The ride back from town was silent, but it wasn't the heavy, suffocating silence Sam was used to. It was the silence of two people who had just survived a small skirmish. The three bags of lime mortar sat in the back of the truck, their weight keeping the vehicle grounded as they bounced over the potholed driveway.
When they reached the clearing, the sun was beginning to slant through the trees in long, golden bars. The fountain looked smaller somehow, more fragile now that the missing keystone had been identified as a "stolen heart."
"We can't put the heart back if the ribs are broken," Sam said, hauling the first bag of mortar toward the well. He didn't wait for Twinkle to prompt him this time. He grabbed a plastic bucket and a hoe, his movements methodical.
Twinkle sat on her favorite stump, watching him. She didn't offer to help with the mixing, sensing that Sam needed the ritual of it. "You handled Mr. Miller well," she said softly. "Most people would have just turned around and left when he started talking about the 'Thorne luck'."
Sam poured water into the grey powder, the dust rising in a fine mist that settled on his eyelashes. "I've spent ten years letting people talk about me like I'm a ghost. It gets exhausting after a while, realizing you're the one who gave them the haunting."
He began to mix. It was a physical, grueling task. The mortar was thick and stubborn, requiring a steady, rhythmic strength. As he worked, he felt the tension in his shoulders—not the tension of anxiety, but the strain of actual effort. It felt good. It felt like he was pulling himself out of a deep well, one inch at a time.
For the next two hours, Sam worked on the lower tiers of the fountain. He used the new, heavy-duty trowel to scrape away the crumbly, century-old binder and replace it with the fresh, wet lime. He tucked the mortar into the crevices with a surgeon's precision, wiping away the excess with a damp cloth.
"It has to cure," Sam explained, more to himself than to her. "If you rush it, it cracks. If it's too dry, it won't bond. You have to give it time to become part of the stone."
Twinkle walked over and ran a finger near a fresh joint, careful not to touch the wet surface. "Is that what you're doing, Sam? Curing?"
Sam paused, the trowel mid-air. He looked at his hands—cracked, grey, and stronger than they had been a week ago. He looked at the fountain, which was slowly losing its "ruin" aesthetic and gaining the sharp lines of a project.
"I think I'm just trying to make sure I don't crack when the water starts flowing," he admitted.
By the time the sun dipped below the horizon, the base of the fountain was stabilized. It wasn't finished, but it was solid. The lime would harden overnight, turning from a wet paste into a bond stronger than the stone itself. But as he looked up at the empty space where the keystone belonged, Sam knew the "cure" wouldn't be complete until the heart was found.
"Tomorrow," he said, wiping his brow. "We go into the attic. We find out where he hid it."