“There’s a map of the loch?”
“There’s a map of everything. Come, I’ll show ye where the fish like to hide.”
He didn’t realize until he heard Ava’s quiet exhale behind him that he had made a promise about showing Esther something. That he had assumed, without thinking, that there would be a next time.
A map, a lesson, and a walk out here again in different weather.
They settled on a flat stretch of bank while Ava lay out what she’d apparently packed without mentioning. A cloth, bannocks, cold meat, two apples, and a small jar of something that turned out to be honey. Esther immediately became very interested in the honey.
“Ye planned this,” he said quietly enough that Esther, who had crouched at the water’s edge to look for the smug fish, wouldn’t hear.
“Aye.” Ava didn’t look up from the jar. “Was I wrong?”
He looked at Esther, who was now narrating something in a low voice to the surface of the water.
“Nay,” he said. “Ye weren’t wrong.”
Ava turned back to the jar of honey. Not quickly enough, he might have caught the corner of her mouth before she got it under control. She pressed her lips together and said nothing, which was, he was beginning to understand, how she looked when she was pleased and had decided not to make anything of it.
They ate with Esther between them again, sitting cross-legged on the cloth, honey on her bannock and a look of profound contentment on her face that Noah was quite sure he hadn’t seen before. Not like this. Not this relaxed and unguarded.
She ate without watching him. Spoke without measuring the words first.
When she reached across him for the second apple, she said, “Excuse me,” routinely, the way a child does when they feel safe enough not to think about manners because manners have simply become part of how things are.
“She hasnae eaten like this before,” he said quietly to Ava.
“She eats well most mornings now.” Ava handed him a bannock. “Took about a week before she stopped leavin’ half her plate.”
“She was leavin’ half her plate?”
“She was worried about takin’ too much,” Ava said it simply, without making it into something he was supposed to feel guilty about. Just a fact, offered so he’d know. “She’s better now.”
He processed this in silence.
Later, Esther discovered that throwing small stones into the shallows caused the ripples to meet in interesting patterns. This completely occupied her.
Noah and Ava sat back and watched, and the silence between them had none of the charged quality of the study two nights ago.
It was, strangely, simply comfortable.
“She greeted me,” Noah said.
“She practiced for two days,” Ava said. “I wasnae supposed to tell ye that.”
Noah said nothing for a moment. He looked back at Esther. At her small, serious face, still fixed on the ripples, entirely unaware her secret had just been betrayed.
Something flickered across his face that he didn’t manage to hide before it showed. He turned away, facing the water again.
“I willnae tell her ye told me,” he said.
“She’d be mortified if ye did,” Ava agreed, with no remorse whatsoever.
He looked over at her. She was watching Esther with the gentle attention she always wore when she thought no one was looking at her, unguarded, warm, and completely genuine.
The morning sun had caught her hair where it had come loose at her temples.
“Ye’ve done somethin’ I couldnae,” he said. “In two years of tryin’.”
