Chapter 14: Bed Check

For three days neither of us said a word about the checks.

I put the rubber-banded envelopes back in my father's drawer and shut it, and every night I lay on my side of the pillow line and thought about them.

He was paying a debt.

I told myself I had known that from the church parking lot, and I'd only never seen it in his handwriting.

On Thursday night at ten, we were both in bed in the dark, with the lamp off and our backs to each other, when we heard the front door.

Voices came up the stairwell.

Delores's was bright and carrying, and a man's was low and kind.

"The pastor," I said.

"I know that voice."

"She's brought the pastor to a bed check," I said.

"That's a thing?"

"It is tonight," I said.

Boots climbed the stairs, one set heavy, one set light, and a third that I'd know anywhere, with a hard heel.

Travis.

"Quick," Nels said.

He got a hand under the bolster and hurled it and the pillows off the bed in a single sweep.

They landed on the floor with a thump.

I had time to think, he's fast, and then he had pulled me flat against him under the quilt, my back to his chest, his arm over my ribs.

The door opened.

A flashlight came in first, then Delores, in her robe, and behind her a gray-haired man in a cardigan holding a Bible against his chest.

"I'm so sorry," the pastor said, mortified. "Delores said you'd want a blessing on the house."

"At ten at night," I said.

"We were worried it was an unhappy marriage," Delores said. "A family has to ask. You hear such stories."

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