Chapter 22: The Night Before

The sheriff parked a patrol car at the end of our road, and Lena's white car was gone by dark.

"She's not stupid enough to come near the farm tonight," Stanley said.

"I never said she was stupid," said Mom. "I said she was Lena."

Tradition did the rest.

The groom couldn't see the bride the night before, Mom decided, and she would not be argued with in her own kitchen.

Stanley took Justin home to his brick house.

Mom took me home to my childhood bedroom, kissed my forehead, and went to bed at nine.

I lay on my old quilt with the lamp off, in the same bed where I had lost a cucumber and my dignity.

I could hear the crickets, and Mom's snore down the hall.

At eleven-thirty something scraped the outside wall.

I sat up.

The window slid open, and a leg came over the sill.

"If you say anything," Justin whispered, "I'll go back down."

"You climbed my mother's trellis."

"It's rated for tomatoes. It held."

He dropped into the room in dark jeans and a gray T-shirt, with a leaf in his hair.

I pulled him down onto the quilt and kissed him before he could straighten up.

"Dad thinks I'm in the guest room," he said, against my mouth. "I put a pillow under the blanket."

"Is it a convincing pillow?"

"It's a very thin pillow."

"Shh."

"You shushed me."

"My mother is twenty feet away."

"Then this should be quick."

"Don't you dare make it quick."

He laughed softly and pulled off his shirt.

The moon came in the window and showed me every inch of him.

I pushed him onto his back and climbed over his legs.

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