That Tsula closed her eyes. She thought about her grandmother, about the camp. About all the voices she'd been hearing in her sleep since the night they ran. She thought, "This man knows what it is to carry something that doesn't go away." And then she slept, really slept.
For the first time since the attack, the fourth day. Tsula came downstairs. She'd taken to calling the loft area upstairs even though it was only five ladder rungs, and found Hadley already outside and Nayeli standing at the window with her arms crossed watching him split wood. "He was up before light." Nayeli said without turning.
"He's always up before light," Tsula answered in Apache. He'd been cataloging Hadley's patterns. Couldn't help it. She cataloged everyone's patterns. "He left food."
Nayeli said. "There was a pot on the stove. Oats and dried fruit still warm. Two bowls set out. One spoon each."
Tsula sat down and pulled a bowl toward her. Her ankle ached in the particular morning way it had. Sharper first thing, then easing as it warmed up. Nayeli sat down across from her. They ate in silence for a moment.
"He's not what I expected." Tsula said finally. Nayeli's eyes were still on the window, on Hadley in the yard, axe rising and falling, steady as a clock. "No." She agreed.
"The graves I know, he didn't put a name." Nayeli was quiet for a long time. Her jaw worked the way it did when she was turning something over. "Some things." She said carefully.
"Take longer to say out loud than people think they should." Tsula looked at her sister. "You sound like grandmother." "Good." They finished breakfast.
On the fourth afternoon, Nayeli asked if she could help. Hadley was patching a section of the cabin wall. Where the wind had worked a gap open near the floor. Stuffing cloth into the crack, which was a temporary fix. And he knew it, but temporary was better than nothing.
He looked up at her standing over him with her arms at her sides and the expression of someone who is not asking for something as much as stating an intention. "You should still be resting." He said. "I've rested." He looked at her.
She looked back. He handed her the cloth and moved aside. She crouched down and examined the gap first. Actually looked at it. Assessed it, then began packing the cloth in with more systematic efficiency than his own effort had produced.
She had deft hands, sure movements. The hands of someone who'd spent years doing precise, careful work. "You were a healer," he said, not asking. He'd been putting together small pieces, "Learning to be one," she said without stopping what she was doing. My grandmother was teaching me.