The stories hadn’t exaggerated him. He was massive, shoulders stacked with muscle from years of chopping and hauling, beard untrimmed and dark, eyes a pale gray that looked like river ice. He didn’t smile. He didn’t lift a hand in greeting. He just studied her the way a man studies weather, trying to decide what kind of storm it will become.
Most women would have shrunk under that stare, feeling suddenly smaller than they’d ever felt. Abby didn’t shrink. She tightened her grip on her carpetbag, squared her shoulders, and walked forward until she was close enough to smell woodsmoke on him. Jonah didn’t move. He didn’t offer to help with her bag. Silence sat between them like a third person, smug and heavy.
Abby glanced back at Hank, who was already wearing the look of a man planning a return trip. Then Abby faced Jonah again and said, “Well? You going to help me with my bag, or are we starting this marriage with me carrying all the weight?” Hank choked on his own spit, half expecting Jonah to explode. Jonah only blinked once, slow, as if Abby had spoken in a language he hadn’t heard in years.
Then he reached out, took the carpetbag as though it weighed nothing at all, and turned toward the trail without a word. No welcome. No vow. Just movement. Abby followed, boots crunching on gravel, breath growing heavier as the path narrowed and climbed. Behind them, Hank shook his head and muttered, “Poor woman,” but Abby didn’t hear. And even if she had, she’d have treated it like rain: something you feel, something you endure, not something that gets to decide your direction.The climb to Jonah’s cabin was a test, and the mountain didn’t bother pretending it was anything else. The trail twisted through pine and spruce, steep enough to make Abby’s calves burn and narrow enough that one wrong step would send a person tumbling into rock and brush. Jonah’s stride was long and relentless. He didn’t look back to see if she struggled. He didn’t offer a hand at the slickest turns.
Abby’s dress snagged on branches, her breath came in rough pulls, and blisters began forming under her heels like small punishments. Still, she kept going, because she’d learned long ago that if you wait for the world to make things gentle for you, you’ll die sitting down.
When the trees finally opened into a clearing, the cabin stood there like a challenge made of logs. It was solid, squat, and built to endure. Firewood was stacked high along one wall. Pelts hung drying on racks. A thin wisp of smoke curled from the chimney into a sky already pale with coming cold.
