The winters in the New World were brutal.

It would be the second one Hester Prynne saw since she had left England. As soon as the leaves started to turn brilliant shades of red, orange, and yellow, she frowned. Summer had gone. The change was inevitable, but she wasn't ready for it.

It was almost a year since her husband had sent her ahead to Boston in the Massachusetts Bay colony to establish their home, and she had. She had set up the house, grew her own vegetables, pickled them, caught rabbits, smoked meats and fish, and sewed and embroidered clothing for money. It was hard, but it was done. She could bear everything but the winter again.

Her husband hadn't written to her in months, but news was slow to travel across the sea. He had business still in England but had bought the land in the colonies and needed her to claim it on his behalf.

In truth, the months alone had invigorated Hester. She thrived doing what she wanted without the sharp critiques of her husband. She was married young to an older, wealthier man, pushed by her family so they had one less mouth to feed, a family in poverty with a decaying old coat of arms in memory of a better past. She, a young girl green to the world, was pushed to marry with no foresight for her own happiness in the choice.

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An older husband was of poor countenance but wise with words, and he had no knowledge of how to connect to people in person. His letters were thoughtful, his essays researched, but face to face there was a disconnect. He did research in medicines to help mankind, but he did not or could not care for a man as an individual. For her, he never understood her wants or needs, and his affection was limited. Her husband was smart but cold, his words critical of everything she did. At first she didn't know how she would manage anything on her own.

But she had managed in her small wooden house with its quaint gable peak in the new bustling seaside New England town.

Her husband wanted her as a wife because she was young and pretty with mahogany dark hair and dark almond eyes. He thought by his own folly he could make her love him, but she claimed no love and no love ever grew. She was too naive as a bride in the Old Country to know if she could stand up to him. He was a weight, a shackle around her ankle, for the three years of their marriage. She did it because she didn't think she had a choice.

She waited for news, and every ship that came in without news and without him was a relief. She knew his return was inevitable, like winter, and it filled her with dread.

It was still autumn. And she was still independent for now.