"Yes."
"Thank you."
"Stop."
"No."
I laugh. The laugh is a wet laugh because I have cried somewhere in the telling and I had not noticed, and she lifts her thumb and runs it under my eye.
"I have not told a person all of that ever.”
"All right."
"I told you in one morning."
"Yes."
"Max."
“I’ve got you,” she says and I believe her.
She does not move her hand off my knee.
We sit like that.
---
We do not get out of the bed until eleven.
We talk. We talk about her sister in Reno who she has not seen in nine years and who calls her on her birthday. We talk about the year she spent in Pittsburgh in 2008 working a department where the chief was a man Val sent her to in order to do a thing Val could not get done in this state, and we do nottalk about the thing, and I do not ask. We talk about the woman she went to the academy with whose name she gave to Val in the chair Wednesday morning, who is named Rachel Doyle, who lives in Oregon, who has two children, who would cover for Max if Max called her at five in the morning. We talk about the firefighter named Dani who watches her at the station. We talk about the probie whose first call out was Monday night. We talk about coffee. We talk about the bread my grandmother taught me and the rice her mother made.
We do not talk about Val any more.
We get up.
She makes us a real breakfast. She makes me eggs and bacon and bread and tomatoes. We eat at the kitchen table. It is delicious.
After breakfast she stands at the sink doing the dishes.
I stand behind her.
I put my arms around her ribs from behind. I press my forehead between her shoulder blades. She is warm and her shirt is soft and she smells of coffee. She does not stop washing the dish.
"Evangeline."
"Yes."
"I enjoyed talking to you.”
“So did I,” I say, kissing her neck.
Then I let her wash.
---
We do not solve our situation. We have delayed dealing with it, but it is still there, hanging over us.
We do not solve it because there is no solving of it, and we do not pretend. We sit on the sofa under a quilt in the afternoon and we read. She reads a thriller from the second shelf. I read the biography I had open on the porch last night. We do not speak for an hour. She has her feet in my lap. I have my hand on hershin. The fire is going. The rain has come in the afternoon and it is on the cedar shingles and it is on the windows and the cabin is the warmest it has been since I have been in it.
