Chapter 2: Letters in the Lamplight
The wind finally died an hour before dawn, leaving a silence so complete it rang in David’s ears. He’d been listening to her breathe for what felt like years, the soft, rhythmic sound from behind the blanket a constant counterpoint to his own ragged thoughts. The fire was just embers, painting the room in deep red and long, dancing shadows.
A rustle. Then the faint creak of the bed ropes. He saw her silhouette appear at the edge of the blanket, a slight, dark shape against the gloom. She moved on bare feet, silent as a moth, to where her carpet bag sat on the table. She pulled out the bundle tied with the faded blue ribbon.
David closed his eyes, feigning sleep. He heard the scratch of a match, the hiss as the lantern wick caught. A soft, yellow glow pushed back the dark. He slitted his eyes open.
She sat at the table, her back to him, the letters spread before her. She didn’t read them right away. She just sat, her shoulders slumped, one finger tracing the extravagant loops of Sam’s handwriting on the top page. Then she picked one up, holding it close to the light.
He watched her back. He saw the moment it hit. A tiny tremor in her shoulders. A hitch in her breath she tried to smother. Her free hand came up and pressed against her mouth. Her head bowed until her forehead nearly touched the paper. The silence was worse than any sound. It was a silence full of collapse.
He threw his blanket off and stood up. The floorboards creaked loudly. She froze, but didn’t turn.
He walked over to the table. He didn’t ask. He just reached down and gently took the letter from her stiff fingers. She didn’t resist. Her hand fell to the tabletop, limp.
“‘My dearest Diana,’” he read aloud, his voice low and rough with sleep. It felt like a violation, speaking his brother’s poisoned words into the quiet cabin. “‘The winter here is a spectacle. The snow piles high against our cabin, and we are warm as toast inside, the fire crackling while the wind sings a lullaby outside our door. I’ve built sturdy shutters, and in the mornings, we watch the deer come right up to the window…’”
He stopped. He let the paper fall softly to the table. “There are no deer that tame. And the shutters are rotten. The wind doesn’t sing. It screams. It finds every crack and turns this place into an icebox. You burn through a cord of wood every three weeks just to keep your toes from turning black.”
She was crying now, soundless tears streaking down her cheeks, catching the lantern light. She stared straight ahead, at the rough wall.
He pulled out the other chair and sat, the wood groaning under his weight. He scanned another letter. “Here. ‘The garden plot is turned and ready. I can already imagine your roses by the porch.’” He looked at her. “The ground out there is hardpan and rock. You can break a plow point on it. What grows is tough grass and thistle. No roses. Never roses.”
He picked up a third, his jaw tightening. “‘I’ve made friends with all the neighbors. We have socials. There’s a family two miles west with a daughter your age…’” He shook his head, a short, bitter motion. “The nearest neighbor is Eli Hawkins. He’s seventy, missing an eye, and he hasn’t spoken a word to anyone since his dog died five years ago. There are no socials. There’s work. There’s silence. And there’s the worry, always the worry, that one bad season will break you.”
He gathered the pages, their lies feeling flimsy and pathetic. “He sold you a fairy story, Diana. A pretty picture. This…” He gestured around the cabin, at the dark, at the lingering chill. “This is what’s real. It’s dirt and sweat and loneliness. It’s going to bed aching and waking up the same. It’s watching the sky for rain that doesn’t come, or hail that strips everything to the stem. He wasn’t bringing you to a home. He was bringing you to a… a decoration. Something pretty to look at while he played at being a man out here. And then he’d have gotten restless, or bored, or broke, and he’d have left you in it. Just like he left everything else.”
A raw, choked sob broke from her throat. It was the first sound she’d made. She folded her arms on the table and buried her face in them, her whole body shaking with the force of her grief—for the lost dream, for the dead liar, for her own terrible, vanished future.
David sat there, the cruel truth he’d spoken hanging in the air between them. He’d meant to shatter the illusion, to make her see. He hadn’t meant to break her completely. He looked at his hands, big and scarred and useless on the table.
He stood up again. He hesitated, then walked around the table. He placed one hand carefully on her trembling shoulder. She flinched, but didn’t pull away.
