By January, snow had swallowed almost everything.
The path to the creek vanished.
The barn roof disappeared beneath white drifts.
Some mornings Boone had to force the cabin door open with his shoulder.
Beatrice had never seen weather like it.
The mountain seemed to erase the outside world.
There was only the cabin.
The fire.
Food stores.
Boone.
And her.
She should have felt trapped.
Instead the confinement created something dangerously close to comfort.
They had stopped behaving like adversaries.
Not completely.
Beatrice still complained about Boone leaving muddy boots beside the door.
Boone still complained that she used too much sugar.
She accused him of treating salt as a personality.
He accused her of talking to herself.
“I’m having intelligent conversation,” she replied.
“With yourself?”
“No one else here qualifies.”
He threw a dish towel at her.
She laughed.
Boone had begun laughing more often.
Never loudly.
Never for long.
But Beatrice noticed every time.
She noticed other things too.
The way he always chose the side of the trail closest to a drop.
The way he made certain she received the larger portion of food while pretending their plates were equal.
The way he checked the stove twice before sleeping because she had once mentioned fearing a chimney fire.
She also learned pieces of his history.
Boone had arrived in Colorado at seventeen.
His father had been a violent drinker.
His mother died when he was fourteen.
At sixteen Boone left Missouri after breaking his father’s jaw during a fight.
He never returned.
“You were sixteen?” Beatrice asked.
They were shelling dried beans at the table.
“He hit my younger brother.”
“You had a brother?”
“Have.”
“Where is he?”
“California, last I heard.”
“You don’t write?”
“He doesn’t answer.”
Beatrice looked down at the beans.
“Families can be very talented at hurting each other.”
Boone studied her.
“What about yours?”
“My father died when I was twelve. Mother remarried.”
“Bad man?”
“No. Worse in some ways.”
Boone frowned.
“He was indifferent.”
She dropped another bean into the bowl.
“He never struck me. Never screamed. He simply made it clear I was an expense he had not requested.”
Boone’s face darkened.
“My sisters married.”
“You didn’t.”
“Thank you for noticing.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know.”
She smiled faintly.
“I had proposals.”
Boone looked genuinely surprised.
Beatrice raised one eyebrow.
“You might attempt to hide your astonishment.”
“I didn’t—”
“You absolutely did.”
He rubbed his beard.
“What happened?”
“One wanted me because his first wife died and left six children.”
“Six?”
“Apparently my hips suggested excellent childcare.”
Boone coughed.
Beatrice suspected he was hiding a laugh.
“Another wanted my father’s small inheritance.”
“What happened to it?”
“Stepfather found excellent uses for it.”
Boone’s expression hardened again.
“And the third?” he asked.
Beatrice became quiet.
“There was no third.”
He nodded.
Something about his silence felt kinder than sympathy.
The fever began three days later.
At first Beatrice assumed she was tired.
She woke with aching muscles and a headache.
By afternoon she was coughing.
Boone noticed immediately.
“You’re sick.”
“I am not.”
“You’re shaking.”
“It’s January.”
“You’re inside.”
Beatrice continued stirring stew.
“I’m fine.”
She nearly dropped the spoon.
Boone crossed the room.
He pressed the back of his hand to her forehead.
Beatrice wanted to object.
Instead she leaned unconsciously into the coolness.
His eyes changed.
“Bed.”
“No.”
“Beatrice.”
“Stew.”
“I can stir stew.”
“That remains unproven.”
“Bed.”
She tried to argue.
The room tilted.
Boone caught her before she hit the floor.
When Beatrice woke again, she was beneath every blanket in the cabin.
Her chest felt crushed.
She heard Boone near the stove.
“How long?”
He turned.
“Few hours.”
“Water.”
He brought it immediately.
Her hands shook too badly to hold the cup.
Boone sat beside her.
“Easy.”
He lifted her shoulders against his chest and held the cup to her lips.
Beatrice drank.
Even that exhausted her.
“What is this?”
“Water.”
“Tastes terrible.”
“You’re sick.”
“Your water has always tasted terrible.”
His arm tightened slightly around her.
“Good. Still complaining.”
She wanted to laugh.
The attempt became a cough.
Pain tore through her ribs.
Boone’s expression changed.
For the first time since she had known him, he looked afraid.
The fever worsened that night.
Beatrice drifted between waking and dreams.
Sometimes she believed she was back in Omaha.
Sometimes she heard her mother.
Sometimes she saw Boone feeding wood into the stove.
He never seemed to sleep.
On the second day he made a remedy from pine, wild mustard, and bear fat.
Beatrice smelled it before she opened her eyes.
“What died?”
“Drink.”
“No.”
“It’ll help.”
“If death is the goal, perhaps.”
