Chapter 12: The Keeper

I got out of bed and went down to the kitchen in the dark.

The stove was banked low.

I sat on the floor in front of it with my back against the wood box and my knees pulled up.

I couldn't see him. I didn't need to.

[Gate's open. She's waiting up. Of course she is.]

A pause. Then his thoughts went small and careful, the way they used to when he was a boy in trouble with his father.

[She says sit. I'm sitting.]

I heard the stairs creak above me.

The widow came down in a long nightgown with a shawl around her shoulders. She looked at me on the floor and didn't ask.

She filled the kettle and set it on the stove. Then she sat down on the floor beside me.

[She's asking how long I haven't felt Mirren.]

[I said since the fire. She asked again. I said before that. She asked again.]

[She knows. How does she know?]

The kettle began to tick.

Then his thoughts stopped being careful.

[Dying.]

[She says it's dying. The bond.]

[She says a bond starves. It doesn't break. You starve it.]

The widow put a hand on my knee.

I hadn't realized I was shaking.

[The tests. She means the tests.]

[The Antler. The couch. The kiss on the lawn. She knows about the lawn.]

[Every time you make her prove it, boy, you take a bite out of it. She said that. She said I ate it.]

I closed my eyes.

[It's not fair. They were just tests. Everybody tests.]

[She says no. She says most men never once in their lives.]

[Full moon. The twenty-fourth. Moonrise.]

[After that it's dead. Like it never was.]

The kettle shrieked. The widow lifted it off before it woke the house and poured two mugs of tea.

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