Chapter 23: Every Night

By the end of January it had become the thing we did.

At dusk I sat on the cellar stair with the lantern.

He came up out of the dark with his black hand on the rail, and I pushed my hair off my neck without a word.

He bit, and I leaned into the wall and held his head, and it was the best part of my day.

The burn had stopped climbing.

He woke an hour after sunset now, then a little sooner, as the nightly blood put the strength back in him.

Morag said the whole kitchen could set its clock by my gasp.

That night the snow came down thick and quiet over the chapel yard.

He took my hand at the kitchen door and said nothing, and we went out into it.

The three wives' stones had caps of white.

The old seer's slate had a new ring in it.

I had found the iron ring under the front pew in the kirk.

I had set it back in fresh lead with my own hands.

It looked as if it had never been moved.

The fourth stone stood blank in the snow, and in front of it lay the flat slab Niall had laid over the filled grave.

I took the chisel out of my pocket.

"What are you doing?" he said.

"Giving it a name."

I knelt in the snow.

I cut the K first, and then the E, and the cold bit through my gloves.

It took a long time and I did not hurry.

When the last stroke was done, the stone said KERR.

Beneath it I cut two more words.

NOT YET.

He read it over my shoulder, and I heard the breath he did not take.

"You are the most ridiculous woman I have ever met," he said, in a voice that shook.

"I have been told."

"By whom?"

"By my husband."

He lifted me off my knees.

He turned me, and his mouth came down on mine, cold and then hot, and I felt the snow melting on my lips between us.

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