Page 19 of Mud & Moxie
He nods toward the horizon. There’s a thin bruise of gray over the tree line. “Weather says wind tonight.”
“Good wind or bad wind?”
His mouth quirks. “Is there a good wind?”
“Hair wind,” I say. “The kind that makes you look like you planned your life.”
He huffs something like a laugh. “Then bad.”
***
We get one hour of normal—if normal is pasta that’s half butter, half apology, and Matthew reading the paper aloud like a cranky news station. The porch light clicks on as the sky goes pewter. My legs ache in a way that makes me feel honest.
A ping lands on my phone. A cookware brand I DM’d two weeks ago has circled back:Proof-of-concept supper? Send a deck.The wordsupperblooms like a lantern in my chest.
“Good news?” Matthew asks, not looking up from the classifieds like he’s eighty.
“Potentially great,” I say. “If we can pull a table together, we might have a sponsor to underwrite the rest.”
“Table we have,” Dylan says, rinsing dishes. “Bread I can mill. People who’d come, I can think of ten.” He says it like a ledger, but I hear the hope he won’t admit to.
He dries his hands and takes two steps toward the mudroom. The wind chooses that moment to punch the house in the ribs. The screen door slams once, hard, even though it’s latched.
He glances at the window. “Tarp,” he says. “North roof.”
“I’ll spot,” I say before he can tell me to stay.
Matthew drops the paper. “I’ll spot,” he says at the same time.
We end up a three-person unit without speaking about it. Boots on. Jackets. Headlamps. The yard is a moving thing now, shadows sprinting under the floodlight as the trees bow and unbow. The tarp on the north side of the barn snaps and bellows like a sail about to tear free.
“Ladder,” Dylan says, already moving.
“I’ve got it,” I say, grabbing the lower end. Matthew takes the middle. Dylan takes the top and we turn this twelve-foot aluminum argument into a coordinated act.
Chain lightning lights up the sky in the west. The count to thunder says we still have time.
Dylan braces the ladder, tests the rungs, and swings up like he was born to it. Matthew plants his feet and locks his hands on the side rails. I stand behind Matthew, hands raised, the human version of a safety net.
The wind gusts meaner. The tarp snaps. One corner rips free with the long, helpless sound of fabric losing a fight.
“Dylan—wait,” I say, voice sharper than I intend. He’s already three rungs up, already reaching for the loose flap, already cursing under his breath.
He pauses. Looks down. Meets my eyes.
I raise my chin. “We do this together.”
The ladder rattles. Thunder cracks closer, the kind that rolls through your ribs and rearranges your heartbeat.
He nods once. “Together,” he says.
And then the wind hits hard from the north, the ladder rocks, the tarp whips, and everything in me lifts with it.
The first cold drop of rain lands on my cheek like a warning.
The screen door on the porch bangs open behind us. The light wobbles in its fixture.
“Dylan!” I shout over the wind.