“Come on now,” he said, his voice softer. It was a tone he used with spooked horses. “Don’t… don’t fall apart on the floor.”
It was the wrong thing to say. A fresh wave of sobs wracked her. She turned her head, her cheek against her arm, her eyes screwed shut, tears leaking from the corners. “I have nothing,” she gasped, the words muffled. “I am nothing. I’m a joke written on a piece of paper.”
Without thinking, he moved. He bent, slid one arm under her knees, the other behind her back, and lifted her from the chair. She was startlingly light, a bundle of bones and damp muslin. She gave a little cry of surprise, her hands coming up to clutch instinctively at his shirtfront.
He carried her the few steps to the hearth and sat down on the rough stone edge, settling her on his lap. He didn’t hug her. He just held her, firmly, an anchor in the storm of her despair. Her face pressed against the worn flannel of his shirt, her tears hot against his skin. One of his hands cupped the back of her head, her auburn curls soft and tangled under his calloused palm. The other arm wrapped around her back, feeling the frantic bird-beat of her heart.
“You’re not a joke,” he murmured into her hair. He smelled lavender and woodsmake and salt. “You’re a person who got lied to. There’s a difference.”
She cried until she was spent, the violent shudders softening to hiccups, then to an exhausted stillness. The only sound was the pop of an ember and their breathing. His, steady. Hers, catching. She didn’t move to get up. He didn’t move to put her down.
Gradually, he became aware of the feel of her. The delicate line of her spine under his hand. The slight, soft weight of her against his chest. The heat of her through both their clothes. He had held a woman exactly once before, at a barn dance when he was sixteen, and it had been nothing like this. That had been fumbling and giggling. This was all quiet, raw nerve endings. His thumb moved, almost of its own volition, in a small, slow circle on her shoulder.
Her fist, still curled in his shirt, relaxed. She took a long, shuddering breath and let it out slowly, her body going pliant against his.
They stayed like that as the embers faded from red to grey, as the first pallid light of morning began to seep through the window, turning the world outside from black to a dusty, colorless blue.
It was she who moved first. She straightened slowly, pushing herself back just enough to look up at him. Her face was blotched, her eyes swollen, her nose red. She looked utterly ruined, and yet, in the thin light, terribly young. Her hazel eyes searched his, looking for something—judgment, pity, maybe just the truth.
He met her gaze, his own face unreadable in the shadows.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her voice wrecked.
“For what?”
“For… all of this.” She gestured weakly between them, at the cabin, at everything.
“Wasn’t your doing.” His voice was gravel. The arm around her back felt suddenly too intimate. He loosened his hold.
She took the hint, shifting her weight, and he helped her stand. She wobbled for a second on her feet, steadying herself on the mantle. The distance between them now felt vast and charged, the memory of her body against his hanging in the cool air.
“I’ll start breakfast,” she said, turning away, wiping her face with her sleeve. A practical retreat.
“I’ll see to the horse.”
They moved around each other with a new, careful awareness for the rest of the morning. The shared intimacy of the night had built a bridge, but neither knew if it could hold weight. She fried salt pork and made biscuits with a deft efficiency that spoke of practice. He brought in water, his movements deliberate.
They ate at the table, the letters now safely tucked away. The silence was different. Not just empty. Waiting.
Finally, he pushed his plate away. “You said you’d mend that draft.”
She looked up, nodded.
“Tools are in the crate by the door. There’s some old sacking and a few bits of wood in the lean-to.” He stood, taking his hat. “I’ve got to ride the east fence line. Won’t be back ‘til sundown.”
It was an offering. Space. A task. A way to be useful that wasn’t about Sam’s lies.
“Alright,” she said.
He paused at the door, looking back at her. She was already sweeping the crumbs from the table, her small frame moving with a quiet resolution. The morning light through the dirty window gilded her hair. For a second, he saw the woman from the letters—the hopeful, romantic soul sailing west for adventure. That woman was gone, shattered on the hard rocks of this place. What was left, standing there in his cabin, was someone else. Someone real.
He closed the door softly behind him.
The day was long and physically grinding. He found two breaks in the barbed wire, his hands bleeding by the time he’d spliced them back together. He checked the small, struggling herd of cattle, their ribs too prominent for his liking. The sky threatened rain that never came. Through it all, his mind kept circling back to the feel of her crying in his arms, the devastating softness of it.
