Chapter 1: The Creature Beneath His Skin 027

But you deserve to know what life feels like when nobody is deciding for you.
I stared at the words.
Then I looked around the barn.
At the clean stalls.
The repaired tack.
The careful order he maintained in a world that often treated him as incapable.
And I realized something.
The marriage had begun without my freedom.
But that did not mean every feeling that followed was false.
I took the pencil.
Would you still want me here if there had never been fifty dollars?
Gideon read the question.
Then he smiled.
A small, uncertain smile.
He wrote:
More than I know how to say.
I laughed through my tears.
“Then perhaps you should learn.”
He looked puzzled.
I tapped his notebook.
“Write more.”
He laughed silently.
And for the first time, I kissed him because I wanted to.
Not because a minister instructed me.
Not because a contract demanded it.
Not because my father had accepted money.
Because I chose him.
Spring arrived slowly that year.
The snow retreated from the foothills.
The cattle returned to the northern pasture.
Wildflowers appeared beside the creek.
Gideon’s ear healed, although his longstanding deafness remained.
Miriam helped him obtain a more comfortable method of communication, and together we practiced a set of hand signs that allowed us to speak without constantly reaching for paper.
He taught me how to read the weather by watching cattle gather beneath the trees.
I taught him how to make his handwriting less difficult to decipher.
He never mastered my mother’s recipe for apple preserves.
I never mastered repairing a saddle without making the stitches crooked.
But we learned each other’s habits.
And gradually, we learned each other’s silences.
Merrick eventually faced judgment for his crimes.
He received a prison sentence after cooperating with the investigation.
I visited him once before he was transferred.
He looked at me through the bars.
“Does Gideon hate me?”
I considered the question.
Then I answered carefully.
“He knows what you did.”
Merrick lowered his eyes.
“That’s not what I asked.”
“No,” I said.