Because being present with it alone had always felt like it would be the thing that finally broke him. It didn't break him. He was still standing. He reached out and touched the top of the marker once. Just his thick fingertips to just for a second, then he straightened and went back inside.
Nayeli was at the stove. She heard him come in and she didn't turn around. Just kept doing what she was doing. Stirring something, adjusting the heat with the competence she'd developed in this kitchen over the weeks, moving around Sapped It's small geography as if she'd always known where everything was. Hadley hung up his coat, stood in the middle of the room.
"Thank you," he said. She stilled for just a moment. Then she kept stirring. "For what?" she said. Neutral, giving him room to decide how much he wanted to say.
"The branch." A pause. "The pine had good shape," she said. The needles were still green, which wasn't an answer, which was exactly the right answer. He sat down at the table and Nayeli brought two cups of coffee and sat across from him and they drank in the kind of silence that has understanding in it.
The kind that doesn't need filling. Recovery. That's what the next several days were. Not just of Hadley's side, which was healing cleanly. Nayeli checked it every morning and evening with the same focused efficiency, reported back in the same neutral tone, showed no sign of finding this arrangement unusual, even though it was considerably unusual.
Recovery of the whole shape of things, the barn half-burned. The east wall and part of the roof needed to come down and be rebuilt. That was weeks of work even in good weather. And this wasn't good weather. Hadley started on it the day he felt steady enough to swing a hammer without his side complaining too loudly.
He didn't ask for help. So Nayeli brought tools to where he was working without asking if he wanted them. So Tsula started stacking the salvageable lumber without announcing she was going to. And somehow the three of them were working together within an hour of him starting, moving around each other in the small space of the ruined barn with the ease of people who've learned each others rhythms without meaning to. Which was a thing which Hadley noticed and didn't comment on.
Which was very much his style. Tsula's ankle was almost right, almost. She still stepped downstairs with the right foot first, still shifted her weight when she stood too long. But she was moving freely, fully. The swelling was gone.