“You can sleep,” he said, his voice soft as velvet.
“No, I’ll come,” I said.
He left the room. The shower went on, and I slowly got dressed. The cabin was small enough that if I leaned forward, Icould see the door to the bathroom was mostly closed. I could pester him, join him, but I had a feeling he needed a moment to himself. I’d invaded his cabin, his life, and there weren’t many places to go for a bit of privacy.
I got dressed, then went into the living room to pick up our abandoned mugs of tea. Started the kettle. Made a fresh pot of tea, which was still brewing by the time Wolfe padded out of the bathroom, barefoot. Drops of water in his dark hair, a steadiness to his gait as he went to the back door and opened it to let the steam out.
“I really do need to fix that vent,” he said. “Or put a window in the bathroom because this is sure damn inefficient.”
I could see the ribbon of gray steam as it hit the cold air and scrambled outside. I watched him as he walked around me. His gaze averted as though he was focused on other things, other thoughts. As if he were alone in the cabin. Did he feel he’d shared too much?
“Hey,” I said. I tugged on the sleeve of his flannel shirt, which was not tucked into his jeans. The cuffs were unbuttoned, leaving him looking half-finished.
The tug stopped him, and he ducked his head. “It feels like too much,” he said, his palm resting where my fingers gripped the soft cloth of his shirt. “And like I don’t deserve it.”
“You do,” I said. “It might not feel like it, but you do.”
Chuffing a small laugh, he looked up at me through dark lashes and seemed to smile. “And you deserve something to eat. It’s past noon.”
It was past noon, with the sun shining on the snow from directly overhead. Wolfe closed the back door and made me breakfast, a giant fry-up. Eggs. Bacon. Sausage. Toast. Mugs of tea. My belly was swollen by the time I finished everything on my plate. Wolfe leaned back in his chair and smiled over the rim of his mug at me as he drank his second cup.
We spent the afternoon putting the cabin to rights, directing our energy at the rumpled bed and the stains from snowmelt by the front door. Wolfe bundled up to go out and get his special order and properly cover up his snowmobile.
“You go out on that much?” I asked when he came in.
He shook his head as he hung up his parka and unlaced his boots. “It seemed a good investment at the time,” he said. “Seven thousand dollars used. I might have to sell it.”
We made good use of the afternoon tromping out to the workshop. Wolfe checked on the order for those stamps and unpacked his special order. I helped by not getting in the way, but I wasn’t very good at that, as he showed me what he’d bought, an odd assortment that contained needles, blank key rings, cotton thread, and a little metal tool.
“It’s a lace cutter,” he said, holding it in his palm.
“But you’re saving up for a lace cutter. The thousand-buck one.”
“This was twenty bucks,” he said. “It’s cheap, and it can only cut one thread at a time.”
I took the tool from his palm and held it in mine. Our foreheads almost touched as we looked at it together.
“You can make a lot of things out of rawhide,” he said. “Whip handles, trim, all kinds of things. Bosals.” He made a gesture around his face. “It’s part of a hackamore bridle. Good ones go for two-fifty. Really good ones go for six hundred. Any good cowboy or wrangler usually wants one, especially in these parts.”
That was his goal then. To handmake objects people would be proud to own. To buy a tool that would let him do that. And to do that, he needed to make a start selling keychains and lanyards for the Christmas bazaar.
“Let’s get to work, then,” I said. If working with his hands made Wolfe feel good about life, as I’d seen to be true, then I would be proud to help him with that.
We worked in the workshop, both space heaters going, drinking hot tea, warm steam curling off our mugs when they were near the windows. Wolfe sketched the colors he thought might look nice for the painted key rings. He put the pieces of paper in front of me.
“What do you think?”
“Me?” I asked.
“You’re pretty good at drawing,” he said. “I figure you must have gone to art school, which is more than I’ve done.”
I couldn’t remember if I had, of course, but I flushed at the compliment.
Between us, we went online and picked out the colors. We didn’t order kits; we got the good stuff, as Wolfe said. Five dollars an ounce. Good quality paintbrushes. Strips of pale cowhide we could practice on. Finger guards. Soft cloth.
“It all should come this week,” Wolf said. “If we don’t get another storm.”
We didn’t. The temperatures stayed near zero for days, and the sky was a hard-painted blue. No wind stirred. Nothing melted. Everything was coated in ice.
