She doesn't move. We sit with it. The pines do what pines do. The woodstove in the next room ticks.
"I'm not going to come to the bed," she says. "Not yet."
"I know."
"You buried a husband this week."
"I didn't love him. I said it out loud earlier, to the ceiling. I said it twice."
She lets a breath out of her nose. It is almost a laugh.
"I heard you," she says.
"You were not here."
"I meant I would have heard you if I had been."
"All right."
"I'm going to make you breakfast," she says. "You're going to put clothes on or you're not going to put clothes on. That's your choice. I'm going to make eggs and toast and I'm going to put it on the kitchen table. I'm going to sit across from you. I'm not going to touch you today."
"Not today?”
"Not today."
"Max?”
"Yes."
"What about tomorrow?”
She looks at me from the chair. The pulse in her throat moves once.
"Tomorrow," she says, "we'll see what tomorrow is."
She stands.
She picks up her jacket off the back of the chair. She does not look at my body on the bed. She looks at my face. She holds my eyes a second longer.
Then she leaves the room.
I lie back on the pillow. I put both hands over my face. I laugh once, into my hands, quiet.
I feel happier than I maybe have in years.
I put the henley on.
Not because I'm hiding. Because I want her shirt on me when I sit across from her.
I walk out to the kitchen.
9
MAX
Istand in the kitchen with a spatula in my hand.
I crack three eggs into the cast-iron pan. I lay two slices of bread on the rack of the woodstove to toast. I pour two cups of coffee. I do all of this while my pulse is doing things it did not used to do, while my hands are doing the normal steady things my hands do and the rest of me is not normal and not steady.
