Beatrice woke to find a note on the kitchen table beside a covered pot of porridge.

East fence down.

Food is warm.

Do not climb the back hill.

Ground gives way.

The handwriting was blunt and careful.

Every letter seemed built rather than written.

So began their life.

Jonah worked the orchard, mended fences, hauled wood, pressed cider, and tended three cows with the patient intensity of a man who trusted tasks more than people.

Beatrice washed curtains, patched linens, scrubbed old smoke from the ceiling beams, organized the pantry, and discovered that the house had been lonely long before she entered it.

They communicated with the slate.

Storm by nightfall.

The kettle leaks.

There are jars under the stairs.

You do not need to rise before me.

That last sentence made her pause.

She looked across the table at him.

“I have risen before everyone all my life.”

He could not hear the bitterness in her voice, but perhaps he saw it on her mouth.

He looked down and wrote, Then rest once.

Beatrice did not know what to do with that.

The town expected her to be miserable.

Owen came by on the fourth day under the excuse of delivering a sack of flour.

He stood in the doorway, dripping rain onto the floor she had just scrubbed, and looked around with open curiosity.

“So,” he said, “has he figured out the joke yet?”

Beatrice did not move from the stove.

Jonah was in the barn.

For once, she was grateful he could not hear.

“Go home, Owen.”

He smiled.

“This is no way to speak to the only family willing to visit.”

“You came to see whether I was suffering.

You have seen me standing upright.

Now leave.”

His smile faded.

“Don’t grow proud because a deaf man took pity on you.”

Before she could answer, Jonah appeared behind him in the rain.

He had an ax balanced loosely in one hand and no expression on his face.

Owen turned, swallowed, and stepped off the porch.

Jonah watched him go.

Then he came inside, set the ax by the wall, and picked up the slate.

What did he want?

Beatrice considered lying.

Instead, she wrote, To see whether the joke hurt.

Jonah stared at the words.

Something tightened in his jaw.

He wrote, It did.

She thought he meant the town’s joke.

Then he added, But not the part he thinks.

That sentence stayed with her for days.

On the ninth night, Beatrice woke to a crash.

She sat upright, heart hammering.

The house was dark except for a low orange pulse beneath the bedroom door.

Another sound followed, muffled and awful, like a man choking down pain.

She threw on her shawl and ran to the kitchen.

Jonah was on his knees beside the hearth.

A broken cup lay near his hand.

Coffee spread across the floorboards, dark as blood in the firelight.

He had one palm clamped over his left ear.

His face was gray, eyes squeezed shut, shoulders rigid.

“Jonah.”

He did not respond.

She dropped beside him and touched his arm.

He flinched so violently she jerked back.

His eyes opened.

They were wild with pain and humiliation.

Beatrice seized the slate.

What is happening?

He read the words, breathing hard.

For a