Chapter 2
Silas did not say the word at first.
He only swallowed, and that frightened me more than any shout could have.
“What is it?” I asked again.
The wind struck the shack so hard the door rattled.
Silas leaned closer, his hands steady even though his face was not.
“Feet first.”
The room tilted.
“No.”
“Cora.”
“No.”
I tried to pull myself up, as if I could somehow climb away from my own body. Pain crushed me back down.
“My baby,” I gasped. “Please.”
Silas gripped my shoulders.
“Look at me.”
I couldn’t.
“Cora, look at me.”
I forced my eyes open.
His face was close now. Stern. Rough. Terrified. But still there.
“I’ve turned animals,” he said. “Not a child. Not like this.”
I started shaking harder.
“But you listen to me. You do exactly as I say. You don’t fight the pain. You don’t waste breath screaming unless you need to. You save it. When I tell you to push, you push. When I tell you to stop, you stop.”
“I can’t.”
“You can.”
“I can’t bury my baby in this place.”
His jaw tightened.
“Then don’t.”
That angered me.
Somehow, that saved me.
Another contraction dragged through me. I grabbed his arm so hard my fingernails dug through his sleeve.
“Not yet,” he said. “Breathe. Short. Fast. Don’t push.”
My body wanted to push anyway.
It was the cruelest fight I had ever fought.
I had fought hunger before. I had fought loneliness. I had fought Thomas’s cold silences and his father’s hard eyes and the way my own marriage had started feeling like a room with no door.
But I had never fought my own body.
“Breathe,” Silas said.
“I hate you.”
“Fine.”
“I hate Thomas.”
“Better.”
“I hate this mountain.”
“Good. Keep talking.”
I cursed until another pain rose.
Silas moved, quick and sure.
“Now.”
I pushed.
The fire popped.
Snow hissed through cracks in the roof.
The whole shack seemed to hold its breath.
Silas worked with a grim focus that made him look carved from stone. Once, he muttered a prayer. Once, I heard him say, “Come on, little one,” so softly it broke something inside me.
The pain became a white wall.
I slammed into it again and again.
Then Silas shouted, “Stop.”
I froze.
My whole body trembled.
“Don’t push.”
“I have to.”
“Not yet.”
“I have to.”
“Cora, if you push now, you may lose the child.”
That stopped me.
I bit my fist until I tasted skin.
His hands moved with careful urgency. I did not look. I could not. I stared at the roof beams and thought of my mother, dead seven years. I thought of her hands kneading bread, her humming in the morning, the way she once told me a woman’s strength was not softness or hardness but the decision to keep breathing when the world tried to close her throat.
So I breathed.
I breathed when every bone in me wanted to break.
Then Silas said, “Now. Everything you have.”
I gave everything.
The scream that left me did not sound human.
Then there was a terrible silence.
No cry.
No tiny gasp.
Nothing.
Silas bent over the small shape in his hands.
“Why isn’t the baby crying?” I whispered.
He did not answer.
“Silas.”
He rubbed the child with one of the torn strips. He cleared the tiny mouth. He turned the baby downward with care, one palm supporting the head.
“Come on,” he said.
My heart stopped beating.
“Come on.”
I tried to sit up.
Pain and weakness knocked me back.
“Is it dead?”
“No.”
The word came sharp.
Too sharp.
He rubbed harder.
“Breathe, little one.”
Nothing.
The shack blurred.
A sound came out of me that I had never heard before. It was not a sob. It was not a scream. It was the sound of a soul being torn open.
Silas put his mouth over the baby’s tiny mouth and gave the smallest breath.
Once.
Twice.
Then he rubbed again.
“Don’t you dare,” he whispered. “Not after she fought that hard for you.”
A cough.
Small.
Wet.
Then a thin, furious cry filled the shack.
I broke.
I covered my face with both hands and sobbed so hard I could barely breathe.
Silas let out a breath that sounded like it had been trapped in him for years.
“It’s a girl,” he said.
A girl.
My daughter.
My living daughter.
He wrapped her in his torn shirt and laid her against my chest.
She was red and angry and perfect. Her tiny fists trembled against me. Her mouth searched blindly. Her cry faded into little broken whimpers.
I held her as if the storm itself would have to tear off my arms to take her.
“Hello,” I whispered. “Hello, my darling.”
Silas sat back hard on the floor.
For a few minutes, he looked older than he had when he came in.
“What will you call her?” he asked.
I looked at my daughter’s face.
I thought of the shack.
The storm.
The stranger who had stayed.
“Mercy,” I said.
Silas looked at me.
“Mercy Whitfield.”
The name hurt the moment I said it.
Whitfield.
Thomas.
I turned my face away.
Silas noticed.
He noticed everything.
“You said your husband went for help,” he said quietly.
“Yes.”
“Why were you up here?”
I closed my eyes.
“We were going to Deer Lodge. Thomas said there was a doctor there who took difficult births. He said his father had arranged it.”
Silas frowned.
“There’s no road through this ridge in November.”
“I know that now.”
The words were bitter.
“I told him the storm was coming. He said I worried too much. Then our wagon axle broke near the creek. He found this shack. He brought me inside. He said he would ride back for men.”
“When was that?”
“Three days ago.”
Silas stared into the fire.
My daughter shifted against me.
Then he stood.
“What are you doing?”
“Checking outside.”
Fear snapped through me.
“No. Don’t leave.”
He turned back.
“I’ll be ten steps from the door.”
“Silas.”
He looked at Mercy in my arms.
Then he picked up his rifle.
“I’m not leaving.”
He went out into the storm.
The door banged behind him.
For those few minutes, every sound became a threat. The wind. The stove. The soft snuffling breath of my daughter.
Then the door opened again.
Silas stepped inside with snow on his beard and something dark in his eyes.
“What?” I asked.
He shut the door slowly.
“There are tracks behind the shack.”
“My husband’s?”
“No.”
The room went cold again.
“Someone came after the snow started,” he said.
I pulled Mercy closer.
“And they didn’t come in.”
May you like
Silas looked at the crooked door, then at me.
“Cora, someone stood outside this shack and left you here.”
