The first frost came early the year Thomas Hale turned sixteen.
It crept in overnight, glazing the fields in a thin, glassy sheen that shattered underfoot by morning. He noticed it before anything else—the silence. No birds. No wind. Just the brittle stillness of a world bracing itself.
By noon, his father was dead.
The accident had been quick, they said. A fall from the barn loft, a snapped neck, no suffering. The neighbors spoke in low voices, hats in their hands, offering the kind of comfort that sounded like facts because feelings were too dangerous to name.
Thomas didn’t cry.
Not when they carried his father’s body inside. Not when his mother collapsed into a chair, her hands trembling in her lap like they no longer belonged to her. Not even when his little sister, Eliza, asked in a small, confused voice why Papa wouldn’t wake up.
He just stood there, holding the door open as people came and went, letting the cold air pour in.
Someone had to.
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