Page 25 of Mail Order Moose

Ella should have begun cleaning at once. Instead, she stood in the center of the room and looked at what remained of the evening.

It had not been effortless. It had not been charming in the way Lula was charming, bright and certain and impossible to miss. Ella had not made speeches or kept everyone laughing or turned burnt bread into a story before anyone else noticed.

But the children had eaten. Sally had rested. Belle had found quiet. Lula had laughed. Maggie had said warm as if it meant more than the stove. The evening had held because Ella had thought about what people needed before they asked.

Perhaps welcome did not have to be overwhelming.

David picked up the spoon from beneath the bench and set it on the table. “Ella.”

She turned.

He stood near the table with his sleeves rolled up, one hand resting on the back of the chair with the troublesome leg. His expression was quiet, but not hidden.

“I have never been prouder,” he said.

The words struck deeper than applause would have. Applause was noisy and over quickly. Pride, spoken softly by David in the messy cabin they had filled and emptied together, stayed.

Ella looked at the stacked bowls, the quiet corner, the cards still scattered on the trunk. “It was not perfect.”

“No.” David’s mouth softened. “It was yours.”

For a moment, Ella did not move. Then she crossed to the washstand and took up the dishcloth. David came beside her and picked up the towel.

When all the dishes were in their place, Ella turned to David. “Thank you for helping me with the dishes, and setting up. Thank you for everything. Especially understanding me.”

He smiled. “It’s my pleasure.”

Ella bit her lip, thinking. “Do you want to sleep in your own bed from now on?” she asked. She spoke a great deal more quickly than usual, hoping to get the words out before she decided not to say them.

David looked at her for a moment. “Are you certain?”

Ella nodded. “I am.”

“Then I would like nothing more.” He scooped her into his arms and carried her to the bed before she could change her mind.

She laughed. She couldn’t remember the last time she had. But David...he even made laughter easier.

Chapter Nine

By the time winter fully arrived, no one in Yeti spoke of it. They knew they were in for a long winter, and talking about it would just make them focus on the hardship more.

The cold no longer came in warnings. It settled into the boards, the hinges, the seams of mittens, the breath of every person who stepped outside. Paths that had once been mud and then snow were now packed hard by boots and sled runners. The creek wore ice thick enough to trust in some places and thin enough to fear in others. Smoke rose from the cabins morning and night, straight when the air was still, torn sideways when the wind came down from the dark shoulders of the mountains.

Ella had learned the sound of winter by then. She knew the difference between snow sliding from a roof and a branch breaking under ice. She knew which floorboard near the stove complained when the cabin was warm enough and which one stayed silent no matter how high the fire burned. She knew the weight of the ledger in her hands without looking and the way David’s steps sounded when he was tired, when he was thinking, and when he was trying to move quietly so he would not wake her.

He no longer slept by the stove.

That was another thing winter had changed, though not in the sudden way stories liked to tell it. Their marriage had become a series of small permissions given and received. David still asked before reaching for her. Ella still needed silence after crowded days. But there was room now for his hand at her back when they crossed the threshold together, for her fingers to find his sleeve in the mercantile when too many voices turned toward her, for the quiet of night to hold not fear, but the ordinary nearness of two people who had chosen not to hurry one another.

The women no longer called on Ella because she was useful in the way a broom or a sharp knife was useful. They called on her because she saw what others missed. Because she remembered who had flour and who had pride enough not to admit they needed any. Because when she spoke, people had learned that it was best to listen.

That still startled her sometimes.

*****

The final scare came on a Tuesday, which seemed unfair to Ella because Tuesdays had never brought anything important.

The delivery from the lower settlement was late. Two days late could be weather. Three days could still be weather if one was generous. By the fourth day, the town had stopped saying weather and begun saying it in other ways. The men lingered too long near the mercantile. The women counted coffee and lamp oil with narrower eyes. Even Lula, who could make almost anything sound like an adventure, pressed her lips together when Mrs. Johnson said there had been no sight of the freight sled.