Where would they go next? She had no answers. For now, all she could do was tend her son, accept the stranger's hospitality, and hope that whatever price Elias Ward eventually named would be one she could bear to pay. In the barn, Elias finished with the tack and moved to evening chores. The horses needed feeding, the stalls needed mucking, the chickens needed their coops secured against coyotes.
Familiar work, routine work, the kind that didn't require thought. But even as his body went through the motions, his mind kept drifting back to the house. To the woman and child inside. To the way Tommy's small hand had clutched at his shirt when he'd carried him upstairs. Seeking comfort even in fever-addled unconsciousness.
To the desperate gratitude in Nora's eyes, like he'd handed her the world instead of just a bowl of stew and a bed. He didn't want their gratitude, didn't want to be anyone's savior, didn't want to feel the uncomfortable twist in his chest when he thought about them leaving. But he did feel it, and that was the problem. As the stars began to emerge in the darkening sky, Elias made his final rounds, checking locks, dousing the lanterns, securing the ranch for the night. At the house, he paused, looking up at the lit window of the spare room.
A shadow moved past it, Nora checking on her son. He should go up there, check on the boy's fever, make sure they had everything they needed. But he didn't. Instead, Elias Ward turned away from his own house and walked back to the barn, where he climbed to the loft and laid out his bedroll in the hay. He'd sleep here tonight.
And tomorrow night. For as long as they stayed, he'd give them the house and keep his distance. It was safer that way. For all of them. But as he lay in the darkness, listening to the prairie wind howl around the barn's walls, Elias couldn't shake the memory of Tommy's small, fevered face or Nora's desperate tears.
And he couldn't quite convince himself that he was doing this purely out of practicality. Some part of him, the part he'd tried to bury along with his wife and unborn child, had woken up the moment he heard that woman's voice crying for help. And no amount of emotional distance or careful routine was going to put it back to sleep. Not anymore. The fever broke on the third morning.
Nora woke to find Tommy's forehead cool to the touch, his breathing deep and even, his small body finally relaxed instead of rigid with chills. She sat on the edge of the bed and wept silently, her whole body shaking with relief so profound it hurt. For 3 days she'd barely slept, hovering over her son, sponging him with cool water, coaxing sips of willow bark tea between his cracked lips, terrified that each breath might be his last. But he'd survived. They both had.
Through it all, the rancher had appeared like clockwork, morning, noon, and evening, bringing fresh water, more medicine, simple meals that Nora forced herself to eat because she knew Tommy needed her strong. Elias never lingered, never made conversation beyond terse questions about the boy's condition. He'd check Tommy's fever with a broad hand to the forehead, nod at whatever Nora reported, and leave again, his boots heavy on the stairs. He hadn't asked her story, hadn't pressed her about payment or how long she planned to stay, hadn't made any demands at all. It was unsettling.
Now with Tommy sleeping peacefully for the first time in days, Nora allowed herself to really look at the room she'd been occupying. Simple furniture, clean but worn. A faded quilt on the bed, patched in places but carefully mended. The walls were bare except for a single framed photograph on the dresser. She hadn't noticed it before, too consumed with caring for Tommy.
She stood on shaky legs and crossed to examine it. The photograph showed a young woman, perhaps 20, with soft features and kind eyes. She wore a high-necked dress and held flowers, smiling at something beyond the camera's frame. Written in faded ink at the bottom, Sarah, 1895. Nora's fingers traced the frame's edge.
A wife then, or had been. The past tense was written in the dust that had settled over the glass, in the way the photo faced slightly away from the room, as if someone had turned it and never turned it back. "Where did you go? " Nora whispered to the woman's image. "And why did you leave him so alone? " Downstairs, a door opened and closed. Heavy footsteps crossed the front room.
Nora quickly stepped away from the photograph, feeling like she'd been caught snooping. She smoothed her dress, still her only dress, now washed in the basin and dried overnight, and tried to compose herself. She needed to go down, to thank Elias properly, to discuss what came next. The anxiety that had been held at bay by Tommy's illness now rushed back full force. She had no money, no prospects, nowhere to go.