“Beatrice.”
She opened one eye.
Boone stood beside the bed holding a cup.
“You expect me to swallow that?”
“Yes.”
“I would rather marry you.”
His face remained serious.
“We already did that.”
Despite everything, she laughed weakly.
Then coughed again.
Boone sat.
He lifted her carefully.
“Drink.”
She did.
It was worse than imagined.
“Terrible man.”
“Another.”
“No.”
“Another swallow.”
“I withdraw every charitable thought I ever had about you.”
“You’ll survive.”
“You cannot know that.”
The silence after those words frightened them both.
Boone looked down.
“No.”
His voice changed.
“But you’re going to.”
For three nights he stayed beside her.
He wiped sweat from her forehead.
Changed blankets.
Fed the stove.
Forced broth between her lips.
When she could not sleep because lying flat made breathing difficult, Boone sat against the headboard and let her rest against him.
Beatrice remembered fragments.
His beard against her hair.
The steady rise and fall of his chest.
His voice saying her name when fever pulled her too far away.
Once she woke crying.
Not from pain.
From fear.
“I don’t want to die here.”
Boone leaned closer.
“You won’t.”
“I don’t want the mountain to be the last thing I see.”
“It won’t.”
“How do you know?”
His jaw tightened.
“Because I won’t let it.”
Even delirious, Beatrice understood the impossibility of that promise.
She also understood why he made it.
On the third morning the fever broke.
She woke soaked in sweat but breathing easier.
Sunlight pushed through the window.
The stove glowed.
Boone sat beside the bed.
His head rested against the wall.
He was asleep.
Beatrice watched him.
His face looked different without tension.
Younger.
Exhausted.
A cup rested loosely in one hand.
His other hand lay across the edge of her blanket.
Close enough that, sometime during the night, he had apparently been touching her wrist.
Checking her pulse.
She moved slightly.
His eyes opened instantly.
“You’re awake.”
“So are you now.”
He leaned forward.
“Breathe.”
“What?”
“Deep.”
She obeyed.
There was pain, but less.
Again.
He listened.
Then he closed his eyes briefly.
Relief.
Pure and unmistakable.
“You were worried,” Beatrice whispered.
“No.”
“You are a dreadful liar.”
Boone stood too quickly.
“You need food.”
“Boone.”
He stopped.
“Thank you.”
His shoulders stiffened.
“You’d have done the same.”
“Yes.”
He looked at her.
That seemed to affect him more than gratitude.
Recovery took weeks.
Beatrice hated weakness.
The first time she attempted to stand, her knees nearly collapsed.
Boone caught her.
“Back to bed.”
“I have been in that bed long enough to memorize the ceiling.”
“You can memorize it another day.”
“I need to move.”
“You need to breathe.”
“I am breathing.”
“Badly.”
She glared.
He lifted her without warning.
Beatrice gasped.
“Boone Fletcher!”
He carried her back to bed.
“Put me down!”
He did.
On the mattress.
“You impossible brute.”
“Rest.”
“Someday I am going to find something you hate and make you endure it repeatedly.”
“Turnips.”
“I already know about those.”
He pulled the blanket over her.
Beatrice stared at him.
“Why did you stay beside me?”
Boone became still.
“You were sick.”
“You could have checked on me.”
He said nothing.
“You slept there.”
Nothing.
“Boone.”
He walked toward the door.
“Because you needed someone.”
The answer came so quietly she almost missed it.
He left before she could respond.
By February, Beatrice was strong enough to work again.
Something between them had changed permanently.
Boone no longer talked about the next stage.
He no longer warned her she would leave.
Beatrice stopped thinking of herself as a guest who had not departed yet.
She began thinking about spring planting.
Where herbs might grow.
Whether curtains could be made from flour sacks.
Whether they needed another lamp.
Small things.
Domestic things.
Dangerous things.
Because every plan assumed there would be a future.
One evening Beatrice noticed Boone measuring the chair beside the hearth.
He crouched with a length of string stretched across the seat.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“That appears remarkably similar to something.”
He stood quickly.
“Loose joint.”
Beatrice looked at the chair.
“It has been loose since November.”
“Getting worse.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
He carried the string outside.
Beatrice shook her head.
The man was strange.
A week later she heard sawing from the work shed late into the night.
When she asked about it, Boone changed the subject.
By March, snow began melting from the lower slopes.
The world emerged again.
Creeks rushed.
Birds returned.
The road to civilization reopened.
And Beatrice realized something astonishing.
She had survived.
The mountain.
The winter.
The sickness.
Boone Fletcher.
More important, she no longer wanted to imagine leaving any of them.
She did not yet know that one shattered piece of furniture was about to convince her she had misunderstood everything.