He returned as the sun was melting into a smear of orange and purple. Smoke curled from the chimney, a straight, pale grey line in the still evening air. The smell of stew hit him as he approached, rich and promising.
He stabled the horse, taking his time. When he entered the cabin, he stopped.
The floor was scrubbed clean, the boards pale where they’d been dark with ground-in dirt. The shelves were dusted. The single window gleamed, the glass wiped clear. And along the bottom of the door, a new, neat strip of sacking was nailed tight, packed with what looked like dried grass and moss.
She was at the hearth, stirring the pot. She had changed into a simple, clean calico dress, her hair braided and coiled at her nape. She turned, and he saw a smudge of dirt on her cheek.
“It’s not pretty,” she said, gesturing with the spoon toward the door. “But I think it will help.”
He walked over and ran a hand along the seam. It was tight, solid. The relentless whistle of wind under the door was gone. “It’s good work,” he said.
A faint, tentative smile touched her lips, there and gone. “Stew’s ready.”
They ate. The stew was full of potato and carrot from his root cellar, the meat tender. It was the best meal he’d had in months, maybe years.
“You fixed the window too,” he said, halfway through.
“It was dirty.”
“I know.”
A pause. The easy silence from before hadn’t returned, but this one was less fraught. It was the silence of two people measuring a new, uncertain landscape.
“David?” she asked, her voice quiet.
“Hmm?”
“What was he like? When you were boys?”
He put his fork down carefully. He looked at her, saw the question wasn’t romantic longing. It was an archaeologist’s question. She was trying to understand the foundation of her own ruin.
He took a drink of water. “He was clever. Could talk his way out of anything. Could imitate bird calls perfectly. He hated the farm. Hated the work. I always knew he’d leave.” He paused, choosing his words. “He wasn’t mean. Just… hollow. Like he was always watching his own life from a distance, looking for a better show to walk into.”
She listened, her eyes on her bowl. “He made me feel seen,” she said softly. “In Charleston, I was just another girl. He made it sound like I was… essential. To something.”
“You were essential to his story for a while,” David said. It wasn’t kind, but it was true. “That’s all he had. Stories.”
She nodded, accepting it. The final piece of the ghost settling.
After the dishes were cleaned, she didn’t retreat behind the blanket. She sat in her chair, hands in her lap. He lit his pipe, the sweet smoke curling toward the ceiling.
“That fence you rode,” she said after a while. “Is it very difficult to mend?”
He glanced at her. “It’s hard on the hands. Why?”
“I was just thinking. I’d like to learn. The things that are real. If I’m to stay… for a time.”
He took the pipe from his mouth. If I’m to stay. Not a demand. Not a plea. A statement of fact, with an open end. He looked at her small, clean hands, so ill-suited to barbed wire. Then he looked at her eyes, clear and determined in the lamplight.
“Alright,” he said. “Tomorrow, I’ll show you.”
She let out a breath he hadn’t known she was holding. A tiny knot of tension seemed to leave her shoulders.
Later, when the lamp was out and they were in their separate places—her in the bed, him on the pallet—the wind picked up again. It moaned against the cabin, but the dreaded, icy knife-slash of air along the floorboards was gone. Absent. Defeated by sacking and dried grass and a pair of stubborn, small hands.
In the dark, David listened to the new sound of the wind. It was just a noise now, not an invasion. A difference so small it was everything. He closed his eyes, and for the first time since she’d arrived, he didn’t feel the walls of the cabin pressing in. He felt them holding, firm against the night.
He felt them holding, firm against the night. Sleep, when it finally came, was deep and dreamless, and he woke to the smell of coffee and the soft, definite scrape of a knife against wood. She was already at the table, whittling the end of a slender stick to a point. Her brow was furrowed in concentration, the tip of her tongue just visible between her lips. She looked up as he shifted on the pallet.
“Morning,” she said, setting the stick down. “I thought, for the fence. Something to help thread the wire. If that’s right.”
He sat up, the quilt falling away. “Could work.” His voice was thick with sleep. He pulled on his boots, the leather stiff and cold. “Coffee ready?”
