And something always stopped her. Some stubborn spark that refused to be extinguished. Some voice that whispered, "Tomorrow might be different even when she knew it wouldn't be." The knock came just after dark, so unexpected that Clara's hand flew to the rifle mounted above the fireplace before her mind caught up with her body. No one came to Stillwater Valley in winter. The nearest town, Ridgewater, sat 12 miles south through passes that became impassable once the snow set in.
Her closest neighbor, Eli Harker, lived three miles east and kept to himself with the determined solitude of a man who had seen too much of the world to want company. The knock came again. Harder, desperate. Clara took the rifle down, checked the chamber, and approached the door with the barrel raised." Who's there?" Clara called.
A man's voice, rough with cold, answered, "It's Eli. I need help." She unbarred the door and pulled it open against the wind's resistance. Eli Harker stood on her porch in a coat crusted with snow, his face raw and red beneath his hat. But it was what he carried that stopped Clara's breath in her chest. A woman native by her features, high cheekbones, dark hair that had come loose from its braids, and now hung in frozen tangles around her face.
Her eyes were closed. Her lips had gone blue, and in her arms, clutched even in unconsciousness with a mother's fierce grip, was a child. Clara had known Eli for three years. Knew he had a ranch three miles east where he raised horses and kept to himself. Knew he had fought in the war which side she had never asked and come west afterward looking for something he seemed unable to name.
Knew he was the kind of man who helped his neighbors without being asked and disappeared before they could thank him. But she had never seen him like this urgent, almost desperate snow melting on his shoulders and something close to fear in his gray eyes." Found them by the creek," Eli said, his words coming in white clouds." Half a mile from your place." "She collapsed in the snow. The little one was trying to drag her.
Couldn't have been out there more than an hour." But in this cold, he shook his head." My place is too far. I didn't think she'd make it." Clara stepped aside without thinking, her body moving on instincts older than her grief." Bring them in by the fire." Eli carried the woman inside and laid her on the rug before the hearth. The child, a girl Clara saw now, maybe four years old, scrambled away from Eli's reaching hands and pressed herself into the corner, eyes wide with terror.
"She won't let me touch her," Eli said. Been like that since I found them. Clara set the rifle aside and knelt slowly, making herself small, unthreatening. The little girl watched her with the weariness of a wild creature that had learned early that the world was full of teeth." It's all right," Clara said softly.
"No one here will hurt you." But the child did not believe her." Why would she?" Clara did not know what this girl had seen, what had driven her mother to flee through a blizzard on Christmas Eve. But she knew fear when she saw it. Real fear, the kind that settled into bones and stayed there." Build up the fire," Clara told Eli,"and put water onto heat. We need to get her warm." She turned her attention to the woman on the floor.