The wooden spice bowl did not hit the flagstones a second time.
As Elin turned toward the dresser to reach for the salt crock, her elbow brushed the turned ashwood rim near the edge of the board, and Jon’s left hand was already waiting six inches below the lip to catch it cleanly out of the air. He set the bowl upright beside the butter churn without a sound.
Elin froze with her hand half-extended, her grey nurse’s eyes narrowing as they dropped from his face to the ten pale rings circling his fingers and then to the rolled-up linen cuff of his right sleeve, where the fresh second band of white scar tissue gleamed above the carved bone mark.
“Another one,” Elin said quietly. She did not waste a breath asking whether he was dreaming or sick; nine lives of practice had honed her reading of his posture down to a single glance at his shoulders. She reached out, took his right wrist between her warm, flour-dry fingers, and turned his forearm toward the tallow light. “Two bands on the arm now. Who did we lose at the end of the fifth day?”
Jon reached into his apron pocket, drew out the tiny, crescent-edged milk tooth that Nell would not shed from her lower gum until tomorrow night, and laid it in the center of Elin’s palm as his customary pledge of unbroken memory.
