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Why not?

“Because I don’t need you to sign for me.”

I don’t want him to. Signing matters, but it’s harder to ignore. It traps me, leaving me nowhere to hide—which is why Folk’s doing it and—god, why do I want to punch something already?

Folk lowers his hand, rotating his wrist, an unconscious movement I’ve seen him do a thousand times since he came home from war for good. He’s never told me why, and I’ve never told him it makes my bones hurt to know he found the time to learn BSL when he was embedded in Afghanistan.

And so here we are, staring at each other in the dusty barn until his gaze drops to my wrist, and the bracelets bunched there. Leather. Stone. A braid of ocean-blue thread that wasn’t there when I came to Porth Luck.

I wonder if he’s going to sign about that too, but the damaged barn roof distracts him. “You need to fix that if you’ve got kids running around here.”

Kids.

Plural.

He knows about Oscar.

Without telling him I’d never let Aras or Ivy anywhere near the barn, I pick up the oil and leave. Scale Edna and drop behind the wheel. It’s in me to drive off and leave it at that, but I gun the engine instead and wait, because—actually, I don’t know why. It just happens and Folk catches me up a few seconds later. Gives me a look—the kind Iggy should probably have given me before I turned into a petulant brat.

That’s not what you are.

I know this, because Folk told me so, when he finally made it home the Christmas after a deadly virus razed my hearing. When I hated the entire world for feeling so suffocatingly quiet. When I hated how hard everyone around me was listening to everything I said while I missed their voices so much it hurt more than the pain in my head I’ll never forget.

The pain I told Oscar about the first night he slept in my bed before I knew he was going to. Before I knew how it felt to wake up to his big warm hand on my skin.

Folk says something.

I miss it. “What?”

He shakes his head. Ironically, he can’t hear me over the tractor engine.

I shut it off.

He comes closer and extends his hand.

I take it without thinking and feel the callouses indented in his fingers from too many years with a weapon in his hand. Machine guns. Sniper rifles. The endless patience he inherited from our father stained blood red.

Why did you leave us?

I’ve never asked. None of us have. I think about asking him now, but as the rough skin on my own fingers catches his, I stop thinking about missed Christmases and my parents hiding from the ten o’clock news. I remember that he’s here, up in my business and alive enough to annoy me, and I hold that memory close as Folk waits for me to give him my full attention.

When I do, he studies my face and touches his own throat. “Are you sick?”

“No.”

He holds my gaze another long moment. Then he nods, and that’s it. He believes me and all it took was a ten-second conversation.

“Sorry.” The apology spills out of me. “I don’t know why I made that so hard.”

Folk squeezes my fingers and lets go of my hand. “You didn’t.”

“Liar.”

He shrugs, not denying it. But he grins and that’s enough for me, because I remember when my brother stopped smiling, and how it felt to believe he never would again.

I raise my hand and sign: Thanks for checking on me. I appreciate it.

Folk’s grin widens. “Now you’re the liar.”