“On the hearth.”
They ate a quick breakfast of leftover biscuits. The silence wasn’t comfortable, but it was purposeful. He gathered tools: wire cutters, gloves, the spool of mending wire. He handed her a pair of worn leather gloves that swam on her small hands. She rolled the fingers back, her movements practical.
“We’ll walk,” he said, leading her out into the brittle morning light. The air was sharp, carrying the scent of sage and cold earth. He set a punishing pace, his long legs eating the distance. She said nothing, just hurried beside him, her breath pluming in short, white puffs.
The break in the fence was a jagged mouth of twisted barbs, a casualty of a wind-topped post or a restless bull. He knelt in the frosted grass. “Watch first.”
His hands, even with gloves, were deft. He explained the tension, how to splice without leaving a weak spot, how to twist the wire ends in so they wouldn’t snag hide. The metal sang a dull, protesting tune as he worked. She watched, her eyes missing nothing, absorbing the lesson in this harsh, necessary grammar.
“Your turn,” he said, moving aside. He didn’t offer help.
She knelt, the damp immediately seeping through her dress. She picked up the cutters, her grip unsure. The first attempt to thread the wire through the existing strand was clumsy; it slipped, a barb scratching across the back of her glove. She inhaled sharply but didn’t drop it.
“Slower,” he said, not unkindly.
She tried again. Her movements were painstaking, her small face a mask of focus. She managed the first twist. It was loose. “It’s wrong.”
“Yeah.” He didn’t fix it. “Do it again.”
She undid her work, her lips pressed into a thin line. The second twist was tighter, the wire biting into the old strand with a satisfying firmness. She looked up at him, a question in her eyes. He gave a single, short nod.
A spark of something flared in her hazel gaze—not joy, but a fierce satisfaction. She bent back to the task.
He watched her work. The prairie stretched away, immense and uncaring. A hawk circled high overhead on a thermal, a silent black speck. Her sleeves were soon streaked with rust from the old wire, her cheek smudged where she’d pushed a curl away. She was terrible at it. Slow. Inefficient. But she didn’t stop. She didn’t ask for relief. She just kept wrestling the uncooperative metal, her breath coming in grunts of effort.
This was the reality he’d described. And here she was, elbow-deep in it. Not as a decoration. As a participant. The sight did something strange to his chest, a tight, unfamiliar ache.
It took her the better part of an hour to finish the mend. When she stood, her knees were stained green and brown, her hands trembling faintly from the strain. She looked at the repaired section, a messy but functional scar on the wire.
“It’ll hold,” he conceded.
“Good.” She pulled off the giant gloves, finger by finger. Her palms were red, a fresh, angry blister rising on her right thumb. She looked at it dispassionately, as if it were a report from a distant country.
He took the tools from her. “We’ll head back.”
The walk was slower. She lagged a half-step behind, fatigue in her movements. The sun was higher now, offering no real warmth. They were a quarter mile from the cabin when he saw it. A dark shape in the yard, resolving into a horse and rider. Sheriff Reed sat patiently, his gaze tracking their approach.
David’s stride didn’t falter, but a cold weight settled in his gut. Diana saw the visitor and went very still beside him.
Reed touched the brim of his hat as they drew near. “David. Miss Jarvis.”
“Sheriff.” David stopped, placing himself slightly between Diana and the horse. “Something wrong?”
“Might be.” Reed’s eyes, that patient, all-seeing grey, moved from David to Diana’s worn dress, her dirty hands, the blister. “Eli Hawkins rode into town this morning. Said he saw smoke from your place last night. Said he saw a woman through your window, wiping glass.” The sheriff’s expression was unreadable. “He hasn’t spoken to a soul in years. Got people talking I told them you were married and in the eyes of the law you are.But thought you'd like to know the circuit judge won't be here for five months maybe more depending on the McKee trail in Bentley.”
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“But thought you’d like to know the circuit judge won’t be here for five months, maybe more, depending on the McKee trial in Bentley.”
The words hung in the cold air. Five months. David absorbed the number, a concrete sentence replacing the vague dread. He heard Diana’s soft, sharp inhale beside him. The sheriff’s horse shifted its weight, the leather saddle creaking.
