“Right,” Lynn said, focusing on the pot of water. “Do you ever . . . hold her like that? Like with me last night?”
“No,” Eli said immediately. “It’s not like that between us. I’m boy enough to know she’s beautiful, and man enough to know she’ll always be my brother’s wife.”
Lynn smiled at his honesty. “I had to ask.”
Eli opened his mouth to answer her but there was a pounding on the door. Lynn grabbed her handgun and went up the stairs. Seconds later, Lucy came bouncing down. “Hey, Uncle Eli!”
Lynn followed more slowly with Stebbs on her tail. “Hey, Uncle Eli indeed,” he said wryly, looking between the two younger people. “Would it be na?ve of me to assume that you left late last night and came back early this morning?”
Lynn blushed and began making up the cot, then realized she was bringing attention to the fact that there was only one cot to be made. “Don’t start,” she said tightly to Stebbs.
“As much as I’d love to spend the morning teasing you, I’ve got a serious question for you both.”
Lynn stopped making the bed. “What is it?”
“How long has it been since either one of you saw smoke to the south?”
“Weeks, easy,” Lynn answered quickly, having checked every morning.
Eli glanced at her, thinking. “I don’t remember any recently, but to be honest I don’t always look.”
“I’m with you,” Stebbs said to Lynn. “It’s been a while, and nothing’s surviving without heat in this weather.”
“You think they’re gone?”
“Gone or dead.”
Eli leaned back in his chair. “I feel like shit for saying so, but that’s a relief.”
“It’s a relief, period,” Lynn said as she tried to place the unfamiliar feeling of contentment and warmth that had spread through her chest at the sight of the people she cared about gathered safely under her roof.
Sixteen
Lynn couldn’t remember a winter that had been so content. The plentiful snowfall meant that there was no need to break the ice on the pond to gather water. When they were thirsty, Lynn and Lucy gathered snow in buckets and warmed it on the stove, or ate it in frozen mouthfuls, after pelting each other with it first.
With the threat from the south removed, Lynn joined Lucy on the ground and showed her the different tracks in the snow. Deer and raccoon, the occasional flying leaps of a squirrel that left a sporadic, clumsy trail. The padded track of the coyotes that had been making appearances again. Lucy learned fast and wanted to know more. Lynn taught her how to distinguish the different birdcalls of the hardier birds that stayed for the winter, and how to make a grunt call with her cupped hands to attract bucks.
Lucy was thriving, her thin arms and legs now stocky with muscle from fighting her way through the snowdrifts in search of her next adventure. Lynn followed her, plowing after the little footprints and warning her off the icy pond on the warmer days. They made the occasional trip to Stebbs’, though it made Lynn anxious to go. Lucy told her no one wanted a pond that was frozen solid, and they agreed to only be gone a little while. Lynn found her worries melting away once in Stebbs’ comforting presence, and they usually stayed long past her time limit.
Eli visited often, making the arduous trek from the stream even on the coldest of days. Lucy would shower him with attention for a while after he showed up, then be distracted by something new, leaving them to talk privately and hold each other’s gloved hands. Eli’s visits were short by necessity. Neva liked some moments alone, but her fear of the wilderness didn’t allow those moments to stretch into hours.
“There’s a fine line between enjoying some alone time and just being downright lonely,” Eli said as they trailed in Lucy’s wake one snowy afternoon.
“Do you think she needs Lucy back?” Lynn asked, even though she wasn’t ready to make the offer. “I don’t want Neva to hate me, but I want what’s best for Lucy.”
“Right now—and I hate to say this—being with Neva is not it,” Eli answered. “She’s not entirely stable. She carries that gun that you gave her inside her bra.”
“That hardly makes her unstable,” Lynn said, letting go of his hand to pat the sidearm she had tucked into her coverall’s pocket. “It’s common sense.”
“Maybe for a girl like you it is, but Neva hadn’t even seen a gun until we got here. Now she sleeps with one?”
Lynn shrugged off his concerns, and they walked quietly hand in hand for a while. “Do you think she’d come over here? Maybe she’d leave the stream now that the men from the south are gone.”
“It’s possible. I can ask.”
“Stebbs says there’s a warm spell coming. Maybe then?”
“Maybe.” Eli squeezed Lynn’s hand and stopped her in her tracks. He held her face in his hands for a moment, tucking stray strands of hair back under her cap. “Can we stop talking about Neva for just a minute?”
Lynn agreed with a smile and leaned forward for her kiss.