Chapter 4: The Neighbor's Visit
The world returned slowly, piece by piece. The first thing David registered was warmth. A deep, pervasive heat along his right side that had nothing to do with the banked embers in the stove. The second was weight. A gentle, living pressure on his chest, in the crook of his arm. The third was scent. Lavender, yes, but beneath it now was the musk of their shared sweat, a scent at once unfamiliar and deeply, irrevocably intimate.
He opened his eyes. Dawn was a pale gray line at the window, the room still thick with shadows. Diana lay curled into him, her head on his shoulder, one arm flung across his stomach. Her breathing was a soft, even rhythm against his skin. In sleep, the determined set of her mouth was gone, her lips slightly parted. A single auburn curl had escaped and lay across his collarbone like a brand.
He didn’t move. He let the reality of her seep into him. The memory of the previous night was not a blur, but a series of sharp, luminous impressions. The feel of her skin under his hands, like warmed silk. The sound of her breath catching in her throat. The way her hazel eyes had gone dark, holding his gaze as he moved inside her, as if daring him to look away from what they were doing. He hadn’t. He’d watched every flicker of feeling on her face, every gasp, until his own vision had blurred.
Martha’s visit had been the spark. The neighbor’s prying eyes and thinly veiled shock had scraped Diana raw, highlighting her precarious place here. He’d seen the vulnerability beneath her stubborn pride, a crack in her armor. And instead of stepping back, he’d stepped in. He’d touched her face. He’d said the words. You are not a burden. You are my wife.
They had tasted true on his tongue.
Now, in the quiet pallor of morning, the words felt even truer. They were a fact, cemented not by a piece of paper from South Carolina, but by the whispered confessions of skin against skin in the dark.
A soft sigh escaped her. She stirred, nuzzling unconsciously against his shoulder before her eyelids fluttered open. Her hazel eyes, still clouded with sleep, found his. There was no surprise in them. No hesitation. Just a slow, dawning recognition that softened into something quiet and sure. A faint pink touched her cheeks.
“Morning,” she whispered, her voice husky.
“Morning.”
He brought his hand up, calloused fingers tracing the line of her jaw, then tucking the stray curl behind her ear. The gesture was so naturally possessive it startled him. She leaned into the touch, her eyes closing for a second.
“I should start the stove,” she murmured, making no move to get up.
“It can wait.”
They lay there as the room lightened from gray to silver. The habitual urgency of dawn chores felt distant, unimportant. For the first time in his adult life, David Montgomery chose warmth over work.
Eventually, the cold seeped in past the blankets. She shivered, and he felt it. Practicality reasserted itself.
“I’ll get it,” he said, and reluctantly slid from the bed. The air was a slap against his bare skin. He moved to the stove, feeding it kindling and split logs, coaxing a flame to life. He worked naked, unselfconscious in the way of a man utterly alone for years, and only halfway through the process did the awareness of her eyes on him settle over his shoulders. He didn’t turn. He let her look.
When he turned around, she was sitting up, the quilt pooled around her waist, her porcelain skin glowing in the burgeoning firelight. She watched him approach the bed. He sat on the edge, the rough wool of the blanket scratching his thigh. He didn’t reach for her. He just looked.
“You’re staring,” she said, a shy smile tugging her lips.
“Yep.”
“Is there dirt on my face?”
“No.” He reached out, his thumb brushing over a faint, bluish mark on the delicate skin of her inner thigh. A bruise, from the pressure of his hips. His stomach clenched. “Did I hurt you?”
She followed his gaze, then looked back at him, her expression softening. “No, David. You didn’t hurt me.” She covered his hand with hers. “It’s just… proof it was real.”
He leaned in then, and kissed her. It was slower than the night before, less desperate, a leisurely exploration of a newly discovered country. When he pulled back, her eyes were closed, a smile still on her lips.
“We’ll be late for everything,” she breathed.
“Everything will still be there.”
But the day was insistent. He rose, pulled on his long johns and denims. She climbed from the bed, a quick, slender flash of pale skin before she bundled herself into her woolen wrap and padded to the wash basin.
