The Mountain Man Turned Away Every Pretty Widow— He Chose the Girl Who Quietly Mended His Torn Boots

Chapter 3

I was twelve when I learned to sew with a needle and thread instead. I was fourteen when I started taking in mending for the townspeople, earning pennies that my father drank away before the sun set. I was sixteen when I learned that the only person I could count on was myself.

Now I was twenty-three, and my mother was dying, and my father owed forty dollars to the Bodine brothers, and I was so tired I could barely stand.

The morning after the blizzard that had driven Elijah Croft down from his mountain, I was in the kitchen stirring a pot of watery soup. The fire was dying. The roof was leaking. In the corner, my mother lay on a narrow cot, a blood-spotted rag pressed to her lips.

“Martha,” she whispered. “Your father is going to do something terrible.”

“He’s always doing something terrible.”

“No.” Her hand reached out, thin as parchment, trembling. “I heard him talking to Rosalind Pryce. She told him about the mountain man. About the gold.”

A cold knot formed in my stomach. “What about the gold?”

“She said he looked at you. In the store. She said he actually looked at you.”

I remembered the store. The giant with the torn boot. The way he had sat when I told him to. The way his eyes had met mine without flinching. I remembered the gold nugget he had tried to give me, the size of a robin’s egg, gleaming in the lantern light.

I had refused it. It didn’t feel right to take payment for a simple kindness.

“Your father is going to send you up that mountain,” my mother said.

“He won’t.”

“He will. He’s already planning it. He told Rosalind. He said you’re going to bring biscuits and apologize and make that man want you.”

I wanted to be sick. “I won’t do it.”

“You will.” My mother’s eyes were wet. “Because if you don’t, he’ll sell my wedding ring. The one your grandmother gave me. The only thing I have left. And then he’ll throw us both out to starve.”

The door exploded inward.

Amos Wainwright staggered through, reeking of whiskey. He was thin and wiry, with the shaking hands of a drunk and the mean eyes of a man who had given up on himself decades ago.

“You turned down gold,” he said. His voice cracked like a whip.

“Papa—”

“A gold nugget. And you said no.”

“It wasn’t right to take it. I just fixed a boot.”

“You stupid cow.”

He grabbed my arm. His fingers dug in so hard I felt the bruise forming before I could pull away. I didn’t cry out. I had learned young that crying made it worse.

“I owe forty dollars to the Bodine brothers. They’re coming Friday. Three days. They’ll break my legs. Maybe worse. And you’re playing proud.”

“I’m sorry, Papa.”

“Sorry doesn’t pay debts.”

He shoved me against the stove. My hip hit the iron edge. Pain flared white-hot, radiating up my spine. My mother tried to rise from her cot, a strangled sound escaping her throat.

“Esther, shut up!” Amos whirled on his wife. “This is your fault. You raised her soft. Useless.”

“Leave her alone.” I stepped between them, shielding my mother. “She’s sick.”

Amos’s eyes narrowed. That calculating look crept across his face — the one he got before doing something terrible.

“Rosalind says he looked at you. Actually looked.” He started pacing. “Why would a rich man look at you unless he was grateful? That’s all. Grateful.”

“No.”

“He’s lonely. Desperate. Men like that get stupid in winter.”

“I said no.”

Amos smiled. It was the worst thing I had ever seen. “Tomorrow, you’re going up that mountain. You’ll bring biscuits. You’ll apologize for being rude. And you’ll make him want you.”

“No.”

The word escaped before I could stop it.

Amos went still. His face darkened like a storm cloud. “What did you say to me?”

My heart hammered against my ribs. I thought of my mother’s rattling breath. I thought of the man in the store who had sat when I told him to, who had looked at me like I was human.

“I have my dignity,” I said quietly. “I won’t sell it. Not even for you.”

He hit me.

The backhand caught me across the cheekbone. I crashed into the wall, knocking loose a shelf. Pots and pans clattered down around me. My mother screamed — or tried to. It came out as a wrenching cough that sprayed blood across her pillow.

Amos ignored her. He stood over me, breathing hard.

“You have what I tell you to have.”

He grabbed my jaw, forcing me to meet his eyes. His fingers dug into the soft flesh beneath my chin.

“Three days. The Bodines are coming. If I can’t pay, they’ll take it out on all of us. Your mother, too.”

He released me with a shove.

“Tomorrow. The mountain. Or I’ll sell your mother’s wedding ring and let you both starve in the street.”

The door slammed. Silence.

I lay on the cold floor, my cheek throbbing, my mother’s labored breathing filling the room. I looked at my hands — the hands that could mend anything except my own shattered life.

I didn’t cry. I was done crying.

Three days. The number burned in my mind as I saddled the borrowed mule. Three days until the Bodine brothers came. Three days until my father’s legs were broken, or worse. Three days until they came for my mother’s ring — the only thing I had left of the woman my mother used to be.