“Ask what?”
“Whatever you’re trying not to ask.”
Mara rested one hand on her satchel.
“Why send for a wife at all?”
Abel thought for a while before answering.
“Because I was tired of coming home to nobody.”
“That simple?”
“No.”
She waited.
“I’m hard to meet.”
Mara looked pointedly at his enormous frame.
“I noticed.”
That earned the full smile at last.
It changed his face more than she expected.
“I meant the mountain,” he said.
“And the town has made up enough stories about me that most people decide who I am before I say hello.”
Mara glanced back toward the invisible valley.
“People enjoy cheap judgments.”
“They do.”
“They made some about me before I got off the train.”
“I noticed that too.”
The wagon rolled through another bend.
Mara opened her satchel and removed the advertisement again.
“You could have written kind,” she said.
Abel looked at the road.
“Could have.”
“Strong.”
“Yes.”
“Stubborn.”
He glanced at her bloodstained sleeve.
“Would have saved time.”
She laughed despite herself.
It was the first real laugh either of them had heard from her.
Abel did not celebrate it.
He did not act as though he had won something.
He simply drove.
By sunset they reached a timber house backed against the mountain beneath tall pines.
It was plain but solid, with a stacked-stone chimney, a small barn, and enough split firewood to survive a serious winter.
Abel stopped the wagon.
Mara looked around.
No neighboring roof was visible.
No church steeple.
No station bell.
Only trees, sky, and the distant sound of water moving over rock.
Abel climbed down and carried her carpetbag to the porch.
He did not touch the satchel.
Inside, the house was cleaner than she expected.
Two chairs stood beside a broad table.
Shelves held flour, coffee, jars, tools, and books.
A second room opened off the main one.
Abel pointed toward it.
“That room is yours.”
Mara’s head turned.
“Mine?”
“Until you decide otherwise.”
She studied him.
