MAILAH SAT WITH HER SHOULDER PRESSED AGAINST HIS ARM, watching the garden drown with the philosophical calm of someone who had already pulled enough weeds today and was content to let the rain handle the rest. The porch roof held. The cottage held. The mule from two days ago had not reappeared, which she considered a victory.
Grayson was quiet beside her.
Not the tactical quiet — not the quality of silence that meant he was calculating or suppressing or managing something.
Just quiet. His forearms resting on his knees, his eyes on the rain, his breathing at that slow unhurried pace that she had come to understand was him at actual rest.
It had taken four days to get here.
"Your brothers," she said.
He didn't tense. "What about them."
He didn't talk about his brothers often, and when he did it was in the particular register of someone describing colleagues rather than family.
"Do you miss them?" she asked.
