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I moved around to join him and pushed my soil probe into the earth. “The soil’s saturated.”

“Shouldn’t be. Ridge drains west.”

I tested the ground again a few feet downslope, then moved farther out. The third probe slid easily through dark, loose soil.

“There.” I pointed back toward the maple. “Compaction around the root plate. Something’s preventing the water from draining properly. The fungus may not be attacking the tree at all. It could be responding to stress.”

Barrett looked uphill. I followed his gaze to a fallen trunk twenty feet away, half-buried beneath storm debris. Behind it, rainwater had pooled in a shallow depression.

He crossed the distance quickly and began pulling branches aside. I followed more carefully, and together we uncovered the remains of an old drainage channel almost completely blocked by leaves, branches, and mud.

Barrett stared down at it, then looked at me.

I tried not to look smug. “You would have found it,” I said.

“Eventually.”

“But I found it first.”

One corner of his mouth moved. It took me a second to realize he was fighting a smile.

“You found a fungus,” he said.

“Which led us to a stressed root system.”

“Which led us to blocked drainage.”

“Therefore, fungus.”

He shook his head and reached for a fallen branch. “Help me move this.”

I set down my bag and joined him.

For the next twenty minutes, we cleared the channel together. Barrett handled most of the heavy work because pretending I could shift logs as easily as a seven-foot man-bear would have been ridiculous, but I scraped compacted soil away from the runoff route and redirected the shallow channel without disturbing the maple’s feeder roots.

When the obstruction finally gave way, trapped rainwater spilled through the gap and ran downhill in a muddy rush.

Barrett rested his hands on his hips and watched it go. “That’ll help,” he said, quiet satisfaction in his voice.

I looked back at the maple. Soil, roots, fungus, water, tree. Different pieces of the same system. Barrett had seen what the tree was doing. I had seen what was growing on it. Neither observation would’ve been particularly useful alone.

The realization settled inside me, unexpectedly warm. “We make a good team.”

Barrett went completely still.

The faint smile disappeared from his mouth, and his gaze dropped to the branches at our feet. Whatever I’d said, it had landed differently than I’d intended.

“Don’t get used to it,” he said, bending to pick up one of the branches we’d moved.

I smiled despite myself. “Was that almost a compliment?”

Barrett glanced at me. “No.”

“It sounded like one.”

“It wasn’t.” He bent to haul another branch out of the drainage channel, setting it aside with insulting ease.

I followed with a much smaller one. “You admitted my fungus was useful.”