The mushrooms were coming up well this season.
Edna worked along the fence line on her knees, fingers finding each mushroom at the base and twisting it free with the automatic motion of someone whose hands knew the job well enough to do it without instruction.
The morning was quiet. She preferred mornings now. Fewer faces. Fewer things that required her to arrange her expression into something it didn’t feel like being.
Her mind drifted the way it always did when her hands were busy.
Down the same paths. Into the same rooms.
Two years ago Eddan had come through the back door with mud on his boots and that particular brightness in his face that she recognised immediately — not happiness exactly, something more unsettled than happiness, something that hadn’t found its shape yet.
“Sit
