Ruth didn’t argue. Not because she agreed, but because she understood the shape of fear. It made rules out of desperation.
The kitchen smelled like a house where someone had stopped trying. The iron stove was barely lit. Dishes stacked in the basin. A mending pile on the floor, untouched for weeks. Cold lived inside the walls like a permanent tenant.
Ruth set her sack down in the back room, hung her coat on the only hook, then returned to the kitchen.
“When’s the last time somebody fed that stove proper?” she asked.
Jonah’s mouth tightened. “I feed it.”
“You feed it like a man who wants it to barely survive,” Ruth said, already crouching. Her knees ached from cold. Her body lowered slow and heavy the way it always did. “I feed it like a woman who wants it to heat a house.”
She opened the grate.
“You got kindling?”
“Wood pile south side.”
“I’ll need lard, cornmeal, salt, and a proper kettle. Not that burnt thing hanging there.”
