Winter's Torment Read Free Page A

dumped them inside. She stared down at them for a moment before deciding she didn’t even have the energy to clean them. She felt so lonely, so unsettled, and so frozen with grief that she found even the simplest of tasks difficult.
    As tears began to burn behind her eyelids, she slowly walked toward the only bedroom in Henry’s house, through a door that separated the main living room of the cabin from a small bedroom.
    She stared at the bed a moment, knowing that she had no right to keep the bedroom to herself. As she sat down on the mattress and heard the springs underneath squeak softly, she realized that she could at least feel fortunate that he had not pressed the issue, at least not tonight, and on their very wedding night to boot.
    That night, as she lay in the bed, nice and warm and comfortable, she wondered how Henry fared out in the barn. She felt guilty sleeping inside the small, warm house, the fireplace in the main room banked and still admitting a dull, red glow from the firewood while Henry was out in the barn without any source of heat. Still, he had straw, and several blankets that she had taken out to him. She had frowned when she hadn’t seen him in the barn, and figured that he was out feeding the cattle.
    Still, as she lay awake long into the night, the wind began to blow. She touched her hand to wall of the house behind the bed over her head. The walls felt cold. Even though the house was still warm, she imagined that the cold wind was making its way through the chinks in the barn walls.
    Perhaps she should go out to the barn and tell Henry that he could come sleep in the house. Maybe he could make himself a nice warm palette in front of the fire. She wished she had thought about that sooner. It was better than having him be upset, and possibly even regret marrying her.

Scene 4
    Winter never did get out to the barn the previous evening. She had hesitated, uncertain. She knew he had been right about what he’d said at the dinner table though. She did have to learn to start standing up for herself. She knew that in some ways she did have to put big parts of her past behind her: her emotionally abusive husband, the blame she carried for the death of her child, and the shame of being a divorced woman. With Henry though, maybe she had a chance to start over. Time would tell.
    By the time she rose in the morning and got dressed before going out to the barn to fetch him for breakfast, he was already gone. One of the horses was gone too, so she could only surmise that he had either gone into town to work in his blacksmith shop, or he was out in the fields feeding the Longhorns. But he would’ve taken a wagon for that, wouldn’t he? Therefore, she decided he’d probably gone into town.
    She sighed, spent some time exploring the barn, the yard, the outbuildings, and then returned to the house, assessing what she might do to it to make it homier. It was a perfectly fine house, well constructed, solid, and would keep out the worst of winter, but it lacked… personality.
    By noon, Henry still wasn’t back. She was sure that he had gone into town to work, and there was still one horse in the barn. She didn’t know how to hook up one horse to the double harness for the wagon, but perhaps she could manage to get a saddle, if she could find one, onto the other horse and ride it into town. Perhaps she could even take Henry some lunch.
    She nodded and felt the inklings of a smile lift her lips. That’s what she would do. Yes, that might please him and help make up for making him sleep in the barn the previous evening. She hurried into the house and made a cheese sandwich for him, packed an apple and a few pieces of dried jerky, wrapped them into a square of cheesecloth, and then into the red neckerchief she found in the bedroom.
    By the time she stepped outside, she hissed in dismay as a surprisingly cold breeze coming from the north swept through her. Why, it had been perfectly pleasant just a little while