Smoke curled from the chimney, thin, gray, almost invisible against the overcast sky. Nola stood on the ridge, shivering, and stared at the cabin the way a person stares at a glass of water when they’ve been thirsty for too long. with desperate want and learned suspicion in equal measure because Nola Price knew something about doors that were slightly open.
She knew that what waited on the other side could save you or it could be the next version of the thing you were running from. She’d walked through doors her whole life that promised warmth and delivered pain. But the cold was inside her now deep and the baby. She’d started thinking of it as the baby, not the pregnancy.
The baby needed warmth, needed food, needed something more than a 16-year-old girl with empty pockets and a bruised face could provide alone in the mountains in October. She descended the ridge slowly. Every step felt louder than it should. Her boots crunching on pine needles and dry leaves with a sound that seemed to carry.
She crossed the clearing that surrounded the cabin, maybe 40 yards of open ground, where the trees pulled back as if giving the structure room to breathe. on the porch,” she hesitated. Up close, the cabin had details she hadn’t seen from the ridge. A wooden rack beside the door held tools, an axe, a bow saw, a pair of work gloves stiffened into the shape of the hands that had worn them.
A pile of split firewood stacked with precise geometry rose waist high against the east wall. A pair of boots sat by the door, caked in dried mud, toes pointed outward as if their owner had just stepped inside. Nola raised her hand to knock. Before her knuckles touched wood, the door swung fully open.
