Chapter 24: Ninety-One

Day ninety passed on a Wednesday like any other.

I tuned a church upright in the morning.

Cal sanded the launch's transom in the barn, humming.

Neither of us said the sentence.

Neither of us said anything about the day at all, and the ninetieth sun went down on the lake without a word of ceremony.

I woke on the morning after it with his arm across my waist and the cold sun in the window.

For the first time in ninety-one mornings, I wasn't counting.

"Day ninety-one," Cal said into my shoulder.

"You're awake."

"I've been awake for an hour. I was working up to it."

"Working up to what?"

He sat up, and the old bed creaked.

I heard him fumble in the drawer of the nightstand, which was a nail keg, and then he took my left hand in both of his.

"Rule one," he said. "Ninety days, real on paper only."

"I remember."

"It's over. I'd like to start a different one."

He slid something onto my finger, and it was warm and slightly rough.

I held my hand up to the window and felt it with my other thumb.

It was a ring, a plain band, with a ridge worked into it like the grain of wood.

"Copper," he said. "From the rivets in the launch. They were forty years old. I pulled six of them out."

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