Chapter 20: Room Four

The sedan's taillights went out of sight, and the lake road was dark and quiet again.

Greet leaned the shotgun in the corner of the porch.

"A letter," Joost said, to the dark road, "that the lawyer will only hand over at a table."

"Pieter writes a letter," I said, "and the boy has to sit in a room with the man who wants him."

"Then we don't go."

"Then we don't know what it says."

Neither of us had an answer for that.

"Room four's made up," Greet said to Joost. "It's got a lock on the inside and a window onto the road."

"Thank you."

"You sleep there, and you leave at first light, and you do not wake that boy."

"Yes, ma'am."

"I'll take the boy to my side tonight. He likes my radio." She looked at me, long and flat. "You're a grown woman, Fem."

"I know."

"Then I'll say good night."

She picked up my sleeping son from the couch, wrapped in his blanket, and carried him up the back stairs without a word.

The door closed.

Joost and I stood on the porch with ten feet of cold air between us.

"I'll go to the motel in Ludington," he said.

"The motel's an hour away."

"I'll take it."

"Stay in room four."

He nodded, and then he stopped on the top step with his hand on the rail.

"I want to say it before I do," he said. "I won't touch you unless you tell me to."

I stared at him.

"Not tonight. Not any night. Not if you ask me with your eyes, or stand too close, or I'm losing my mind."

His voice was low and level.

"You say the words, and I'll do it. You don't, and I don't."

"That's a rule you made up on a porch."

"It's the only one I can keep."

My heart was going so hard I thought it would show through my shirt.

"Go to bed, Joost," I said.

He went.

I stood alone in the cold for a long time.

Then I took the key to room four off the hook, and walked across the yard in my socks.

He opened the door before I knocked.

He had taken off his cut and his boots, and he stood in the lamplight in his T-shirt and jeans.

He did not reach for me.

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