Chapter 24: Ask Me

The first thaw came to Park Point in the second week of March.

The ice on the bay went grey and loud, and the road to the lift bridge ran with meltwater.

I came home on a Sunday evening from the last plowing of the season with the ring on my left hand under my work glove.

The house was warm.

A candle burned in every window, not forty, only nine, and the bathroom door stood open on a haze of steam.

"Vinnie," Emlyn called. "I have run a bath."

"You always run a bath."

"I have run it differently."

I stood in the hall and took off my boots.

My hi-vis jacket went on the hook beside his camel coat, where it lived now.

My things were in his closet and my towels were in his bathroom.

A pile of Dewey's hotdish containers stood by the sink, washed and waiting to be returned.

I walked into the bathroom, and he was kneeling by the tub in his shirtsleeves with a pitcher.

The water was deep and hot and smelled of cedar.

"Sit," he said.

"I don't take orders."

"Please sit."

I sat on the stool by the tub, and he stood behind me and began to undo my braided crown.

I'd worn it up since I was twenty-five.

He took out the pins one by one and set them in a saucer, and the braids came down, heavy and cool, to my waist.

"These are lovely," he said quietly. "Silver."

"I dyed them in the sink, the week my mother died."

"I thought it might be something like that."

He lifted the whole length of them in his hands and held them for a while.

"I want to wash them," he said. "If you'll let me."

"Ask me."

"May I wash your hair, Vinnie?"

"Yes."

I undressed and climbed into the water, and he knelt behind me and poured it over my head.

He worked the shampoo into each loc in turn, slowly, with his thumbs, his fingers moving along my scalp in circles.

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