Chapter 20: The Porch Swing

"Fix the swing, Ben," I said.

It was nine on Monday morning, and my father was sitting twenty feet away on the porch in an Adirondack chair, reading the paper.

He wore his birthday cardigan, the brown one my mother knits him a new copy of every five years.

His glasses had slid down his nose.

The swing hung from two chains at the far end of the porch, and one of them squeaked every time it moved.

"It's been squeaking since Friday," Dad said, without lowering the paper. "I figured somebody would."

"Yes, sir."

"Sixty-five today. Nobody's going to fix my swing."

"I'll fix it, sir."

"Good man."

I sat on the swing with a plaid blanket over my lap and down to the porch boards, because it was cold, and because I had planned it.

I wore a long wool skirt and nothing under it.

Ben crouched down in front of me with a wrench.

The blanket hung between us.

"Under," I said, so quietly my lips barely moved. "Get under it."

He glanced up.

I looked back at him, perfectly calm.

He lifted the edge of the blanket and ducked in, and I felt his hands settle on my knees.

"Don't make a sound," I whispered.

"The swing..."

"I'll hold it."

I planted my heel against the porch boards to stop it moving.

"Put your mouth on me," I said. "Slowly."

His hands ran up my thighs under the wool, pushed the skirt to my hips, and drew me forward to the very edge of the seat.

Then his mouth was on me, warm and wet and slow.

I gripped the arm of the swing and looked straight ahead at my father's newspaper.

"Eight letters," Dad said. "Does what he's told."

My breath went out of me in a thread.

His tongue moved in one long flat stroke, up, and I felt it in the roots of my teeth.

"Jodi? Eight letters."

"Obedient," I said, in an almost normal voice.