked its weight.
He had assumed she had packed too many dresses.
Adelaide knelt.
She unlocked it.
Then lifted the lid.
Inside, wrapped carefully in cloth, were glass jars.
Dried roots.
Bundles of herbs.
Willow bark.
Yarrow.
Peppermint.
Boneset.
Elderflower.
Comfrey.
A mortar and pestle.
Small bottles of tincture.
Her uncle’s handwritten apothecary book.
Adelaide ran her fingers across the worn leather cover.
Her uncle had taught her everything he knew.
How to recognize fever.
How to reduce inflammation.
How to clean wounds.
How to prepare broth for someone too weak to eat.
She had packed the supplies because they were the only inheritance that mattered.
Gidrick had wanted a woman strong enough to survive his mountain.
He had no idea what kind of strength had arrived in that trunk.
And before winter ended, he would learn.
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