Sadie Bell had not touched her food. Both hands were wrapped around the coffee cup as if warmth were a thing she did not expect to keep.
“Are you in trouble?” he asked.crsaid
She gave a broken little laugh at that. “That depends on who’s telling it.”
“Then you tell it.”
Her eyes dropped. “I can tell you this much. I didn’t come here to cheat you.”
It was not an answer, but it was honest in the shape of one. Jonah recognized that.
He pushed the biscuit plate closer to her. “Eat first. Then we’ll ride.”
The road up to Granite Ridge curled through pines and stone and long strips of mountain shadow. By the time Cedar Ridge disappeared behind them, the late afternoon light had gone amber and thin. Sadie sat beside him in the wagon seat with the new wool shawl he had bought her wrapped tightly around her shoulders, as if she still half expected someone to snatch comfort away the moment she relaxed into it.
For the first mile, neither spoke.
At last she said, very quietly, “Thank you. For back there.”
Jonah kept his eyes on the road. “Town’s got too much free time and not enough manners.”
“They laughed because of me.”
“No,” he said. “They laughed because cruelty’s easy when a person thinks somebody else is lower than they are.”
That seemed to strike her. She turned toward the windowless sweep of mountain dusk and blinked fast.
After a while she said, “My stepfather used to tell me no decent man would ever pick me. Said if one did, it’d only be because he couldn’t get better.”
