He Calls It Love, She Sees It as Home novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: The Porch

The night after the bath, she wouldn't come inside.

I found her on the front porch at eleven, barefoot on the boards, with a quilt around her shoulders and her face turned up.

The sky over the ranch was black and crowded with stars.

I had stopped looking at it years ago.

She hadn't.

"Come in," I said. "It's freezing."

"Come out."

"Iris."

"Please look. I want you to see it with me."

I came out.

I stood beside her on the porch and looked up, and for a moment I did.

The Milky Way ran across the whole sky from the barn roof to the hills.

There was no light for eleven miles in any direction.

"Mama used to say you could hear it, if you stood still enough," she said. "The stars."

"What do they sound like?"

"Like nothing. Like the whole world holding still."

"Is that what you think about out here?"

"I think about the ocean," she said. "You've seen it. Is it bigger than this?"

"It's bigger."

"Will you take me someday?"

"Someday."

It was the easiest word in the language, and I had used it on her for three years.

I looked at her instead of the sky.

The quilt had slipped off one shoulder, and under it she was wearing nothing but my flannel shirt.

It hung to the tops of her thighs.

"Is that mine?" I said.

"It smells like you."

"What else are you wearing?"

She smiled and opened the shirt with both hands.

Nothing.

"Lesson ten?" she said.

"The first rule was the house or the barn."

"The porch is part of the house."

"It's outside."

"Then make a new rule." She stepped up close to me, bare skin and flannel against my coat. "Nobody is out here. You said so yourself. No lights for eleven miles."

I should have taken her inside.

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