Page 12 of Kept By the Silent Mountain Man

"Plumb."

"You're very good at this."

He drinks his coffee. "I know."

I bite down on a smile. Fourteen months ago, I stood on this hill for the first time and watched this man stand completely still for two full minutes reading the ground and thought:serviceable.I have since revised this assessment considerably.

I put my free hand on my stomach. Fourteen weeks. The nausea is finally backing off, the reality of it solidifying the way things solidify when you stop bracing against them and just let them be true.

He sets his mug down now and crouches to read the base course with his hands, running his thumb along the mortar joint the way he runs his thumb along everything he's made — checking, confirming. I watch his hands. I have spent anunreasonable amount of time this past year watching his hands, and I have zero regrets about this.

"Come here," he says, without looking up.

I crouch beside him. He takes my hand and puts it flat against the stone — the same way I put my hand on the Jamie stone that first night in his workshop, the gesture that started everything, the first thing we said to each other that neither of us had to translate.

The stone is cold and solid under my palm. The valley spreads below us, the river catching the early light, the memorial garden visible on the slope above Ridgeline Road — the kinnikinnick in its third season, the wild grasses dense and settled, the Jamie stone at its heart holding the morning the way good stone always does.

"It's going to be good," I say. I mean the house.

He looks at me. "I know," he says. He means more than that.

I lean into him, and he puts his arm around me. We stay there in the early morning with our hands on the stone, and the foundation rising around us and the life we're building is already more than I knew how to want.