One, Two or Three Rooms‪?‬

The Bennett family had rooted themselves into the salted, unyielding soil of Good Hope, Massachusetts, for as long as the county seat had kept records and probably some decades before. Their house, perched on a wind-blasted hill above the town, had once been a proud, white-painted beacon. By the time Sarah Bennett reached twenty-three, its shingles curled like old birch bark and drafts whistled through the beadboard walls, promising that neither house nor inhabitants would outlast another hard winter.

Sarah's earliest memories were of cold: Of chapped knuckles and woolen stockings hung above the stove to dry, of her father's voice echoing in the kitchen as he quarreled with the wind about how little firewood he'd chopped. As a girl, she'd scurried between the chopping block and the hearth, dragging kindling with raw, purpled fingers, feeling as if the air itself resented her presence.

Now, she was alone in those tasks—her siblings buried in the family plot; her mother's once-capable hands curled uselessly in her lap. The days blended into each other, a gray cotton wadding of monotony secured at either end by the sunrise and the iron clang of the supper bell.