Chapter 4: The Hayloft Ladder

I woke at ten to six with the sheet warm on his side of the bed and nobody in it.

Through the window the pasture was silver with frost, and the barn door stood open a foot.

I put on my jeans and pulled his flannel off the chair.

I went down the back stairs in the grey light without waking a single relative.

The barn smelled of cold hay and old wood.

Ben was crouched at the big sliding door with a screwdriver in his teeth and a hinge in his hand.

He took the screwdriver out of his mouth when he saw me.

"It was dragging," he said. "Your dad said it dragged."

"My dad said that last night?"

"Over the dishes. He said it to the room. I figured it was a hint."

"It was a hint," I said. "Come here."

He stood.

He wiped his hands on his jeans and crossed the dirt floor to me, with straw in his hair, and stopped one step away.

He was waiting.

I loved it.

God help me, I loved it.

"Your profile said final bookings," I said. "Why?"

He thought about it.

"A man can only tell a stranger's mother that her daughter is the love of his life so many times," he said.

"It starts to feel like lying."

I looked at him.

"It is lying."

"Not as much as it was yesterday."

My stomach dropped a story.

I stepped back against the hayloft ladder.

It was old oak, the rungs worn smooth, and it held my back like a hand.

"Get that horse blanket off the stall rail," I said. "Put it down. Kneel."

He did all three, and knelt on the folded wool in front of me with his hands on his thighs.

I opened his flannel and unbuttoned my jeans.

I pushed them down my hips with my underwear and stepped out of one leg.

The air in the barn was freezing, and I didn't feel it.

"Put your hands on my hips," I said. "Not anywhere else."