Lily held him tighter. June turned down the kitchen light and made hot chocolate for three, adding more marshmallows than anyone actually needed. Outside, the farm took the beating it could not escape. Inside, Ethan sat with his daughter and understood with dreadful clarity that the hardest part of the storm would begin after the wind stopped.
Morning came slowly, washed in a gray light that made the fields look unfamiliar. The storm had knocked out power along half the county road and left strips of roofing in the orchard like enormous pieces of broken tin. A branch lay across the driveway. One of the barn's walls had shifted outward, and water stood in the low storage area where Ethan had kept a season's worth of packaged produce.
He walked the property with a notebook in his hand because he needed to turn the damage into something he could count. Half the remaining squash was unsellable. Most of the apples stored under the damaged roof were wet, bruised, or mixed with debris. The old baler had been exposed to rain, an electrical panel had taken water, and two interior beams would need replacing before he could safely use the barn again.
June stood beside him in rubber boots, holding the flashlight even though there was enough daylight to see. "You can't climb in there," she said when he leaned toward a damaged support. "The wall's moved. You need somebody who understands what they're looking at."
"I know."
"You said that the last time you tried to repair your own shoulder."
"That was different."
"You had a ladder, an impossible job, and the belief that the laws of physics would make an exception because you were busy. Seems related to me."
He gave her a tired look. She did not smile, which meant she was frightened in a way she preferred not to show. Ethan stepped back from the building and made a call to a contractor who had repaired their roof years earlier. The man promised to look at the damage when the roads reopened. The wait could be several days.
By the afternoon, farmers from three neighboring properties had arrived. Walter Beckett brought a trailer and offered a dry corner of his produce shed. A younger grower named Amara Reed brought crates and gloves, and two teenage boys from the high school agricultural program helped carry usable boxes into the farmhouse. The work went quickly once there were enough hands, though every crate they saved seemed to draw attention to the ones they couldn't.
Ethan hated that part. He hated seeing people spend their time on his problem, hated being the one who couldn't offer more than coffee and sandwiches in return. He was grateful, genuinely grateful, but gratitude did not magically erase the feeling that he was failing people who had expected him to be competent. He tried to work twice as hard as everybody else until Amara took a crate out of his hands.
"You're running on no sleep," she said. "You're going to hurt yourself if you keep pretending otherwise."
"There isn't time to rest."
"There's never time to rest on a farm. That's why we need other people. Go help your daughter. Let us carry a few boxes."