“That is precisely what concerns me.”
He looked at her.
She lowered her voice.
“You expected something else.”
Elias could have lied.
Instead, he looked toward the cabin and said, “I suppose I did.”
Beatrice nodded once.
“Then be decent until your imagination catches up with reality.”
She climbed back onto the wagon.
Before leaving, she pointed one gloved finger at him.
“And fix that shutter before she discovers you have spent eight years listening to it rattle instead of using a hammer.”
By late afternoon, Elias discovered that Mara Whitfield had not traveled eight hundred miles to sit beside a stove.
She changed into a work shirt, heavy trousers, and old boots, tied her hair back, and walked straight toward the damaged pasture. Elias had expected her to unpack or sleep after the train journey. Instead, he found her crouched beside the fence post he had repaired that morning.
She pressed one thumb into the wood.
“This was already rotten.”
“I know.”
“Then you didn't repair it.”
“I stopped the bull getting through.”
“You delayed him.”
Elias crossed his arms.
“There a difference?”
Mara looked up.
“One lasts until supper.”
Then she stood.
“The other lasts through winter.”
They rebuilt the section properly.
Elias cut fresh rails while Mara set braces. She drove wedges into hard soil, checked each post twice, and refused to waste time pretending a task was lighter than it was. When Elias offered to take the hammer, she handed him the heavier one.
The afternoon grew colder.
They spoke mostly in short practical sentences.
“Higher.”
“Like that?”
“Little more.”
“Now?”
“Good.”
For reasons Elias could not explain, that single word pleased him.
Near sundown, the bull approached the new fence.
His name was Brutus, a red-and-black animal with one damaged horn and the disposition of an insult remembered too long. He pushed his shoulder against the rail. Nothing moved.
Mara watched him.
“He'll test another section tomorrow.”
Elias looked at her.
“You know that?”
“Everything looks for weakness.”
She wiped her hands on her trousers.
“Animals are simply less polite about it.”
That evening, supper consisted of beans, fried potatoes, biscuits, and bacon that Elias admitted had survived too long in salt. Mara ate without complaint. Between bites, she studied the cabin with the same practical attention she had given the fence.
“Roof leaks?”
“Back corner.”
“Chimney?”
“Temperamental.”
“North shutter?”
Elias stopped chewing.
Mara looked toward the wall.
“It bangs whenever the wind shifts.”
“I know.”
She raised one eyebrow.
“Knowing something is broken isn't the same as fixing it.”
He stared at her.
Then, unexpectedly, he almost laughed.
The next morning she repaired the chimney draft before breakfast.
Elias walked into the kitchen to find Mara standing on a stool with soot across one cheek and a bent wire in her hand. The stove burned cleaner than it had in years.
“What are you doing?”
“Improving my chances of surviving the winter.”
“I was going to fix that.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
Mara looked down.
“Soon is where neglected chores go to die.”
Elias laughed.
It came out rough and louder than he intended.