The next morning, Ren decided she was going to town.
There was no working phone in the cabin.
No vehicle.
The attorney Emmett mentioned was eleven miles away.
So Ren filled a jar with water, tucked the first letter and two photographs inside her jacket, banked the fire, and started walking.
Dutch came with her.
“You should stay,” she told him.
He ignored her.
The road was almost invisible beneath the snow.
Ren followed the opening through the timber.
For nearly two hours she pushed through drifts.
Dutch limped beside her.
Twice she stopped because he needed rest.
The third time she stopped, she heard an engine.
An old plow truck climbed toward them.
The driver slowed.
A man with gray stubble and a wool cap rolled down his window.
He looked at Ren.
Then at Dutch.
“You the girl staying up at Emmett Voss’s place?”
Ren nodded.
“I’m walking to town.”
The man stared at the snow around her boots.
“In this?”
“I don’t have a car.”
“Get in.”
Ren hesitated.
The man pointed at Dutch.
“Dog too. Before both of you freeze.”
The cab smelled of diesel, coffee, and work gloves.
For the first mile, the man said very little.
Then he looked down at Dutch wedged beside Ren’s legs.
His expression changed.
“Well, I’ll be.”
“What?”
“That’s Emmett’s dog.”
Ren looked down.
“Dutch?”
“That’s what Emmett called him too.”
Ren turned sharply.
The man nodded.
“I’m Wendell.”
He reached down and scratched Dutch behind one ear.
“I’ve been trying to keep this fool alive since Emmett passed last winter. I’d get him fed, get him inside, turn around, and he’d disappear.”
“Where?”
“Back up the mountain.”
Wendell looked at the dog.
“Eleven miles uphill to sit on that porch.”
Dutch closed his eyes beneath Wendell’s hand.
“I figured he was waiting for somebody.”
Ren looked out the side window.
Trees passed in a gray blur.
Wendell kept talking, perhaps because he understood she could not.
“Emmett made the cradle my granddaughter slept in. Wouldn’t take money for it. I plowed his road most winters. We called it even, but it never was.”
After another moment he said, “You favor Sylvia.”
Ren’s chest tightened.
“You knew my mother?”
“Knew her since she could climb onto this seat by herself. She used to ride down with Emmett.”
Ren looked at her hands.
“I found his workshop.”
Wendell smiled faintly.
“Still got the chair?”
“The rocking chair?”
“He talked about that chair for years.”
Ren swallowed.
“He made it for me.”
“That’s what he said.”
The town consisted of a few businesses gathered along the highway.
Wendell stopped in front of a small grocery and feed store.
“Go inside,” he said. “Fay will want to see you.”
“Who’s Fay?”
“You’ll know.”
The bell over the store door rang when Ren entered.
A silver haired woman behind the counter looked up.
Her face changed instantly.
She came around the counter.
“Oh,” she said softly.
Ren stopped.
The woman covered her mouth.
“You’re Sylvia’s girl.”
“I’m Ren.”
“I know.”
Fay took both of Ren’s freezing hands.
“I’ve known who you were since the day you were born.”
She sat Ren beside the wood stove.
Food appeared without Ren asking for it.
Chili.
Cornbread.
Coffee.
Fay crouched down and fed Dutch scraps from the meat counter while she talked.
“Your grandfather came down off that mountain once a month for nearly thirty years,” she said. “He bought coffee, lamp oil, flour, whatever he needed. And every time he came in, he checked his mail.”
“For letters from me?”
Fay nodded.
“He kept hoping.”
Ren looked into the coffee.
“He wrote to me.”
“I know.”
“They sent them back.”
Fay stopped.
“All of them?”
“I found them under the floor.”
Fay sat very still.
“I used to wonder. Lord, I hoped you had gotten at least one.”
“My stepmother wrote on some of them herself.”
Fay closed her eyes briefly.
Ren asked the question that had lived underneath everything else.
“Why did my mother leave him?”
Fay was quiet before answering.
“Your mother was seventeen and in love with your father. Emmett was proud, and your mother had inherited every ounce of that pride. They had a terrible fight. He said things he regretted. She left.”
“So he did drive her away?”
“Not the way you’ve been told.”
Fay shook her head.
“He expected her to cool off and come home. She expected him to come after her. Neither one moved first. By the time Emmett tried, too much had happened.”
“My father said Emmett hated him.”
“They never liked each other. That’s true.”
“And my mother?”
“Emmett loved your mother until the day he died.”
Fay’s eyes filled.
“After Sylvia died, you were the last piece of her he had left.”
Ren looked toward Dutch.
“Then why didn’t he come get me?”
“He tried to contact your father. He tried letters. He tried through people in town. Eventually somebody convinced him you had been raised to hate him and wanted nothing to do with him.”
“But he kept writing.”
“Every year.”
Fay gave a sad smile.
“That man could be stubborn enough to make a fence post look flexible. Sometimes stubbornness ruins things. Sometimes it keeps a person knocking on a door after everybody else would have gone home.”
The attorney’s office was upstairs over a hardware store.