"She's safe." "You're both safe." The woman's eyes found her daughter, and the tension in her face eased just slightly. Then her gaze moved to Clara, studying her with an intensity that felt like being read." Who are you?" "My name is Clara. Clara Dawson. This is my home." "Why did you help us?" It was a strange question, Clara thought.
Or maybe it wasn't strange at all. If you were a woman running through a blizzard, expecting only cruelty from the world "Because you needed help," Clara said simply." And it's Christmas." Something shifted in the woman's expression. Not quite belief, not yet, but the beginning of something that might become trust if given enough time and care. "I am Nolan," she said.
"My daughter is Kaya."" Rest now, Nolan. We'll talk more when you're stronger." But Nolan's hand shot out and gripped Clara's wrist with surprising strength." There are men coming," she said, her voice urgent despite its weakness." Men who want to hurt us." "If they find us here, then we'll deal with that when it comes." Clara gently loosened Nolan's grip, but did not pull away.
"Tonight, the only thing that matters is getting you well." Nolan's eyes held hers for a long moment." Then slowly, she nodded and let her head fall back against the pillow Clara had fashioned from a folded blanket. Outside, the wind screamed against the cabin walls. Inside the fire burned warm and steady, holding back the darkness. And Clara Dawson, who had not felt needed in two years, found herself praying for the first time since she buried her son, praying that Dawn would find them all still alive, still together, still fighting. Christmas morning came gray and quiet.
The storm having finally blown itself out sometime before sunrise. Clara awoke from a thin doze in the chair beside the fire to find weak light pressing through the frost-covered windows and the cabin wrapped in an unfamiliar sound. Silence. True silence. The kind that came only after a blizzard when the world held its breath beneath a blanket of new snow.
She sat up slowly, her body aching from the night's work and the uncomfortable angle of sleep. Her neck had a crick in it. Her hands smelled of herbs and sweat and sickness. But she was awake, and the cabin was warm, and somehow they had all survived the night. Nolan was still sleeping, but her fever had broken during the night.
Her skin, when Clara touched it, felt warm instead of burning, and her breathing had eased from the ragged struggle of the previous hours to something slower, deeper. She would live against all odds, she would live. The relief that washed through Clara was so intense, it brought tears to her eyes. She had not been able to save William. She had not been able to save Thomas.
But this woman, this stranger who had stumbled into her life on the worst night of the year, this woman she had kept alive through sheer stubbornness and whatever knowledge she had gleaned from books and necessity. It felt like redemption, or the beginning of it, anyway. The little girl, Kaya, was awake, sitting cross-legged on the floor where she had slept, watching Clara with those dark, weary eyes. In daylight, Clara could see her more clearly, a beautiful child with her mother's high cheekbones, and a dusting of freckles across her nose that seemed out of place unexpected. Her hair was tangled and matted, her dress torn at the hem.