One taller, two women standing together. Not a group that happened to be in the same place together. The way she'd drawn them, the way their shapes related to each other in the composition. Below the three figures, she'd drawn something small at the base of the cabin. Two small rectangles in the earth.
Two markers, just outlines, but unmistakable. And from the first marker, the larger one, a single line connecting up and outward to the figures above. Not heavy, just a line. Thin and deliberate connected, not gone. Connected.
Hadley stood in the middle of the room and looked at this drawing for a long time. His throat did something complicated. Tsula was at the table, not looking at him. Looking at her hands. Giving him the space to look without being watched.
"It's not finished." she said. "Quiet." "I thought I'd ask before I added more." He looked at the space still empty on the right side. "What were you going to add?" he said.
His voice came out more carefully than he intended. "Spring." she said. "Green." "Coming up from the ground." a pause. "If that's all right."
He looked at the wall, at the figures. At Eleanor's marker with its single connecting line reaching toward the living. At the small unnamed marker beside it. Just an outline. But there.
"Yes." he said. "That's all right." He went and put the coffee on. And Tsula picked up her charcoal. And behind him, very softly, she started adding spring, February, which in Wyoming is still very much winter, but winter in a different mode.
Less aggressive, less performatively brutal. The cold was still real. The snow was still present. But there was something different in the quality of the light. A slight lengthening of the days, a softness in the afternoon sun that hadn't been there in January.
Things were growing in the cabin, around the cabin. Between the three people in it. Hard to name exactly. Harder to point to. But present.
Hadley found himself doing things he hadn't done in years, without deciding to. Checking whether there was enough of whatever they'd been using most before he went to the supply shelf. Noticing when Tsula's drawing supplies were running low and finding more charcoal. Cutting slightly more wood than strictly necessary because the sound of being warm when it was cold outside had come to mean something it hadn't before. He was providing for more than himself.
And the thing was, the startling thing, it didn't feel like a burden. It felt like having a reason, which was different from what he'd had before. Before he had routines. And routines kept him moving, but reasons, reasons were something else. He found Nayeli at the graves again.