Winter Rose Read Online Free PDF Page A

thing if you don’t eat,” I scold her.
    She scrunches up her nose at a chunk of onion I try to give her. “I can’t bear the smell of it.” Then she turns a strange shade of yellow and runs off to the yard to spill her empty stomach into the snow.
    The incidents of vomiting increase as the days pass. She can’t seem to keep anything down, mostly just nibbling on bowls of snow. I start to worry when I see her shoulder blades poke at the back of her dress, like bird bones. When the bumps of her spine turn sharp and wicked-looking I berate her, and take my fear out on her a little. I’m ashamed, but I can’t pretend anymore like it’s all fine. She won’t leave me here like Mamma did. She just can’t.
    Luke makes it his job to find food, and trade some of the rabbit skins for supplies down at the shrinking miner camp. When I protest his dealings with the dark mountain men, he says, “Becca needs grain for bread, Rose. She’s gonna whither away to nothing, if she doesn’t eat.”
    He’s right, of course, and I’m glad for his willingness—even though I hate the thought of another connection with those men. I would have gone south to trade, walked an extra two days to find another settlement instead. But Luke says we don’t have the time and I reluctantly agree.
    He seems fine with his strange role in our lives. Some days he stays gone ‘til the sun’s setting, and I wonder at those times if he’ll come back at all. And then, I wonder at him when he does. What’re we becoming to him?
    I only escape the shack to gather wood or to fetch water now and then; Luke’s ability to supply precious things like soap and grain, his talent at the hunt, make my life more confined than ever, and here I am, always grinding the wheat or corn, always making bread or cakes in the fire, always close to the sickbed. I miss my daily hunts and feel the walls start to close in a little more as the hours and days pass.
    I mend Luke’s pants and two blankets. I scrounge around in Mamma’s herbs and look for something to sooth my nerves. Instead I uncover something that might sooth Becca; dried mint leaves in a brown glass jar. I make a tea and it seems to help her stomach. I use it sparingly, though, not sure how long it’ll need to last.
    “Thanks, Rose,” she mumbles to me as I hand her a cup. The steam curls up and brushes her cheeks. She sighs. “I’m so sorry to be a bother.”
    “You’re not a bother, Becca. Just get well.” I watch her sip the tea and then look out the window to the falling snow.
     
    *
     
    For six, maybe seven weeks Becca’s ill. She grows so thin and frail-looking, her fingers like white bone, her eyes rimmed in darkness, I wonder some mornings if she’ll wake up at all.
    Luke is a permanent fixture now, like a soldier beside her, guarding when he’s home. His eyes are wary whenever they watch her from across the room, but I see him hiding his worry from her, acting fine whenever she’s looking and telling her jokes to try and get her to laugh. I hear him whisper to her when she holds his hand, that he’s not going anywhere, that he’s here for her.
    He obviously cares for her. It’s plain on his face. Plain in the way he sits beside her in the evenings and reads to her from the Bible by firelight. In the way he looks in her eyes for long moments, like he’s speaking without words.
    The fire grows in my gut, and I begin to realize I’m not going to be able to stop it. They’re so in sync, like music timed just right. It’s beautiful and impossible not to envy. It makes something in me spark, something I’ve never felt before, something I don’t understand.
    And it terrifies me.
    He’s sitting beside her pallet, leaning against the wall. His eyes drift closed and his chin dips down, like he’s starting to fall asleep.
    “You should lay down,” I say. I motion to his pallet when he blinks up at me.
    “I’m not tired,” he mumbles.
    “You can leave her side for a little while.