“Appreciate the heads-up,” David said, his voice flat.
Reed’s gaze lingered on Diana’s blistered thumb. “Town’s got a mail-order catalog at the mercantile. Sells a decent balm for that.” He looked back at David, meaning plain in his eyes. This is your situation now. Manage it. He nudged his horse, turning it. “I’ll be on my way. You two take care.”
They watched him ride off, a shrinking silhouette against the endless grass. The silence he left behind was heavier. Five months. A hundred and fifty days of this. Of pretending. Of whatever this was becoming.
David turned toward the cabin. Diana didn’t move. She was staring at the spot where the sheriff had been, her arms wrapped tight around herself. The morning’s fragile sense of purpose seemed to have blown away with his dust.
“Come inside,” David said, not looking back.
He heard her footsteps follow, slower than before. He went straight to the wash basin, pumping cold water over his own hands. She stood just inside the door, the strip of sacking she’d nailed now a monument to a temporary fix.
“Five months is… a long time,” she said quietly.
“It is.” He tossed her a relatively clean rag. “For the blister. Wrap it.”
She caught the cloth automatically. “What happens when people in town talk? Really talk?”
“They’re already talking. Eli Hawkins saw you. That’s all it takes.” He leaned against the table, crossing his arms. “They’ll decide you’re either a saint for putting up with me, or a fool. Maybe a whore. Depends on who’s telling the story.”
She flinched at the word, her porcelain skin flushing. “You could correct them. Tell them the truth.”
“And say what? That my dead brother stole my name to marry you and left you stranded? That makes you more pitiful, not less. It makes me look either like a liar covering for him, or a chump who can’t control his own kin.” He shook his head. “Truth doesn’t matter out here. Facts do. The fact is that paper. The fact is you’re here.”
She finally moved, wetting the rag and carefully wrapping her thumb. The practicality of the gesture, amidst the conversation, was intensely her. “So we live with the facts. For five months.”
“Seems that way.”
“And after? When the judge comes?” She looked up, her hazel eyes clear and direct, no tears left. “You’ll want the annulment. You’ll want me gone.”
He held her gaze. The honest answer was yes. This was his space, his silence, his struggle. An intrusion, no matter how helpful, was still an intrusion. But the word wouldn’t come. He saw her at the fence, wrestling the wire. He saw the clean window. He felt the absence of the draft.
“We’ll cross that when we get to it,” he said, evading. “One day at a time. Today, that means going into town for supplies. We’re low on flour, coffee. Need that balm.”
“Together?” The question was edged with anxiety.
“Together. If we’re selling a story, we sell it all the way. A married couple buying supplies.” He pushed off from the table. “Change your dress. The calico’s fine.”
The ride into Benton Creek felt longer than before. She sat rigid beside him on the wagon bench, her hands in her lap, the damaged one hidden in a fold of her skirt. He could feel the tension radiating from her small frame. He navigated the ruts with a scowl, tipping his hat low against the sun.
The mercantile was the town’s loud, smelly heart. The bell above the door jangled their entrance. Conversation near the pickle barrel stuttered, then resumed in a lower hum. David felt every eye. Old Man Turner behind the counter gave a slow, knowing nod. “David. Missus.”
“Turner.” David kept his voice neutral, placing his list on the counter. “Need these.”
As Turner gathered the goods, David was aware of Diana moving away. Not far, just along the aisle of tinned goods, her fingers trailing over the labels without seeing them. She was a magnet for sidelong glances. A woman from the church group, Mrs. Greely, approached her with a wide, predatory smile.
“Why, you must be David’s new wife! We heard tell! I’m Betty Greely. We’re so pleased to see him settled finally.”
Diana turned, a polite mask sliding into place. It was a good mask. “Thank you, Mrs. Greely. I’m Diana.”
“And how are you finding our little corner of Wyoming? It must be so different from… where was it you came from?”
“South Carolina. It’s… certainly larger.” Diana’s voice was soft, melodic, perfectly civil. David, listening while pretending to examine a new axe head, felt a strange pride. She wasn’t crumbling.
“And how are you finding the Montgomery homestead?” The question was sugar-coated arsenic.
