He hung up.
He stood at the railing for a beat longer. Then he came back and sat down on the step next to me and put his hand on Biscuit's head again. He didn’t offer an explanation, and I didn’t ask. The wind moved in the columbines.
After a minute he said, “Biscuit ate two of Mae's rolls again. She knows. I'm going to pay for it.”
“How did she find out?”
“She has a network.”
“A roll network?”
“Yeah.”
I went back to drawing. He went back to scratching the dog. We didn’t talk about Mama Mae, and we didn’t talk about Bison coming through at the end of the month. We didn’t talk about a lot of things.
He took me into the workshop late that afternoon because I asked him to.
I had asked him without asking him. I had walked down to the shop after lunch with my sketchbook under my arm and looked at him in the doorway and tipped my head toward the inside, and he had set down the chisel, stepped aside, told Biscuit to stay on the porch, and shut the door behind us. The shop was warm in the afternoon. Cedar shavings covered the floor. The light through the south-facing window was the gold mountain light that came on at four in the afternoon at this elevation in this part of summer. He’d been working on a rocking chair he’d been ignoring for a month, and it was almost done.
I set the sketchbook on the workbench, then crossed to stand in front of him. I put my hand on his chest, making him stop where he was.
I was taking the lead and he was letting me.
The storm shelter had been weeks of holding back exploding on a tarp by a fire while hail fell down around us. This was different. This was me walking into his shop in the late afternoon on a Wednesday in July and putting my hand on his chest and watching him not breathe for a beat and then breathe again on my terms.
He was already shaking before I touched the buttons on his shirt. I unbuttoned the shirt. Slowly. He let me. His hands were at his sides and then at my hips and then back at his sides, like he was trying to figure out where they were supposed to go. I caught one of his hands and put it on my waist and he stopped trying to figure it out.
I undressed him in his own workshop in the late afternoon with cedar shavings on the floor and the gold light on the side of his face and his back against the workbench, and he watched me the whole time. He didn't take his eyes off me.
When I had his shirt off, I put my mouth on the scar on his knuckle, and he made a sound that sounded like relief and release all at once.
I told him to sit down on the workshop stool. He did. I climbed into his lap with my dress bunched up around my hips and his hands on the small of my back and his forehead against my collarbone, and the workshop was quiet. The only sound came from the wind outside, and his breathing under my ear ,and the small, careful sound of me undoing what was left of his belt.
I took my time the way he had taken his time with me at the cabin. I took my time on purpose. I let him watch my face. I let him see me the way he’d let me see him in every room he had ever brought me into. I didn’t look away from him, and I didn’t let him look away from me, and when he was finally inside me with his hand spread across my back like he was trying to hold me to him without claiming me, he said it.
“Mine.” The word vibrated against the bone at the base of my throat.
It was different. It was the same word and the same mouth, but this one wasn't a claim he had been suppressing and let out by accident, and it wasn't a confession he had made because he could not, in the moment, choose not to make it. This one washim saying it because he had decided to say it. This one meant “I’m yours” and I knew the difference because I’d heard the other two and I was learning his language fast.
I held his face in my hands and kissed him slow. I didn’t say it back because it was implied. The room knew. The shop knew. Even the cedar shavings on the floor knew. I rocked against him on the stool in the gold afternoon light and he held me through it, and I held him through it and when it ended, it ended quietly, the way quiet things ended, which was without anyone having to announce that they had.
We sat there for a long time after.
His forehead rested against my chest. My hand tangled in his hair. The light through the south window turned from gold to honey to the deep amber that came right before the sun dropped behind the ridge. Outside the door, Biscuit was either asleep on the porch or had given up on us and gone exploring.
“I made you something.” His voice came out low and rough.
I didn't move. “What?”
“In the cabin. I'll show you tonight.”
I held the back of his neck and closed my eyes. I should have asked him what it was. I should have asked him a lot of things, but I didn’t. The wall of silence between us was still working, and I wasn’t going to be the one who brought it tumbling down.
We had dinner at his cabin that night. He’d made stew earlier in the week and warmed it up. We ate on the porch with Biscuit begging for scraps between us. After dinner he took me inside and showed me what he’d made. It was a small wooden box with a hinged lid made out of mountain ash. He’d carved the underside of the lid with a single columbine. He didn't say anything when he handed it to me. He let me open it and waited while I looked. Then he let me close it again without naming what I’d seen. My hands shook as I handed it back to him. He set it on the table by the door.
I drove down to the bookstore in the morning to check in with Evelyn. Part of my residency involved making a presentation at the end and we’d been making plans for a few weeks. After we wrapped up, Evelyn pulled me aside.
“Soleil. Do you have a minute?”
