"Come to bed."
I nod and allow myself to be led.
I do not eat.
I do not take the boots off at the mat. I do not hang the coat on the peg. I let her take the coat off me at the bedroom door. I let her pull the henley over my head. I let her unbutton the trousers. I let her sit me on the side of the bed, and kneel in front of me, and unlace each boot, and pull each one off, and pull each sock off, and put a hand at each ankle a count.
She stands.
She tugs me up onto the bed. She pulls the quilt over me. She gets in beside me. She puts her hand flat on my chest.
"Sleep," she says.
I shake my head. “Evangeline."
"Yes."
"In the morning at six I am supposed to drive into the city and tell Val you are gone."
She is quiet.
"What are you going to do at six?” she says.
"I am not going to drive into the city at six."
"All right."
"All right."
She does not ask anything else.
She puts her face into the side of my throat and she pulls me into her and she breathes against my collarbone, and after a count her breath slows, and after another count she is asleep.
I lie on my back in the dark of the bedroom in the cabin behind a porch light I have left on, and I listen to her breathe, and I do not sleep.
I count to four. I hold for four. I let it out for four. I hold for four.
I do not sleep.
18
EVANGELINE
Max is awake when I open my eyes.
The grey light is at the edge of the curtain. The clock on the dresser says six-twenty. She is on her back beside me, one arm folded under her head, the other across her stomach, and she is looking at the ceiling. She has not slept. Her eyes are open and her breath is the low quiet breath of a woman who has been counting it in fours through the night.
Six-twenty.
She was supposed to be in the city by six.
I do not say it. I lie still beside her with the quilt up to my shoulder and I let her have the count of breaths she is having, and after a long while she turns her head and she looks at me, and her face does the small thing it has been doing in the morning, and then she says, "Hi."
"Hi."
"You slept?” she asks.
I nod.
