Chapter 29
Obedient, though I would not have used the word at the time.
A woman who would enter my life and fit inside the empty spaces without changing their shape.
Instead, Cora tore half those spaces apart.
She moved my pantry.
Burned my old bedding.
Read novels beside my stove.
Learned every path on the mountain.
Kept better accounts than I ever had.
Argued with me about trapping seasons.
Insisted we build a larger kitchen.
Eventually convinced me to visit a doctor in Denver about my leg.
I complained the entire journey.
The surgery improved my walking.
She reminded me of this whenever I resisted her advice afterward.
Which was often.
We had hard winters.
Poor harvests.
Illness.
Arguments.
There were days Cora missed St. Louis.
Not Elias.
Never him.
But music.
Crowded streets.
Libraries.
Women she had known.
There were days I missed the silence I had once believed was peace.
Marriage did not cure loneliness forever.
Nothing does.
People can sleep inches apart and still become distant if they stop choosing to cross the space between them.
So we learned.
Sometimes badly.
Sometimes painfully.
But we learned.
I learned that protecting someone does not mean deciding for them.
Cora learned that accepting help does not always create debt.
I learned that needing another person is not weakness.
She learned that being loved does not require surrender.
Years after Elias came to our cabin, I found the old matrimonial letter in a box beneath the bed.
My first letter.
The one where I had warned any potential bride about cold, work, silence, darkness.
Cora had kept it.
I carried it to the kitchen.
She was cutting apples.
“You still have this?”
She looked at the page.
“Apparently.”
“Why?”
“It reminds me you once thought this was persuasive.”
“It worked.”
“Against all reason.”
I read the final line aloud.
“Anyone afraid of snow, blood, hard labor, silence, or the dark should stay in St. Louis.”
Cora smiled.
“You forgot stubborn husbands.”
“I was trying to attract someone.”
“You nearly failed.”
“But I didn’t.”
She set down the knife.
“No.”
I folded the letter.
“What made you answer?”
She leaned against the table.
I expected one of her usual jokes.
Instead, she became thoughtful.
“You sounded like a man who believed the worst thing in the world was needing someone.”
I frowned.
“And you found that appealing?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“I recognized it.”