But there was something underneath that. Not humor exactly. More like warmth. The kind that doesn't advertise itself. That you find when you're not looking for it.
She said things sometimes, cockeyed things, things that stayed with him. One afternoon she said, "My grandmother told me that the most important skill in healing is knowing when not to do anything. Just to stay. Just to be present." She said, "Most people heal faster from presence than from medicine."
She said it while checking his binding. Not looking at him and he thought about that for the rest of the day. 11 days after the attack. Malone came back. Not in the night.
Not with subtlety. He came at mid-morning. The sky clear and cold riding at the front of five men in a loose line. Unhurried. Confident.
The confidence of a man who'd thought about this more carefully this time and believed he'd thought of everything. Hadley saw them from the north window. He didn't move for a full 10 seconds. Just watched them come. Five he counted plus Malone.
Six total. Same as before. Maybe the two who'd gone through the cabin door had reconsidered their career choices. Couldn't blame them. He turned from the window.
Nayeli was already watching him. He didn't say anything. She said, "How many?" "Six." She nodded once.
Tsula was at the wall. She'd been adding to the drawing. A new section she'd been working on for three days. Something she hadn't let him see yet. Covering it with her body when he came near, as if shy about it for the first time.
She stopped now, set down the charcoal, turned. Her expression was the expression of someone who has been expecting something. The relief of a feared thing finally arriving. "We should go out," Nayeli said. Hadley looked at her.
"The three of us," she said. "Together." He opened his mouth. She met his eyes. He closed his mouth.
He went first through the door onto the porch, rifle in hand. Malone and his men were 30 yards out, stopped, arranged in the loose way of men who are trying to look casual while being entirely not casual. Malone looked the same as before, pleasant in that deliberate way. Like being pleasant was a tool he kept sharpened. He opened his mouth, and then the door opened behind Hadley.
And Nayeli walked out and stood on his left, and Tsula walked out and stood on his right. Not with weapons, not with anything demonstrative, just standing, upright, present. The way you stand in front of something that belongs to you and you know it, and the thing that happened to Malone's face, small, but real, a recalculation. He'd expected what? A man trying to hold a door, a man negotiating from weakness.