Banished at Dad's Wake, So I Came Back to Run the Boardwalk novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: Her Father's Bed

The old women had aired my father's room, and the bed was made with the quilt my mother had stitched.

I stood at the foot of it in the dark with the lamp off and the window open on the back bay.

The water was black and still.

Somewhere out there a halyard tapped a mast.

Asher closed the door behind us, and the house went quiet, and I heard him set his glasses on the dresser.

"This is the room," he said.

"This is the room."

"I can go sleep on the sofa," he said.

"Come here."

He crossed the floorboards in his socks and stopped in front of me.

I put my hands on his lapels, and the gray wool of his father's suit was soft under my fingers.

I pushed it off his shoulders.

It slid down his arms and I let it fall.

Then I undid his tie and the buttons of his shirt, one at a time, without hurry.

He stood and let me.

His chest was warm.

The white print of my flour hand had long since washed out, but I knew exactly where it had been.

I laid my palm there.

"You were afraid," I said.

"I was."

"Tell me the answer was worth it."

"I'd have waited another ten years for it," he said. "I'd have been a very boring old man."

I laughed, and he caught the laugh with his mouth.

He kissed me slowly, thoroughly, with his hands cupping my face, and the hunger in it was gentle.

When he lifted his head I turned around.

"Zip me," I said.

He drew down the zipper of my dress inch by inch, with his lips following it along my spine.

The dress slid to the floor.

I stood in my slip and the gold St. Anthony medal on its chain, which I had not taken off since the club.

The thin ring was on my left hand.

He undid the slip and let it go.

"Leave the medal," he said.

"I'm not taking anything off."

He turned me around and looked.

He went down on one knee in front of me, and set his mouth to the first mark.

It was the faint yellow thumbprint on my hip, almost gone.

He kissed it.

He kissed the crescent of his own teeth on my inner thigh, the old one, and the one beside it, and the third.

Then he stood and turned me to find the shoulder-blade mark I could not see.

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