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But she didn’t say it on the walk out either. The forest was too loud around us—a jay accompanied us for a quarter mile, jeering, and the thrushes picked up its chorus as we passed. Hazel walked ahead, clutching the journal to her chest, like a child clinging to a stuffed animal after a nightmare. My fur still vibrated with the memory of the shimmer, like a plucked string. The air against my skin felt thin.

She didn’t say my name on the trail. Or in the truck. Or when I opened the door for her.

I knew the sound of her voice. The way she called me from the porch when she needed help lifting something. The way she whispered it in bed, half-breath, half-question. The way she said it when she discovered something remarkable and turned to see if I noticed it too.

The way she said it when she wanted me.

She didn’t want me tonight. I told myself she wanted her own thoughts and a wall to lean her head against while she decided how to tell me.

The truck’s engine ticked as it cooled for a full minute before she moved. She sat with one palm flat on Grandma’s journal in her lap, and I sat beside her, letting her have the silence. I had nothing to offer that wouldn’t demand a response.

I unclipped her seatbelt. “I’ll take your pack.”

She let me climb down first and come around to open her door. She followed me up the porch steps, watching where her boots landed as if the steps were less familiar than the limestone had been.

Inside, she placed the journal on the kitchen table and stood beside it, both hands flat on the cover—the same stance she’d taken over the flowers. She didn’t remove her jacket.

I put the pack on the bench and began unloading it: flashlights, spare batteries, the collection kit she hadn’t opened, the four capped vials of water she’d drawn from the pool. I labeled the vials as I went: site, depth, temperature, time. It was work she didn’t ask me to do, but I couldn’t stop.

Her voice came from the table. “You must be starving.”

“A little.”

If she was hungry, I’d rustle up a meal, but after a moment, she collected the journal, brushing past me on the way to the bedroom. The door closed behind her.

I heard her sit on the edge of the bed. Then nothing.

I could sense her heartbeat, but I couldn’t read her thoughts.

What did she see?

The answer came before I had finished asking. She’d seen exactly what I was, tape measure out and light meter on. She’d stood beside me as a limestone wall dissolved because I’d walked up to it.

I set the water sample vials on the shelf above the sink, arranging them by volume, largest at the back. Moving the honey jars two shelves down to make room took longer than it should have.

Den. Take her under. Keep.

My bear had gone quiet on the walk out of the caves. He had what he wanted: the deep dark, the ward, the sense of a place that would hold her if I chose. He lay under my ribs, struggling to make sense of everything.

I made bread dough. It didn’t matter that we already had bread; my hands needed work, and dough was the answer. Flour, water, salt, honey, the sourdough starter I kept alive on the sill. I worked it until the tremor was gone from my fingers.

The bedroom door remained closed. The stove ticked. On the other side of the wall, her breathing settled into sleep.

Four days until she left.

I set the dough to rise and washed my hands in cold water until they were numb, letting the thing I’d been not-deciding become a decision.

Not with any drama. The way you decide a limb needs to come down. You look at it. You see how it’s holding. You see where it’ll fall if it goes on its own, and where it’ll fall if you take it down yourself. You choose the second because the second one lets you protect the person you love.

Then I made a list in my head of everything that needed doing before she left.

The bedroom door was still closed when I went out to the shed hours later. My bear didn’t stir. He had told himself, in the small hours, that there was nothing to keep.

She was going to leave. The department. The offer—the tenure-track one she’d told the voice on the other end of the phone she wanted.

I’d heard enough of that conversation to know what she wanted. The rest, I filled in myself.

She was going to find a way to tell me that didn’t hurt me, but such a thing was impossible.