Stopping at the river’s edge, Kate leaned back against a granite boulder and surveyed the vast landscape around her. The rock was not exactly the most comfortable of recliners. She made do anyway. A view so beautiful deserved to be looked at. She could think of no better place to collect her thoughts. The tall evergreen trees followed the river down to a broad estuary in the distance. Unlike the half-frozen, half-cold spit rain, the river really had frozen over, halting the rushing water with a thin top layer of ice.

In the spring especially, she could understand the appeal of Jedediah Woodward’s gift to his wife. In a time before flu medicine, one generally appreciated a warm, leafy landscape more than a cold, wet one. Today, with plenty of cold pills and doctors on hand in town, she enjoyed the view for its resilience. Everything froze. Everything died in winter. But that was all the more reason to flourish and blossom come April. Kate sat on the edge of it all, taking in deep breaths of fresh tree breezes as she reckoned with her failings.

She’d failed him, the man with eyes as cold as this landscape. Something in Clark wanted to come out. She saw the hesitant hope hiding in his distant eyes. So why was he being so cruel to her? What had she done to deserve his devil-may-care attitude? She ran circles around this question, poking and prodding and second-guessing every decision she’d made this morning. Every turn she took led her to another brick wall. Every time she thought she’d grabbed onto an answer, her hands clutched at empty air.

She’d been kind and open and honest with him. Maybe she’d been a bit pushy and he made her heart race when he even glanced at her with his hypnotic green eyes, sure, but overall, she’d done nothing but try to help him.

For the first time in a long time, Kate considered the possibility of someone else’s failure. Maybe she hadn’t failed him. Maybe nothing she could do would open him up. Emily could be right about him. Maybe he just…wasn’t a nice guy. Maybe he’d been cruel to her to get her to leave.

With that horrifying yet liberating thought, the full weight of his insults bayoneted her in the chest. You don’t care about me. I don’t care about Christmas. I don’t care about you. She heard them the first time, but blamed herself for their stings. Now, she accepted the full weight of his hatred. It burned her worse than the frostbite she was no doubt getting out here in this rain.