The rhythm of the morning was different. A silent conversation passed between them in exchanged glances and fleeting touches. His hand on the small of her back as he passed her to get the coffee tin. Her fingers brushing his as she handed him a mug. It was a new language, built in a single night.
They ate fried eggs and the last of the rabbit stew, now even better for having sat.
“I’ll need to run the trapline again,” he said, mopping his plate. “And check on the Larson place. He was having trouble with a coyote pack worrying his sheep. Said he’d shout over if he needed a hand.”
She nodded, pouring him more coffee. “I’ll air the bedding. And that sack of flour has weevils. I’ll need to sift it all.”
It was a simple list of mundanities. But it was their list. Their shared burdens.
After breakfast, he went to the lean-to to sharpen his axe and check his traps. The physical work was a familiar balm, the bite of the file on steel a satisfying rhythm. Yet his mind kept drifting back to the cabin, to the woman inside sifting flour, her brow furrowed in concentration.
At midday, he came in to find her on her hands and knees by the hearth, scrubbing the stone floor with a stiff brush and a pail of sandy water. The damp hem of her dress was darkened, a smudge of ash on her cheek. She sat back on her heels, pushing her hair back with her wrist.
“It’s hopeless,” she said, but without despair. It was a statement of fact.
“It’s just dirt. The prairie makes more every day.”
“I know.” She grinned up at him, a sudden, bright thing that transformed her face. “But it’s my dirt now. I want to know I fought it properly.”
My dirt. The words reverberated in him. He offered her a hand and pulled her to her feet. She was so light, coming up against his chest with a soft oof. He didn’t let go of her hand.
“Come on,” he said.
“Where?”
“Just come.”
He led her outside, around the back of the cabin to a patch of ground that got the southern sun, protected from the worst wind by the woodpile. It was mostly tough grass and volunteer sage, with a few stubborn wildflowers.
“What is it?” she asked.
“What do you see?”
She looked at the patch, then at him, confused. “Dirt. Weeds.”
“Sam ever talk about a garden?” he asked, his voice low.
Her expression shifted, understanding dawning. The letters. The fantasy. “He wrote about roses. Trellises of morning glories. A kitchen garden with peas and tomatoes that ‘burst with summer.’”
David grunted, nodding toward the tough ground. “No roses here. Not yet, anyway. The soil’s hard. Short growing season. Wind’ll tear anything delicate out of the ground. You’d get peas, maybe. Some root vegetables. Potatoes do alright. Hardy things.”
She stepped forward, crouching down to pick at the crust of earth with her fingers. It was dry, packed solid. She looked up at him, the wind teasing strands of hair from her pin. “Can we try?”
“We can try.”
“Not roses,” she said, standing and brushing her hands on her dress.
“No.”
“But maybe… something green. Something we can eat.” Her eyes met his, that quiet stubbornness flaring. “Something real.”
“Something real,” he agreed.
That evening, the domestic quiet was shattered by the sound of a horse approaching at a hard gallop. David was out of his chair, hand on the rifle propped by the door, before the rider reined up in a cloud of dust.
It was young Tom Larson, hatless, his face smeared with soot and panic. “David! Come quick. It’s the coyotes—they got into the pen. Pa’s shot one, but there’s a bitch leading them, clever as the devil. She’s took two lambs already and she’ll be back for the rest. We can’t watch all sides.”
David was already pulling on his coat, grabbing his rifle and a box of shells. “Saddle the bay for me, Tom. I’ll be right there.”
Tom nodded and wheeled his horse around, kicking it back towards his family’s spread.
Diana stood by the table, her face pale. “You’re going now? In the dark?”
“Has to be now. While the pack’s still riled up and close by.” He checked the rifle’s load, his movements efficient and calm. “They’ll slaughter the whole flock if they get a taste for easy mutton. Larson’s got nothing if he loses those sheep.”
“Is it dangerous?”
