She'd gone out back to bring in more kindling from the covered pile near the rear wall. She was there longer than made sense for the task. When she came back in, she set the wood down carefully and didn't say anything, but she looked at Hadley differently. Not with pity, not with anything thinking sentimental. With the specific recognition of someone who has also stood in front of a grave and understood.
There are kinds of loss that don't have a bottom. He noticed the look, didn't comment. Later that evening, after the food was done and the fire was low and Nayeli had convinced her sister to sleep despite the ankle that was still puffed and sore, Nayeli stayed awake. She sat near the fire, so did he. They sat on opposite sides of it, not looking at each other.
Two people not sleeping. Close enough to the fire that the warmth was real. "There are two markers," she said. "Yes, your wife. Yes."
A silence. Then quietly, "The other one." His hands were still on his knees. He kept them still. "My son," he said, "he came early in December, same year as Eleanor."
Stopped. He didn't have a chance to Another stop, a long one. "I never wrote a name on the marker." The fire popped. Nayeli said nothing, which was the right thing to say.
That night, Hadley did something he hadn't done in longer than he could honestly account for. He went out to check on Rex after supper. Routine. Always checked on Rex. And he found himself talking, not about the fence.
Not about the weather or the work or anything practical. He stood in the warm dark of the barn. Rex's large head turned toward him with that patient half asleep attention horses have, and he talked about Eleanor. About the morning light in winter when it came through the kitchen window at an angle and caught the dust in the air and made everything look like a painting. About how she could burn three different things on the stove simultaneously and still somehow produce something good to eat.
About the way she sang to herself when she thought he was outside. And then stopped the instant she heard his boots on the porch and pretended she hadn't been singing at all. He talked for a while. Rex listened the way Rex always listened with complete undivided equine attention occasionally blinking. What Hadley didn't know, couldn't know, was that the barn wall was thin and the cabin window was cracked open a finger's width for air despite the cold.
And Tsula was not as deeply asleep as she appeared. She lay in the dark with her sister breathing softly beside her and she listened to a man she'd known for three days talk to his horse about his dead wife. Not with drama. Not with grief on display. Just talking like Eleanor was someone he thought about anyway all the time and it happened to come out into words tonight.