Free The Snowflake by Jamie Carie Page B

around me. There were his pants, so narrow at the waist but still requiring the rope belt he’d had to keep them up. His best shirt, a bright blue and his favorite. I remembered when I had bought it for him and how his pleased smile made my heart surge with love for him. I held the shirt up to my face and inhaled, closing my eyes and seeing him at his best. I knelt and looked down, my hand skimming the pile of the remains of his short life.
    My hand met with a hard edge. I picked it up, unwrapped the large bundle, and gasped. There, among the threadbare clothes and the old razor and strop, was the stolen food.
    Buck walked over. His eyes widened as he knelt beside me, took the bag of flour, and turned it over and over in his hands. “I can’t believe it. He didn’t even eat it. Was he trying to starve us? Starve you?”
    I looked up into Buck’s wide eyes and shook my head. “He never knew anything but fear. He grew skinny shoring up against it. I think he died trying to save himself from it.”
    “God have mercy.” We were both silent for a long moment, remembering Jonah, wondering what might have been if he’d been stronger, if he’d been sane.
    “What is that?” Buck gestured toward a silken bundle.
    I lifted the small, wrapped object. It was tied with a blue ribbon, the bow giving way easily as I pulled it apart. “I don’t . . .” I struggled for breath as the cloth fell away, revealing a photograph. I gazed up at Buck, my lips compressed and quivering.
    “It’s you.”
    “Yes.”
    “He loved you.”
    “The best he could. Yes.”
    The photograph had yellowed with age; the young woman staring back at me was thin and pale, strained, and in her eyes, I saw fear. I folded it up and eased it back in its silken ribbons, as if it were made of spiderwebs . . . or snowflakes. He’d been as fragile and yet as intricately designed as a snowflake.
    My brother had melted in the heat of life, and there was nothing I could have done about it.
    Buck grasped my hand. “Forgive yourself, Ellen. You did the best you could, more than most folks would have. Let him go.”
    I looked up into his sure eyes. Did he speak the truth? Had I really done the best I could have by Jonah? I could have found a way to keep him alive . . . I should have found a way. “But I failed.”
    “God did not give you this burden. It was placed on you by your parents—first by your father leaving and then by your mother making you promise to give up your life and future for your brother. That wasn’t God, Ellen.”
    “But God expects us to give up our lives for each other.”
    “Yes, He does say to lay down our lives for each other. But in His time and way. In seasons. When we obey Him and trust Him to help carry our burdens, it brings life; it doesn’t rob it.”
    I looked down at my hands. I hadn’t leaned on God for help or strength. I’d tried to carry the burden of Jonah by myself. If I’d had more faith and trusted God, would things have turned out differently? Grief stabbed at me anew, and for the first time I realized how important it was, how life changing it could be, to trust and obey God.
    “Come on.” Buck hauled me up and then turned back to packing the empty sled with his supplies.
    I bit down on my lower lip as I watched his movements, so familiar from the trail, swift, determined, economical. “When are you leaving?”
    “Within the hour.” He faced me and pulled out a leather pouch from his coat pocket. “Take this. You’ll be stuck here until spring thaw, and I want you to find a decent place to stay.”
    The fact that he could give me his money but not his heart tore through me like a lance, making me feel no better than a charity case to him. Besides, I would never be able to repay him. “No, I’ll be fine. Jonah and I had enough to get us through one winter.”
    Buck stared hard at me, as if trying to see if I was telling the truth.
    “Really. I—I will get a job.” I paused. It took every ounce of