One Bed

His truck is green under the mud and older than your law degree, and the heater works on exactly one setting: furnace.

You sit with your briefcase on your knees and your rolling suitcase wedged between your boots, because he looked at it on the sidewalk outside Merle's office like it had insulted his mother and then threw it in the cab without a word.

Ember Creek ends after four blocks. Then it's just road, and fence, and golden grass rolling away to mountains that look painted on. Cattle stand in the fields like black punctuation marks. The sky is enormous. You didn't know a sky could be this big.

"So," you say.

Colt drives.

"Courthouse Friday," you try. "Is that... a figure of speech? Or are we actually..."

"Clerk's open nine to four. Judge does weddings at two." His eyes stay on the road. "Unless you've got a better idea, Counselor."

"Don't call me that."

"You are one."

"You say it like it's a diagnosis."

The corner of his mouth does something. It's gone before you can decide if it was a smile.

You make it eleven more minutes before you crack. You've never been good with silence. In depositions it's a weapon. In a truck with a stranger you're apparently going to marry, it's torture.

"Who's the little girl?"

His hands tighten on the wheel. You see it.

"What?"

"Crewe said take care of that little girl."

A long pause. A hawk lifts off a fence post and rides the wind beside the truck for a second before it peels away.

"My daughter. Clover. She's six." Another pause. "She's at my mom's in town this week. Calving pens need fixing before snow."

"And her mom?"

"Died." He says it like a door shutting. "Three years ago."

"I'm sorry."

He doesn't answer. You look out the window and feel like the worst person in Montana.

Larch Hollow Ranch appears around a long bend: a big two-story house built of logs and river stone, a wraparound porch, a red barn, corrals, a smaller bunkhouse with smoke rising from its chimney. Behind it all, a long ridge climbs into dark trees, and among the dark trees are others the color of new pennies, blazing gold.

"Oh," you breathe. "What are those?"

"Larches." He parks. "Only pine that drops its needles. Turn gold in fall, go bare in winter. Come back green."

It's the longest thing he's said to you. You look at him. He looks away.

A man comes out of the bunkhouse wiping his hands on a rag. Late fifties, a gray mustache, a face like weathered leather and handsome in an old-movie way. A black-and-white border collie trots at his heels.

"Arturo Villalobos," the man says, and shakes your hand warmly. "Foreman. You must be Mavis's girl." His eyes crinkle. "The lawyer. Licenciada."

"Just Ava."

"Licenciada," he says again, firmly, like it's a compliment he intends to keep giving. "That's Badger. He likes you."

Badger is leaning his whole body against your leg. You like Badger too.

"She's staying at the cabin till Friday," Colt says.

Arturo's eyebrows go up. He looks at the sky, which has gone a strange heavy pewter color over the peaks. "Radio says snow tonight, jefe."

"I'll get her up there and come back."

The cabin is two miles up the ridge on a rutted road that the truck climbs in low gear, rocking like a boat. It sits at the edge of the larch grove, one room of square-cut logs with a stone chimney and a porch just wide enough for two chairs. The gold trees around it are so bright it looks like the whole place is lit from inside.

Inside, it smells like cedar and old coffee and lavender soap. A woodstove. A table with two chairs. A kitchen along one wall. A patchwork quilt on a narrow brass bed.

One narrow brass bed.

Colt goes straight to the furnace closet and starts swearing under his breath.

You wander, touching things. A shelf of paperbacks, mostly mysteries. A photo of a young woman on a bucking horse, laughing, her hat flying off. A tin of buttons. A pair of reading glasses folded on a crossword, half done, in pen.

Then you see the fridge, and you stop.

There's a calendar from the feed store. A grocery list. And held up with a magnet shaped like a cow, your law-school graduation photo. You, three years younger, in the purple gown, holding your diploma and grinning like an idiot.

Next to it, yellowed and soft, a drawing in crayon. A brown horse with legs like a table and a purple mane. Under it, in the careful handwriting of a nine-year-old: Dear Aunt Mavis, thank you for the check. I have never seen a horse in real life. Here is one anyway. Love, Ava.

Your throat closes.

"She kept it," you whisper.

Behind you, the furnace clanks and goes silent. Colt stands. He looks at the fridge, and at you, and something in his face goes careful.

"Furnace is dead," he says. "Igniter. Need a part from town."

"Okay. There's a woodstove."

"There is." He goes to the window. The light outside has changed. The gold trees have gone dull, and the first flakes are coming down sideways, small and hard, ticking against the glass.

The radio on the shelf crackles to life on its own, some emergency band. Winter storm warning for Galena County until noon tomorrow. Whiteout conditions on the Silvertip ridge. Travel is not advised.

Colt goes very still.

"Can you get down?" you ask.

He opens the door. The wind nearly takes it out of his hand. You can't see the truck, twenty feet away. You can't see anything but white.

He shuts it. Leans his forehead against the wood for one second, like a man praying for patience.

Then he crosses to the stove, crouches, and starts building a fire with quick, sure hands. When it's going, he sits down on the only chair and bends to unlace his boots.

You look at him. You look at the bed. It's very, very clearly built for one person.

He pulls off his first boot and sets it by the stove, and meets your eyes.

"Looks like I'm staying, Counselor."