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There was no wood piled against the door. Someone had stacked it neatly again in the woodshed. The door itself had been repaired and fit snugly now into its frame. She raised her father’s wooden latch and pushed it open.
Even at the brightest midday, it was never really light inside the cabin. On a November afternoon it was truly dark. She found the flint box—no sulfur matches here—and lit the neatly laid tinder and logs. It was as though someone had prepared for her coming. She pulled her mother’s rocker close and stared into the flames. Nothing smelled so good or danced so well as a birch fire. It was so full of cheer, so welcoming. Lyddie stretched her toes out toward the warmth of it and sighed, nearly content. She could almost forget everything. She was home where she had longed to be. Perhaps she could just stay the night here. No one would care. How could they deny her just one night before she left forever?
“Lyddie?”
She jumped up. There was the shape of a man, bent over low so as to clear the doorway. He stepped into the cabin and straightened tall. “Lyddie?” he said again, and she knew him for Luke Stevens. She was more angry at the interruption than ashamed to be caught.
“Lyddie?” he said a third time, “is it thee?” He took off his broad Quaker hat and held it over his stomach, squinting a little to see her through the darkness.
“I meant no harm,” she said. “I just come to say good-bye.” It sounded silly as she said it, coming to say good-bye to a cabin.
“Mother thought she saw thee pass. She sent me to fetch thee for supper and to stay the night if thee will.”
She wished she could ask him just to let her stay here—for this one night. But there was no food, and she had no right to use up the Stevenses’ kindling. She would not be beholden to them more than she could help. “I’ll just be going back—”
“Please,” he said, “stay with us. The dark comes so quick this time of year.”
Her pride fought with her empty belly. But the truth was it had been hours since Triphena’s breakfast, and the walk back would be long and dark and cold. “I’ve no wish to impose—”
“Thee must not think so,” he said quickly. “It would pleasure our mother to have another woman in the house.” He smiled shyly. “She often complains that none of us boys can seem to find a woman who will have us.” He came to the fireplace and knelt to separate the logs and put out her small fire.
She was glad his back was to her and there was no chance that he could see her face flush red in the shadowy light of the cabin. “About your letter …” she began.
He shook his head without turning to her. “It was a foolish hope,” he said quietly. “I pray thee forgive me.”
They walked side by side down the road, the sun a blazing pumpkin as it fell rapidly behind the western mountains. Luke’s long legs purposefully shortened their stride so that she would not have to skip to keep up. For a long time, neither spoke, but as the sun disappeared, and the dusk began to gather about them, he set his gaze far down the road ahead and asked softly, “Then if thee will not stay, where will thee go?”
“I’m off
…” she said, and knew as she spoke what it was she was off to. To stare down the bear! The bear that she had thought all these years was outside herself, but now, truly, knew was in her own narrow spirit. She would stare down all the bears!
She stopped in the middle of the road, her whole body alight with the thrill of it. “I’m off,” she said, “to Ohio. There is a college there that will take a woman just like a man.” The plan grew as she spoke. “First I must go tomorrow to say good-bye to Charlie and little Rachel, and then I’ll take the coach to Concord, and from there”—she took a deep breath—“the train. I’ll go all the rest of the way by train.”
He watched her face as though trying to read her thoughts, but gave up the attempt. “Thee is indeed a wonder, Lyddie Worthen,” he said.
She looked up into his earnest face as he leaned to speak to her and saw in his bent shoulders the shade of an old man in a funny broad Quaker hat—the gentle old man that he would someday become and that she would love.
Tarnation, Lyddie Worthen! Ain’t you learned nothing? Don’t you know better than to tie yourself to some other living soul? You’d only be asking for trouble and grief. Might as well just throw open the cabin door full wide and invite that black bear right onto the hearth.
Still—if he was to wait—
He was looking right at her, his head cocked, his brown eyes questioning. His face was so close she could see a trace of soot on it. Like Charlie. The boy could never mess with a fire without getting all dirty. She held her hand tightly to her side to keep from reaching up and wiping his cheek with her fingers.
Will you wait, Luke Stevens? It’ll be years before I come back to these mountains again. I won’t come back weak and beaten down and because I have nowhere else to go. No, I will not be a slave, even to myself—
“Do I frighten thee?” he asked gently.
“Ey?”
“Thee was staring at me something fierce.”
She began to giggle, as she used to when she and Charlie had been young.
His solemn face crinkled into lines of puzzlement and then, still not understanding, he crumpled into laughter, as though glad to be infected by her merriment. He took off his broad hat and ran his big hand through his rusty hair. “I will miss thee,” he said.
We can stil hop, Luke Stevens, Lyddie said, but not aloud.
