For six years, no one in Briar Hollow had seen Rowan Halloway eat anything sweet.
He bought salt pork when he came down from the ridge. Flour. Coffee. Nails. Kerosene. Once, in a winter so hard the river froze thick enough to hold a loaded wagon, he bought a bolt of wool the color of storm clouds and paid for it with three fox pelts so cleanly trapped the storekeeper held them up like church banners.
But honeycake, berry tarts, sugared rolls, apple dumplings, molasses bread — he never touched them.
Not at the harvest tables. Not at Christmas suppers. Not when old Mrs. Bell set a slice of spice cake in front of him and said it was a sin for a man to frown at cinnamon.
Rowan only looked at the plate, stood, and walked out into the snow.
After that, people stopped offering.
They said all kinds of things about him, because people will fill silence with whatever ugliness fits inside it.
They said Rowan had no heart left.
They said he had buried it somewhere up on Wolfthorn Ridge with his dead wife and the baby boy nobody spoke of loudly.
They said he had gone half-wild after the avalanche.
They said a man who lived alone that long either talked to ghosts or became one.
Lydia Marrow believed none of it.
Or rather, she believed only the part about the ghosts.
Everyone had them.
Some folks carried theirs quietly. Some drank because of them. Some married badly because of them. Some laughed too loudly at supper and cried into wash water before dawn.
Rowan carried his like a loaded rifle — always close, always dangerous, always pointed inward.
Lydia knew about that kind of carrying.
Her mother had died with flour on her apron and debt collectors at the door. Her father had spent the next four years gambling away grief one coin at a time, until the Marrow Bakehouse — the only warm, bright place Lydia had ever truly belonged — stood one bad signature away from being swallowed by Victor Cale.
Victor owned the freight depot, the hotel, two saloon shares, and enough men’s shame to make the whole town step aside when he crossed the street. He smiled like polished silver and had the patience of a wolf waiting for a calf to limp.
He wanted Lydia’s bakehouse.
He also wanted Lydia.
In his mind, there was not much difference.
The trouble began on a gray morning in late November, when Lydia opened the back door of the bakehouse and found a bundle wrapped in deer hide.
Two rabbits, cleaned and dressed.
Under them lay a small twist of blue thread.
Rowan Halloway used blue thread to mark his trade bundles. Everyone knew that. He never wrote notes. He never wasted words on paper if he could avoid speaking them with his mouth, and he avoided that too whenever possible.
Lydia stood in the alley, breath smoking in the cold, and stared at the rabbits.
“Stubborn man,” she murmured.
Then she smiled despite herself.
The day before, Rowan had found her on a ladder trying to patch a loose roof board while sleet needled sideways across the street.
“You’ll break your neck,” he had said from below.
Lydia, balancing a hammer between her teeth, had looked down at him. “Good morning to you too.”
He had held out one hand. “Come down.”
“I own this roof.”
“You won’t own the ground any less when you hit it.”
That had startled a laugh out of her.
Rowan had looked up sharply, as if laughter were a bird he had forgotten existed.
Then he climbed the ladder without asking permission, fixed the board in three minutes, checked the chimney brace, and climbed down before Lydia could decide whether to be grateful or insulted.
She had offered coffee.
He had refused.
She had offered bread.
He had refused that too.
So now, apparently, he had sent rabbits instead of accepting thanks.
Lydia carried them inside, cleaned the table, and stood for a long moment staring at her mother’s recipe book.
It was bound in cracked brown leather, swollen at the corners from years of steam and sugar and kitchen spills. Her mother, Evelyn Marrow, had written everything in it: recipes, debts paid, debts owed, weather notes, who liked more ginger in winter, who pretended not to like raisins but always bought currant bread when no one watched.
Lydia turned to the honeycake page.
The recipe had always been her favorite, though she rarely made it now. Honey was expensive. So was kindness. Both had to be rationed.
At the bottom of the page, in her mother’s slanted hand, was a note Lydia had read a hundred times without understanding.
For M.R., who said every sad man should be dared into sweetness.
Lydia had never known who M.R. was.
That morning, she made the honeycake anyway.
She warmed the honey until it loosened like amber in sunlight. She beat eggs until they shone. She grated nutmeg, shaved lemon peel, folded flour into the bowl, and poured the batter into her mother’s black iron pan.