Clinic

They wintered in the clinic. It was the only sensible thing and Papa had made her, under everything else he made her, a sensible girl. The building was sound and the wire from the tower's panels gave a little power on the sunny days, enough for a bulb, which was a wonder she never got used to, electric light at the turn of a switch, a thing out of the lost world. There was water. There was wood to be had in the canyon and the last of the elk hung frozen and there was the town below to scavenge slow and careful over the months. And the mountains behind them were filling with the real snow now, closing the high passes, closing the road up and west that her mother's people had taken, so that going on before spring was not a choice a person made who wanted to keep the boy alive. So they stayed. They mended. It was the first time in longer than she could remember that staying was the right thing and not the coward's thing, and she had to learn all over again how to do it, how to be still, how to live in a place instead of only crossing it.

She spent the winter at the boards.