He scrubbed the cabin until the pine-plank floor looked almost polite. He patched the chinking between the logs where last spring’s thaw had opened thin cracks. He stocked the pantry with dried beans, salt pork, and jars of preserved berries he’d made himself, because there had never been anyone else to do it. He split enough wood to build a small fence and stacked it under the eaves like a promise.
Three weeks crawled by.
The mountain paths turned to glass. The sky stayed bruised and low. Nights grew so long they felt like entire months, and the wind prowled through the pines like a hungry animal looking for a weakness in his walls.
If Ruth Gutierrez didn’t arrive soon, she might not arrive at all.
Daniel told himself he didn’t care.
Then one bitter morning, while he was splitting wood behind the cabin, he heard the sound he’d been trying not to listen for: wagon wheels, creaking and groaning up the grade.
He stopped mid-swing.
The axe hung in the air.
Something shifted inside him, not hope, not excitement. Awareness. The simple recognition that this might be the last chance he would take.
He set the axe down and walked to the edge of his property. The wagon dragged itself forward like an exhausted animal, the horses’ breath steaming in thick clouds.
