Chapter 24: Home

She showed me where the key would go at ten that night.

The heifers were fed, and the supper dishes were dry.

She took my hand and led me up the stairs in the dusk.

My bedroom door stood open.

I had changed the lock on Monday, the only thing I had done without being asked.

It was a plain brass latch now, with a thumb-turn on both sides and no key at all.

Anyone inside could lock it.

Anyone outside could open it with a coin.

Iris looked at it for a long time.

"You did this for me," she said.

"I did it for us."

"Say it better."

"I did it so I couldn't lock you in, even if I forgot myself."

She nodded slowly.

She lifted the cord from her neck and hung the iron key on the nail beside the door frame.

It swung there and settled.

"That stays where we can both reach it," she said. "Nothing in this house gets locked from one side."

"Yes."

"Say the rest."

"Nothing in this house gets locked from one side."

She turned and put both hands in my hair.

"Good," she said. "Now undress."

I undressed in the lamplight with her watching.

Then I undressed her, one button at a time, and put her shirt on the chair.

She stood bare in the middle of the room, tall and tanned, with the coast sun still on her shoulders.

"On your back," she said. "I promised you something."

I lay down across the quilt Martha had pieced, and I did not think about the quilt.

Iris climbed over me and turned her back to my face.

She lowered her hips over my mouth and her face down toward my cock.

I took her thighs in both hands and pulled her down onto my tongue.

She gasped, and I felt her mouth close around me.

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