Chapter 6: The Kitchen Table

"That's my mother," Roe said.

He was standing in the parlor doorway in the dark, and he did not come any closer.

"Not tonight," he said. "I'll tell you. But not tonight."

I set the glass down on the hall table.

"Then I won't ask," I said. "You pick the day."

His shoulders came down an inch.

He crossed the hall in two strides and put his forehead against mine.

We stood there breathing in the dark until I was sure he was steady.

Then he took me back to bed, and I slept.

By Tuesday morning my legs were good.

Not great.

Good enough that I walked from the parlor to the kitchen with only a hand on the wall.

I felt I had won a prize.

The sun was coming up over the barn.

Roe had been out milking since four.

I heard his boots on the porch, and the screen door.

Then he stood in the kitchen doorway in his barn coat with straw in his hair.

He smelled like cows and cold air.

I was sitting on the edge of his big kitchen table in his flannel shirt and nothing else, with my bare feet dangling.

His eyes went down me, slowly, and stopped at my legs.

"You're up," he said.

"I'm up."

"You're not wearing anything under that."

"No."

He took his cap off.

He hung it on a nail by the door, and his barn coat after it.

He stood there in his work shirt.

He looked at me, a man who had been up four hours and was only now about to eat.

"Come here," I said.

He came.

He stopped between my knees, and I caught his shirt in both fists and kissed him.

He tasted like fresh air and tea.

His hands slid up the outside of my thighs, under the flannel, and found my bare hips.

"Elke."

"On your knees."

He went down.

The kitchen floor was old linoleum.

He knelt on it without even a pillow, with his hands on the table's edge on either side of me.

I leaned back on my palms and opened my knees.

He looked up the length of my body.

"Say it," he said.

"Put your mouth on me. Slow. Don't stop until I tell you."

His mouth closed over me, hot and wet and patient.

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