Eduardo's Arc

Chapter 98 of 115

The fire held through the cold snap. But the next morning, Eduardo and Kiersten woke stiff on the floor. One warm room. The rest of the house stood bare. No beds, no chairs, nowhere to sit but near the hearth. They could not live their days crowded into a single corner. "We need more than warmth now," Kiersten said. She pulled her shawl tight and looked down the empty hall. "A place to eat. A place to sleep. A place to just be." Eduardo felt the old pull. Drive to town. Buy a full set of furniture. Fill every room by dark and call it done. He held still. "We can't buy it all," he said. "And buying it alone is me taking over again." "Then we make it," Kiersten said. "One room at a time." They started with the bed. Eduardo had cut spare boards from the roofing lumber. He laid them out on the floor. Then he handed Kiersten the pencil. "How wide?" She marked the frame herself. "Here. Wide enough for both of us, not an inch more." They cut the posts together. He held the joints. She drove the pegs. He wanted to argue about the headboard height. He did not. She was right before, and he let her be right now. They built through the morning. The bed frame first. Then two plain chairs for the window table. Kiersten chose the order. Eduardo followed. When his hands itched to rush ahead, he slowed to her pace. The work was quieter that way. By afternoon they carried the bed frame into the back room. They stuffed a tick with clean straw from the yard. They set the chairs by the table where they drank their tea. The house had three rooms now that held a life, not just a fire. Kiersten walked the hall slowly. She touched the bedpost. She sat in one chair, then the other. "This is ours," she said. "Not yours. Ours. I can feel it in the wood." Eduardo stood in the doorway. He did not reach to pull her close. He did not claim the work as his own. "We're not done," he said. "There's still bare floor. Empty rooms." "We'll fill them," Kiersten said. "Slow. Together." She leaned back in the chair she had chosen. "But today we have somewhere to live. Not just somewhere to hide from the cold." That night they slept in a bed they had built with their own hands. The fire burned low in the hearth. The house was no longer one warm room with bare rooms around it. It was a home with places to live. The empty corners could wait. For the first time, Eduardo had built a life he could stand inside without fear.