Diana didn’t hesitate. “The draft was fierce. But we mended it yesterday.”
We. The word hung in the air.Mrs. Greely’s smile tightened slightly. “How… industrious.”
David had heard enough. He walked over, coming to stand beside Diana, closer than was strictly necessary. His presence was a wall. “Diana. Turner’s got the balm for your hand.” He nodded curtly at Mrs. Greely. “Ma’am.”
He guided Diana back to the counter with a hand lightly on her lower back. The touch was for show, but the heat of it through her dress was real. She didn’t pull away.
Turner slid a small tin across the counter. “That’ll do the trick. Makes a nasty blister a memory.” His eyes flicked between them, missing nothing. “That’ll be four dollars, sixty, David.”
David paid, his jaw tight. As they carried the sacks out, the bell jangling behind them, he felt the weight of the collective stare between his shoulder blades. He loaded the wagon swiftly.
“You handled that,” he said, not looking at her as he tightened a strap.
“What was my alternative?” Her voice was flat, drained. “I learned how to be pleasant in difficult rooms a long time ago. Just never figured the room would be a mercantile in Wyoming.”
He helped her up onto the bench. As he swung up beside her, he saw a man leaning against the post outside the saloon. It was Cole Harrigan, a rancher with more land than sense and a mean streak when drunk. It was only midday, but Cole looked well on his way.
“Well, if it ain’t Montgomery!” Cole called out, his voice slurred. He pushed off the post, taking a few unsteady steps toward the wagon. “Heard you got yourself a mail-order bride. Didn’t know you had it in you, Dave.” His bloodshot eyes crawled over Diana. “She’s a little thing. Pretty. You sure she’s for farm work? Looks more like… parlour work.”
David felt his whole body go still. A cold, familiar rage settled in his veins. He started to get down.
Diana’s hand shot out, clamping over his wrist on the reins. Her grip was surprisingly strong. “David,” she said, low and urgent. “Don’t.”
Cole laughed, a wet, ugly sound. “She’s got your leash already, huh? Maybe Sam had the right idea after all. Skip town, find a prettier patch to—”
David was out of the wagon in one fluid motion. He didn’t run. He walked, a steady, deliberate pace that ate the distance between them. The street went quiet.
Cole squared up, swaying. “You got a problem, Dave?”
David didn’t answer. He stopped just within arm’s reach. He looked at Cole, then past him, at the saloon, then back. His voice, when it came, was so quiet only Cole could hear it, a rough whisper like grinding stones.
“You say my brother’s name again. You look at my wife like that again. You won’t be drinking for a long, long time. You’ll be eating through a straw. You understand me?”
Cole’s bravado faltered. He was drunk, not stupid. He’d seen David Montgomery break a wild stallion’s spirit with nothing but patience and sheer, unwavering will. He saw that will now, focused and deadly.
“I… was just funning,” Cole muttered, taking a step back.
David didn’t move. He waited until Cole looked away, the fight gone out of him. Then he turned and walked back to the wagon. The street remained silent. He climbed up, took the reins from Diana’s limp hand, and clicked to the horse.
They drove out of town. The tension in his shoulders was a solid rock. He could feel Diana staring at him, could feel the questions she wouldn’t ask.
After a mile, she spoke. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“Yes,” he said, the word final. “I did.”
They rode another half-mile in silence, the prairie vast and swallowing.
“He was wrong, you know,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
“About what?”
“About me being for parlour work.” She held up her wrapped hand, then gestured back toward the cabin, unseen over the rise. “I mended the draft. I’m learning the fence. I’ll learn the rest.”
He glanced at her. The determined set of her jaw, the resolved light in her eyes—it was the same look she’d had wrestling the wire. It had nothing to do with Sam’ stories. This was all her.
“I know,” he said.
And he did. The realization was a quiet earthquake inside him. She wasn’t the fantasy his brother sold. She wasn’t the pitiful victim he’d first seen crying on his porch. She was something else, something tenacious and real, digging into the hardpan of this life right beside him. The five months stretched ahead, not just as a sentence, but as a stretch of unknown ground.
He didn’t know what grew in ground like that. But for the first time, he was curious to find out.