My hand is on her hip where it ended up sometime in the night and I haven't moved it for hours.
I look at her in the grey light.
The freckles across the bridge of her nose are darker than they were two days ago because she's been outside in the morning sun.
Her mouth is slightly open. There's a faint mark at the side of her neck from where I had my mouth on her last night before we went to sleep.
The chain that used to live between us in this bed is gone.
She put it on top of her dresser a couple of days ago and it's stayed there since.
In its place is my mother's ring, sitting six inches from my hand in the back of my nightstand drawer under a roll of socks I haven't worn since I bought them.
She saw it.
I didn't know it at the time.
My back was to the doorway with the ring in my palm and my head bent down, and she came back for a sweater and saw me and stepped back out before I knew she was there.
What I knew was that she came into the bunkhouse kitchen that afternoon without the sweater she'd gone to get, and her hand kept finding the bare place at her throat the way it does when she's holding something inside her chest and not ready to talk about it yet.
She ate quieter than usual at supper and her eyes wouldn't quite settle on mine across the table.
She knows.
I haven't told her I know that she knows.
That ends today.
I slide out from under her one inch at a time and lift her hand off my stomach and set it on the pillow where my body was.
She turns her face into the warm spot and stays asleep with her hair across her cheek and a small line between her eyebrows that smooths out when she settles.
I pull on jeans from the floor and walk barefoot to the front room.
The cabin is quiet.
Nash is asleep in the spare room with Diesel at the foot of his bed where I tucked them in last night.
The kid sleeps the way all kids sleep—full-body, mouth open, one foot hanging off the side of the mattress.
The dog sleeps the way old dogs do. One ear up, the rest of him gone.
I close the door to the hallway behind me so the kitchen noise doesn't carry.
I make coffee. The good stuff, the bag from the place in Llano she likes.
While it brews, I walk back down the hall to the bedroom and pull open the drawer of my nightstand.
The roll of socks is where it was last night. I move it.
The ring is under it.
I pick it up, knowing my life is going to change today.
The band is warm against my palm faster than it should be.
My mother wore this ring for thirty-two years.