He looked at her then, really looked. The fear in her eyes wasn’t for the sheep. He walked over, stopping before her. He didn’t kiss her. He put his hands on her shoulders, feeling the fine bones beneath the wool. His touch was firm, grounding.
“It’s work,” he said. “It’s what neighbors do. I’ll be back by morning.”
She swallowed, then nodded, her jaw setting. “Alright. Be careful.”
He almost smiled. “Always am.”
He turned to go.
“David.”
He glanced back.
She stood straight, her hands clasped tightly in front of her. “Come back,” she said, and it wasn’t a plea. It was an instruction.
He nodded once, a sharp dip of his chin, and vanished into the deepening twilight.
The night was long and sharp with gunfire and barking dogs and the frantic bleating of sheep. It was cold, muddy work, a war of shadows and quick, snarling movement at the edge of lantern light. David spent hours in a makeshift blind with old man Larson, the two of them sharing a flask of bitter coffee, their breath fogging in the air. The cunning old bitch never showed herself, but her pack did. One bold male came too close, silhouetted against the moonlit skyline. David’s shot was clean. The crack of the rifle echoed across the hollow, and the night fell silent after that, holding its breath.
“That’ll settle ‘em for a spell,” Larson grunted, clapping David on the back. “Obliged.”
David just nodded, his ears still ringing. He helped drag the carcass away from the pen, then rinsed his hands in the icy water of the stock tank. The sky was shifting from black to indigo when he finally untied the bay and pointed its nose for home.
Exhaustion was a deep ache in his bones as he rode up to the cabin. But a thin, golden thread of light shone from the window. She’d left the lamp burning.
He unsaddled the bay, rubbed him down, his movements automatic. The cabin door opened before he reached it. She stood framed in the light, wrapped in a blanket over her nightdress, her hair loose around her shoulders.
She didn’t ask if he was okay. She looked him over—the mud-spattered clothes, the grim set of his mouth, the absence of blood that wasn’t animal—and stepped back to let him in.
The warmth of the room enveloped him. The stove glowed. A pot of coffee sat waiting, still warm on the grate.
“Any trouble?” she asked, her voice quiet.
“Got one. Rest scattered.” He shed his coat, the weight of it suddenly immense. The adrenaline was gone, leaving him hollowed out.
She brought him the coffee. He took it, his cold fingers brushing her warm ones. He drank, the heat spreading through his core.
“You’re shivering,” she observed.
“Just cold.”
She took the empty cup from him. Then, without a word, she began to unbutton his heavy work shirt. He stood still, letting her. She pushed it off his shoulders, her hands small but firm. She knelt to untie his boots, tugging them off, then his sodden socks. Her touch was clinical, practical, but it burned where it landed.
When he stood in just his long johns, she took his hand and led him to the bed. She pushed him down to sit on the edge, then fetched the washbasin and a cloth. She knelt again, washing the mud and night chill from his feet with warm water, her movements gentle and thorough. He watched the crown of her head, the firelight catching in her auburn curls, and felt something vast and unnamed break open inside his chest.
He was a man who had built his life on self-reliance, on the understanding that he would meet every hardship alone. This—this tender, silent ministry—was an undoing.
She finished, dried his feet with a towel, and set the basin aside. She came to stand before him, between his knees. She cupped his face in her hands, forcing him to look up at her. Her hazel eyes were dark, serious.
“You provide the food,” she whispered, echoing her words from days before. “You protect the flock. You stand with your neighbor.” She leaned down, her forehead touching his. “Let me do this. Let me be the warmth you come home to.”
He closed his eyes. The last of his resistance, the final, lonely bastion, crumbled into dust. He pulled her into his lap, burying his face in the curve of her neck, inhaling the scent of lavender and clean skin and home. He held her, just held her, as the first true rays of dawn began to bleach the darkness from the sky.
Outside, the Wyoming wind swept across the endless land, singing its old, lonely song. But inside the weathered pine cabin, for the first time, there was a silence stronger than the wind. It was the sound of a solitary man not being alone anymore. It was the sound of a beginning, hard-won and real, taking root in the stubborn dirt.