Home is where love lives. The words seemed to mock him now. What happened to a home when love died? What became of it when duty and desperation moved in where love used to be? Somewhere in the house, a floorboard creaked.
Clara moving around, perhaps unable to sleep in her new surroundings. He wondered what she was thinking. If she was crying into her pillow or staring dryeyed at the ceiling like him. Did she have someone she'd left behind, a love that circumstances had torn away from her? Or had she always been alone, always on the outside looking in at other people's happiness?
He realized with a start that he knew almost nothing about her. Three years she'd been in Silver Creek, and all he knew was that she came from Boston, taught school, and read books. Who were her parents? Why had she left Boston? What had driven her west to a small Colorado town where she knew no one?
The questions nagged at him, but he pushed them away. It didn't matter. They were married now, bound by law and necessity, but that didn't mean he had to know her. They could live as polite strangers, sharing a house, but not a life. It would be easier that way, safer.
Because if he let himself know her, if he let her become real to him, then he might start to feel something. And feeling anything beyond the grief that had become his constant companion seemed like the ultimate betrayal of Margaret's memory. The clock in the hallway chimed midnight, marking the end of his wedding day. Ethan Walker closed his eyes and tried not to think about how many more empty days stretched ahead of him. Tried not to wonder if Clara was lying awake counting them, too.
Tried not to imagine what might have been if circumstances had been different for them both. Outside, a coyote howled in the distance, its lonely cry echoing across the valley. It sounded exactly like how he felt, wild, mournful, and utterly alone. The first week passed in a careful dance of avoidance. Clara rose before dawn, preparing breakfast with Molly's grudging assistance, and Ethan made sure to be in the barn by the time she entered the kitchen.
They took their meals at opposite ends of the long table, Sophie's empty chair between them like an accusation. The child had taken to eating in her room, and neither adult had the energy to fight her on it. Clara spent her mornings attempting to learn the household routines, though Molly guarded her territory with fierce determination. "I've been doing this for 6 years, ma'am," she'd say, whenever Clara offered to help with laundry or cooking. "I know what Mr. Walker likes." "What Mr. Walker liked Clara was learning was to pretend she didn't exist.
He spoke to her only when absolutely necessary, usually in clipped sentences that conveyed information and nothing more. Storm coming tonight. Fence broke in the north pasture. Sophie needs new shoes before school starts. School.
That was another source of tension. Clara had assumed she would continue teaching when the term began in 2 weeks, but Morrison had made it clear that married women didn't work outside the home in Silver Creek. Your place is with your family now, Mrs. Walker, he'd said with that oily smile when she'd gone to town for supplies. I'm sure your husband wouldn't want his wife working when there's so much to do at home. She'd wanted to tell him that her husband wouldn't notice if she sprouted wings and flew to the moon, but she'd held her tongue.
Years of being the unwanted spinster had taught her the value of silence, of keeping her thoughts locked away where they couldn't be used against her. Now, on the seventh morning of her marriage, Clara stood at the kitchen window, watching Ethan work with a young horse in the corral. The morning sun caught the sweat on his skin, making him glow like something out of a Renaissance painting. He moved with an easy grace, his voice low and soothing as he coaxed the nervous animal to accept the saddle. There was a gentleness in him that he showed to every creature on this ranch except her.