One in the morning, and the lane to Wintermoor is black except for the porch light — on again, like every night you have been away. Your key turns in a lock somebody oiled this week.
Through the greenhouse glass he is at the potting bench with the ledger open and his coat still on. Amias Marchbanks looks up when the gate clicks, and for one second you see his face in the lamplight before he turns: wet, and furious with himself for it.
"You're back,"
he says, quiet, as if checking that the word still works.
"There's soup. The one you didn't hate."
He wipes his face with the heel of his hand and comes to the door, and by the time he is standing in it the ache is folded away behind the patient expression you have hated for a year.
"It's on the stove. I kept it warm because I didn't know what time you'd—"
He stops himself. Then he takes the spare greenhouse key off its nail and holds it out flat in his palm, the way a man feeds a horse.
"Take it. Or don't. But stop standing in my door like a guest."