"My granddad gave my grandmother a ring he carved from the heartwood of the first tree he ever dropped on their land. Walnut. Sixty years, she wore it. When she died, he put it in a coffee can on his workbench and kept it there till he died too."
Her breathing's changed. I can hear it.
"I don't have that ring. It's gone. Sold with the property after he passed." I open the box. "So I made one."
The band is black walnut, cut thin, bent over steam, shaped on the mandrel I bought in town with hands that wouldn't hold still at three in the morning. The grain runs through it the same way it runs through the bowl she held up to the light that first night in my cabin. On the inside, I inlaid a thin line of cedar bark. Her wood and mine.
"Oh my God," she whispers.
"My mama passed in November." My voice holds. It holds because she's standing here, and when she's standing here, my voice holds. "And I sat in this cabin at four in the morning, andfor the first time, I wasn't thinking about the past. I was thinking about the future. About spring. About barley. About Sunday lunch and your mama's chili and a cabin with two horses in the stable and your boots next to mine by the stove."
Tears. Running down her face. She's not wiping them.
"Paige Adulsa Thomas." I go down on one knee on the cabin floor, the floor I swept at five this morning because that's who I am now, a man who sweeps. "I came to Wild Peak to disappear. You rode into my clearing with a thermos and decided that wasn't happening. You brought me coffee I didn't ask for. You made me eat. You held my hand in a gravel yard in front of a woman who broke me and you said you were mine."
"I am yours."
"Marry me."
"Yes."
"I haven't finished asking."
"I don't care." She's laughing and crying at the same time, pulling me up by the shirt. "Yes, Aiden. Yes."
"Marry me and stay on this mountain. Marry me and fight me about the thermostat. Marry me and bring that horse up the trail every morning even though she lives here now and the trail's unnecessary."
"She likes the trail."
"Marry me."
"I already said yes." She grabs my face. Kisses me so hard I taste salt. "You beautiful, stubborn, impossible man. I said yes."
I slide the ring on her finger. The walnut's warm from the box. It fits, because I measured her finger while she slept two weeks ago and she didn't know, and if that's creepy, I don't care.
She holds her hand up. The grain catches the morning light through the window, and the cedar line glows against the walnut.
"You made this at three in the morning," she says.
"Three, four, five. Lost track."
"Aiden."
"Hm."
"You're never sleeping through the night, are you."
"Probably not."
"Good." She wraps her arms around my neck, presses her whole body against mine, my flannel on her shoulders, her bare legs against my jeans. "More time for carving."
I hold her in the middle of our cabin, in the middle of our mountain, with the snow falling quiet on the grain field we grew together, and for the first time in twelve years, four in the morning isn't a punishment. It's just early. Just dark. Just the hour before the sun comes up over the ridge and lights everything gold.
I'll take it.
Paige
[photo of the ring on her hand]
