"I don't know." Quieter this time. "But I do."
She stares at me. Tears still falling. Pottery clutched in her hand.
She makes a sound.
Small. Wrong. Not a sound she makes.
Then her knees buckle.
I'm already there. Catching her. The pottery falls from her hand into the ash and I don't let her follow it down—one arm under her knees, the other behind her shoulders, lowering both of us together.
We end up on the ground. Me sitting in what used to be her cottage. Her in my lap. The ash soaking through my pants and I don't care, my arms full of a small shaking woman and I don't care, her face pressed into my chest and the sounds coming out of her now are wet and broken and human and I don't care about any of it except that she's the one making them.
She cries.
Her whole body shaking with it, her hands fisted in the fabric of my shirt, her face hidden against my collarbone, the world too bright to look at right now.
I hold her.
That's all. One hand at the back of her head, fingers in her hair. The other arm wrapped around her ribs. My chin on top of her head and my body curved around hers, making myself the wall between her and the wreckage.
I don't tell her it's going to be okay.
I don't know that it's going to be okay.
I let her be.
Time stops mattering. Could be ten minutes. Could be an hour. The sun moves and I don't track it, the wind picks up and I shift slightly so my back blocks it. Her face stays pressed to my chest and she keeps crying and I keep holding. The only thing I'm doing—the only thing I can do—is be the thing that doesn't move.
Eventually the shaking slows.
Her breath evens out. Still ragged. Still wet. But evening.
She doesn't move. Doesn't lift her head. Just stays there, inside the circle of my arms, breathing.
I don't move either.
Eventually her fingers uncurl from my shirt. One at a time. Slow.
She lifts her head. Doesn't look at me. Wipes her face on her sleeve.
Pushes off my chest with both hands and stands.
I help—one hand at her elbow until she's upright. Then her arm slips out of my grip and she's walking.
We walks deeper into the ruins. Crouches again, sifts through rubble. Pulls out an iron pot, blackened but intact.
"This survived." Sets it aside. Keeps searching. "And this." A trowel, handle burned away, blade good. "And this." Iron hooks from the wall. A stone mortar, cracked but usable.
I crouch beside her and start pulling debris away from the foundation edge. A hinge. Another pot. The remains ofa kitchen knife, wooden handle gone. We work the rubble, shoulder to shoulder. Her arm brushes mine when she reaches for a piece of twisted metal.
"The hearth was my favorite part." Her fingers trace the rubble. "I found the stones in the river. Carried them one at a time. It took weeks."
"How old were you?"
"Fourteen. Maybe fifteen. I lost track for a while." She pulls a stone from the rubble—smooth, river-worn. "This is one. See the flat edge? I picked them for that. So they'd stack evenly."
"You carried these yourself?"
