His gray, exhausted face was slick with sweat. But in his eyes burned the same stubborn force Anna had seen the day she first woke in his cabin. He took two slow, dragging steps toward the heavy oak door. Then he lifted his hand and dropped the iron bar into place with a clang. After that he took the long iron key from its nail, slid it into the old lock, and turned it.
Anna stood frozen, watching him with growing horror.
Key in hand, Mike turned toward the hot stove. He yanked open the cast-iron fire door. Inside, the flames glowed hard and bright. He drew back his arm and threw the key straight into the fire. It struck the grate with a metallic ring and dropped into the red coals. Then he shut the stove door, leaned his back against the wall beside the door, and slowly slid down to the floor.
Anna rushed to the stove. She grabbed the poker, flung open the door, and tried to rake through the coals. The heat blasted her face, and the key had already dropped deep into the fire under the burning wood. There was no reaching it. The door, made of thick fitted planks and locked from inside with both bar and key, would not yield even to an ax. It was sealed.
The poker fell from her hands with a dull clatter. Anna turned to Mike on the floor. And then she broke. All the fear, all the pain she had held in for days came pouring out. She ran to the log wall and struck it with both fists until the skin split over her knuckles.
“What did you do?” Anna cried, her voice breaking into sobs. “Why?”
She pounded the wall, not feeling the pain. “I’m a doctor!” she shouted into the room, choking on tears. “I’ve done complex surgeries. I’ve saved people who were almost gone. So why am I here now, sitting in this cabin, unable to save the one person who matters? Why can’t I save the only person I have?”
Her legs gave way. She slid down the wall to the floor and covered her head with both hands. Her shoulders shook with hard, helpless crying.
Mike sat by the door, breathing in rough, ragged pulls, but his face was strangely calm. There was no fear in it. Only the deep weariness of a man who had made up his mind. He reached out and touched her knee.
Anna lifted her head, face wet with tears. She crawled to him and pressed herself against his chest, holding him carefully so she wouldn’t hurt him. Mike wrapped his weakening arms around her, laid one heavy, fever-hot hand on her graying hair, and stroked it slowly.
“Easy now, sweetheart,” he said softly. “Easy. Don’t cry. You did everything right.” He swallowed hard, gathering strength for the next words. “I’m not trading your freedom for medicine, Anna. If you walked out that door and they took you, what would I be breathing for? I’d be gone right after you.”
He rested his cheek against the top of her head. “I’ve had a good life. But these last four years with you—they were the best of it. More meaning in them than in all the fifty before. Worth being born for.”
Anna shut her eyes, taking in every word, every rough breath.
“Remember,” Mike said, pulling back just enough to see her face, a faint warm smile on his lips, “that blue fabric I brought you from town? Tiny flowers on it. You made yourself a dress.”
Anna nodded. Tears ran off her chin onto his shirt.
“Wear it tomorrow,” he said. His eyes were beginning to close. “Put on that blue dress. I want to remember you that way. Beautiful. My wife.”
He couldn’t say more. Another coughing fit seized him. Anna helped him back to the bunk and laid him down. That night lasted forever. She never left his side. She put on the blue dress, combed her hair, and sat on the floor beside the bed with her head near his chest, holding his big hand in both of hers. She listened as his breathing changed. The rattling grew softer. The pauses between breaths grew longer. He never fully woke again.
Outside, dawn slowly came. The bitter night gave way to a clear, cold morning. A thin beam of sunlight pushed through the frost on the window and fell across Mike’s face. The lines in his forehead smoothed out. His face became calm, almost peaceful. He drew one last shallow breath and was still.
Anna did not scream. She did not shake him. She simply sat there, looking at his face, still holding his hand. She held it for hours, until the warmth left his fingers and the cold took them. The cabin was utterly silent. The woods had taken back one of their own, leaving Anna alone in a world where she no longer feared anyone.
The ground beneath the big spreading tree was hard as stone. Frost had locked the earth deep. Anna dug the grave for two days. She hacked at the frozen soil with a heavy ax, throwing aside hard clods of dirt. Her hands blistered and bled. By evening her back hurt so badly she could barely straighten. But she did not stop.
She buried Mike on the third day after he died. Wrapped him in a clean wool blanket and lowered him into the grave. Covered him with earth. Anna did not cry. There were no tears left. Inside her was only a dry, burned-out emptiness. She tied together two straight pieces of wood to make a simple cross and set it at the head.
Then she sat in the snow for a long time. She reached out in her rough mitten and ran her hand over the wood of the cross, the way she might have touched his shoulder.
“I’ll keep living,” she said in a flat, unfamiliar voice, looking at the dark trunk above the grave. “I promised you.”
Spring brought warmth to the mountains, and with it came danger. The snow had not fully melted when Anna found fresh tracks on the far edge of Mike’s old route—deep prints from heavy men’s boots and the large paw marks of a hunting dog. Inspector Victor had begun patrolling the area too often. He had never believed the story about weasels. The circle was tightening. Sooner or later he would reach the cabin when Anna had no time to hide under the floor…
