Chapter 4: The Woodshed

The woodshed was a lean-to against the north wall, open on one side to the rain, with cedar rounds stacked to the roof.

Anders set a round on the chopping block and split it with one stroke.

He did not look at me.

He set another.

"Say it," I said.

He split the second round. "Say what?"

"What you meant at my door six years ago. Go in, Linnea. Then nothing."

The axe stopped.

"You passed me at the Grange and at the mill," I said. "You passed me at my mother's funeral, and you looked at the floor."

"I did," he said.

"I was twenty. I thought I had done something wrong."

"You hadn't," he said.

"Then what was it?" I asked.

He leaned the axe against the block and stood with his back to me.

The rain made a gray curtain past the open side of the shed.

"You were twenty," he said. "I was thirty-seven, and promised to the boundary."

"That isn't an answer."

"It's the one I have."

"It's been nine years since Birgit," I said. "Everyone knows that. It isn't a reason either."

He turned around.

His face was very still.

The beard hid most of it, but not his eyes, which were gray.

They had been looking at me for a long time, in a way I had told myself I imagined.

"I'm not going to touch you," he said. "I swore it to the tribunal. I keep what I swear."

"I know. I'm not asking you to."

I walked up to him through the sawdust.

He was so big that the top of my head came to his chin.

I put my hands flat on his chest and slid them up to his shoulders, slowly, and felt the muscle go rigid under the canvas.

"Linnea," he said.

"Hands behind your back."

He looked down at me.

"You heard me. Warden. Put your hands behind your back and hold the axe handle."

He did.

A forty-three-year-old man, six and a half feet tall, put his hands behind him in a woodshed because I told him to.

He gripped the handle until his knuckles went white.

I took his coat by the lapels and pulled his head down, and I kissed him.

He did not move for a moment.

Then his mouth opened under mine, and the sound he made was low and raw and came from deep in his chest.

He kissed slowly and completely, missing nothing.

His beard was rough on my chin, and when I bit his lower lip he groaned.

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