Chapter 11: Not a Debt

I woke with his arm across my waist and the whole cabin full of grey morning light.

For one second I forgot where I was.

Then I remembered, and I lay perfectly still and stared at the rafters.

Last night I had been bold.

This morning I felt every doubt that I had left on the porch come back to sit on my chest.

He had come because of a barn, a loaf of bread and a promise.

It was a debt, and I had just collected on it.

"You're thinking very loudly," Ansel said into my hair.

"I'm not."

"I can hear it from here."

I turned onto my back.

He lay propped on one elbow, his hair wild, with the scar on his forearm pale in the light.

"Ansel, you don't owe me anything," I said. "I didn't do that last night so you'd feel paid."

"Paid?"

"For the barn and the bread. I was twelve."

I made myself go on.

"It was a loaf and a blanket, and you don't have to spend your life on that."

He was silent so long I thought I had insulted him.

Then he said, very evenly, "Is that what you think this is?"

"It's what I would think, in your place."

"Then you're not looking at it from my place."

He sat up and took my hand off the quilt and held it between both of his.

"The week I knew you, you were a child, and I was a boy on the run with nothing to give you."

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