Page 25 of The Mountain Man Lumberjack’s Claimed Bride

Fourteen months. In fourteen months, Nora Marsh has planted a garden, repaired every fence line on the property, established a sourdough starter she treats with more tenderness than most people show their children, started a small business selling bread and preserves at the Grizzly Ridge farmers market on Saturdays, and made my cabin smell like a place worth coming home to every single day.

The sign hangs above the workshop door now. MARSH TIMBER / Est. 1952 / Hunter & Nora Marsh. The lettering has weathered slightly in the Montana elements, darkening at the edges the way good timber does when it's exposed to real weather. It looks better than the day I carved it. Permanent things usually do.

The access road carries the sound of a familiar engine. Bette's SUV rounds the last curve, pulling into the drive, and my sister steps out looking like a woman who has been summoned.

"You said it was urgent." Bette crosses the gravel, coffee in hand, sunglasses pushed up into hair that's the same dark shade as mine. "It's six in the morning, Hunter. The only things that are urgent at six in the morning are medical emergencies and bad coffee, and since you've never made bad coffee in your life?—"

"Nora asked me to get you here before she wakes up."

That stops her. "Before she— why? Is she okay? Is something?—"

"She's fine. She wanted to tell you something in person, and she's been planning this for a week, and if I ruin it by telling you first, she'll make me sleep in the workshop."

Bette's eyes narrow. Then widen. Then narrow again as the calculation runs behind them, thirty-eight years of sibling pattern recognition processing data points at a speed that would impress a computer.

"Hunter Marsh."

"Don't."

"Is she?—"

"I said don't."

"Oh my god." The coffee nearly hits the gravel. Bette's free hand covers her mouth. Her eyes are bright, shining, already filling, because my sister has never once in her life waited for confirmation before leaping to the correct conclusion. "Oh mygod, Hunter."

"She wants to tell you herself. Go inside. Make yourself useful. Don't cry until she gives you permission."

Bette is already halfway to the front door, walking with the controlled urgency of a woman who has been waiting for this moment since she paid eight thousand five hundred dollars to a matchmaking agency and changed both our lives.

The door closes behind her. Through the kitchen window, I watch her set her coffee on the counter, smooth her hair, and assume a position of completely unconvincing casual normalcy at the kitchen table.

Five minutes. Maybe less. The sounds of the cabin waking filter through the morning air. Water running. Footsteps. The soft creak of the bedroom door, which I keep meaning to oil and keep forgetting because the sound has become part of the rhythm of my mornings. Door creak means Nora is up. Nora up means coffee for two. Coffee for two means the day has started properly.

The front door opens.

She steps onto the porch wrapped in my flannel, the same one she claimed fourteen months ago, worn soft now at the cuffs and collar. Bare feet on the timber planks despite the November chill. Hair loose around her shoulders. Coffee mug in one hand, the handmade ceramic one I gave her the first morning, and in the other hand a small rectangular box wrapped in brown paper.

"She's inside?"

"At the table. Pretending she doesn't know."

A smile. Full. Warm. The one that starts at her mouth and moves through her whole face until even her eyes are smiling, brown and bright in the morning light. "Come in with me."

"This is between you two."

"Hunter." She looks at me the way she's been looking at me for fourteen months. Patient. Steady. Completely certain. "Nothing about this is between anyone except us. All three of us. Come inside."

All three of us.

The words reach something deep in my chest. Below the ribs. Below the breastbone. In the place where a man keeps the things he doesn't say out loud because they're too important for language and can only be expressed through acts. Building a sign. Making coffee. Planting a garden in the spot a woman identified on her second week because she was already planning a life here before either of us admitted it.

The kitchen is warm. Woodstove crackling. Bette at the table, hands folded, expression set to "aggressively casual" in a way that fools absolutely nobody.

Nora sets the brown paper package on the table. Slides it across to Bette.

"Open it."

Bette's hands tremble slightly as the paper tears. Inside, a wooden box. Small. Hand-carved. My work, done in the workshop over the last week while Nora stood watch at the door to make sure Bette didn't stop by unannounced.