And I'd like to keep standing on solid ground if you'll have me. Clara looked at him at the ring. At the land around them that was nothing yet and would become something. At the man who had stood beside her on a boardwalk with a lie about a coat because he couldn't stand watching her be alone in a hard moment. "Yes," she said.
He put the ring on her hand. It fit. She would learn later that he'd asked Mabel Puit for her ring size, and that Mabel had known immediately, and provided the information with the satisfaction of a woman who had seen this coming since the second week. Clara, when she found out, laughed until her eyes watered, and Ryder looked quietly pleased with himself in the way he did when something had worked out better than he'd let himself expect. They walked back across the land as the sun dropped and the cold came in harder, and the ground was uneven, and the grass caught at her boots, and she stumbled once, and he caught her arm and didn't let go.
And they walked the rest of the way like that, his hand at her elbow, then her arm through his, adjusting by small increments until they found the way that fit. It was not graceful. It was not easy. It was two imperfect people on imperfect ground figuring out what it felt like to choose each other on purpose. It felt, Clara thought, as they came back to the road and Silver Creek lay ahead of them in the early dark, its lights beginning to show in the windows.
It felt like the most honest thing she had ever done. Not the best day of her life, not perfect, just real and chosen and hers. She kept walking. The first winter on the Kain land was the kind that tested everything. It arrived early and without the usual warning signs.
No gradual cooling, no gentle transition. One morning in late November, the sky went white, and by afternoon 3 ft of snow had buried the foundation stakes Ryder had driven into the ground, marking where the house would stand. The creek froze solid enough to walk on. The wind came off the eastern flats in a way that found every gap in the temporary shelter Ryder had built from salvaged timber at the edge of the property where he was staying while the house went up. Clara saw the shelter for the first time the morning after the storm and said nothing for a long moment.
You're staying in that, she said. It keeps the wind off. Ryder, it's a box. It's a well- constructed box. She looked at him.
He looked back at her with the expression that meant he had already argued this with himself and arrived at a conclusion he intended to hold. She recognized the expression because it was usually the one preceding the times he was actually wrong. "You'll stay above the shop," she said. "In my father's old room until the house is weathertight. " "CL, I'm not asking," she said. "That room has been empty for 4 years, and it's warm, and there's no reason you should be sleeping in a constructed box on your own land when there's a bed 30 ft from my front door.
She paused. We're engaged. The town already has opinions about us. Nobody is going to be surprised. He moved in that evening quietly with a single bag and very little ceremony, which was how he did most things.