Page 41 of The Widow and the Wanted

It is just the two of us.

Again.

She lifts the lid, steam rising to her chin, then looks up at me as if she has been expecting me. I set the wood by the fire and watch her strain the tea through a cloth into a tin cup, keeping the needles back, careful with everything.

Freshly washed garments hang from the rafters like ghosts.

“You washed our clothes?”

She shrugs, but her mouth tightens, as if she does not want my thanks to land too heavily. “Seemed the least I could do.”

“Thank you,” I say, and crouch by the fire, rubbing my hands together until feeling returns in slow, needling increments.

“You’ve been at it all day,” she says, keeping her voice light.

I feed a split log into the stove and watch it catch. “My father would say winter rewards routine.”

Lula sets the tea near the hearth to keep warm, then takes the cloth she strained it through and rinses it in a basin, wringing it hard with both hands. When she reaches for a garment on the line—Boone’s shirt, still damp at the seams—she hesitates, then shifts it farther from the smoke so it will not take the smell.

“You mention him a great deal,” she says, watching the flame. “For a man you claim to disagree with on everything.”

I rise, wiping my hands on my trousers. “I’m his only son. Whether I wanted the burden or not.”

She nods slowly, then takes a cautious sip from her cup. Her face pinches at the bitterness. She coughs once, soft, then recovers her composure.

“Pine tea?” I ask.

“In wintertime, you need something green in you or your blood goes wrong,” she says.

“You mean scurvy,” I say.

“Yes!” she says, then, as if embarrassed by her enthusiasm, glances down into the cup and clears her throat. “Precisely. First a man tires and blames the weather. Then his gums soften. Old wounds open.” Lula tips the cup toward me. “Would you like some?” Her mouth quirks as if she cannot decide whether to apologize for it. “It tastes awful.”

The steam carries that bright, resin bite. Her fingers brush mine when I take the cup, and the small contact travels farther than it ought.

I take a sip, letting a mouthful roll over my tongue.

Bitter. Sharp.

Like chewing a forest.

She watches my face with quiet satisfaction when I do not spit it out. “I used to make it for my Eli in the winters when there was little else green and fresh to be had.”

Her eyes drop to her hands, red at the knuckles from washing, cold, and work.

“A wife does what she can,” she says. “Keeps a man upright.”

I hand the cup back. The fire pops and settles.

“Now I haven’t anyone to care for but myself,” she says, and there is no self-pity in it. Only the plainness of a fact. She reaches for the cloth by the basin and wrings it once more, as if the motion is habit. “But at least as an apothecary there are always others. Someone’s child wheezing. Someone’s hands split open. If I cannot keep my own household, I can still be of use.”

She turns the cup slowly in her palms, clearing her throat gently. “Is there anyone special in your life?”

I blink. “Beg your pardon?”

“A courtship perhaps?”

Boone flashes through my mind—the way he looks at me when we are alone, unguarded and adoring.