She knew what she could and couldn’t do. She couldn’t run this homestead by herself. Not with the cattle and the other livestock to take care of, and not when she couldn’t leave the animals long enough to hunt game meat for the winter. She needed a helpmate, and this time she was going to do it better. She was going to be stronger. Uncle Jim had put an ad in the newspaper for a helpmate when he’d needed one, and he’d been rewarded with Marta, who’d worked this place beside him for twenty years before she passed. He’d found the exact partner he needed to run this place, and that’s just what Elyse aimed to do, too. No more romantic bullshittery or fairy-tale notions. She would find a good, capable husband who would just happen to be fantastic at leading the subsistence lifestyle this place required. She was going for the man with the strong back and leaving love off the table completely. A wise woman learned from her mistakes, and Cole McCall had been the biggest, most disappointing mistake of all.
Her cell phone rang, and she tossed it a glare before she moved to a box with precious few carrots left in it. Half of those were rotted, too, and it became abundantly clear that her rationing hadn’t been doing her any favors. The vegetables were old and going bad. No amount of cool, moisture-free air and sawdust packing could keep them edible forever.
Another ring, and she wiped the sawdust from her palms to her jeans and picked up the phone that was about to jump off the wooden stool she’d set it on. She didn’t recognize the number.
“Hello?”
“Uh…” There was a pause that was too long to be polite.
Elyse narrowed her eyes. “Cole, if this is you, fuck off.”
She went to end the call, but the man said, “No, no, wait,” in a deep, gravelly voice that was definitely not Cole’s. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think you would pick up.”
“Well, you called me. What do you want?”
“Cole McCall. Have you seen him?”
Elyse sank down to the stool and bit her thumbnail. “Who wants to know?”
The man gave off a nervous laugh. Deep and rich, like his voice. “Look, I’m sorry for interrupting—”
“Does he owe you money?”
“No.”
“Did he bang your sister?”
The man cleared his throat and sighed. “No.”
“Mister, I haven’t seen Cole in months. I booted his ass out of here mid-winter. I haven’t seen him at my homestead or in town. His brothers still hang around the bar in Nulato, though, if you want to ask them.”
“Okay. Thanks for taking the time to talk to me. Miss, are you crying?”
“Of course not.” She wiped her tears with the back of her hand and swallowed hard. “I never cry.” Stupid sniffles were giving her away.
“Over Cole?”
“Ha,” she huffed.
“I’m a complete stranger who you’ll never meet.”
Elyse forced herself to stop biting her nail—a bad habit she couldn’t seem to break—and leaned back against the stone wall of the root cellar. “Not over Cole. Over the situation he left me in.”
“What situation?”
“It’s nothing. I’m fine, just angry with myself. Everything will work out. It always does.” She’d been repeating those lies for the last three snowy months.
“Hmm,” the man said noncommittally, as if he didn’t believe her lies either. He had a nice sort of voice. Calm and deep, but with a gravelly rasp, as though he didn’t use it often. She couldn’t get a grasp on his age, though. He could be twenty or sixty. She smiled and imagined he was twenty-six like she was. Food for thought since there weren’t many people her age in Galena.
“Elyse Abram?”
She froze. He knew her whole name, and the way he said it, so formally, sounded so strange against her ear. “Yes?”
“If you need anything, you call this number, and I’ll get it to you. Food or anything. No strings attached.”
“What?” She sat up straighter against the cold stool. “But…you don’t even know me.”
“That’s okay.”
She waited the span of three breaths, her mind racing round and round. No man had offered her help out of the blue…well…since before she met Cole, and even then, it was kind neighbors who had a stake in helping her out. She had repaid their kindness and more as soon as she had been able. But complete strangers didn’t offer help. They just didn’t.
The line was quiet, the man still waiting, and for lack of a better answer, she murmured, “Okay,” knowing she would never call this number again. Her pride was as big and wide as a canyon, and asking for help from someone she couldn’t repay reeked too much of charity. And she was no charity case. “It was nice talking to you.”
The man’s voice softened as he said, “You, too, Elyse Abram.”
The line went dead, and Elyse stared at the screen until long after it had gone dark. She couldn’t believe that five minutes ago she was thinking there wasn’t a decent man left on earth, and then one had called her unexpectedly.
Perhaps that was a sign.
Not everyone was as broken as Cole McCall, so maybe she could stop being so mad at the world and get on with living already.
And the first step to doing that was putting the ad in the newspaper, just like Uncle Jim had done all those years ago.
She would be damned if she was going to come out of another Alaskan winter this hungry.