a wonderful thing, marriage,” May said. “Two people committing to stick together. But it closes doors. It drops you into a container. Before, anything. After, married.”
This was new.
May picked up the needles and the small patch of pink yarn, still staring out the window. “But by making your circumstances fixed, marriage forces change inside you.” Her black T-shirt read Easily Distracted by Shiny Objects. “Or it busts the container to bits,” she said and laughed.
“If you knew then what you know now, would you do it again?”
May turned to her. “But we’ll never know before what we know after. It will always be a leap. But, yes, I would do it again.”
Huge old oak trees bordered the lot. May’s answers weren’t supposed to change. “What do you remember about being a kid?”
“No trash,” May said.
Cass relaxed.
“We used everything. Until the paper disintegrated or the fabric shredded, or the last carrot top had dissolved into the broth. When there were bones, we played with them first and then gave them to the dogs.”
Cass leaned against the bed.
“If I were doing it all again, by the way, I’d have a houseful of children.”
“Why?”
“They bring the life to the party. They bring the unexpected, the future. But I couldn’t have any. Are you sure you don’t want any children?”
“Pretty sure.” The sky was a clear blue.
“Why?” May dropped the needles and yarn into her lap.
Cass hesitated. “My mother didn’t want me. I ruined her life. Then, when I was in seventh grade, I saw a little girl get hit by a motorcycle. And that was that.”
“Bless your heart, you were a child yourself.”
“Let’s read.”
“Cass,” May said, reaching out. Cass leaned forward and May touched her arm. “Bad things happened to you, but good things can happen, too. Look for the good things. Your heart may surprise you one day.” May placed her hands in her lap on top of the needles. “Okay, climb up and get comfortable. Let’s read.”
Reading to May was how it had all started, and it remained Cass’s favorite part of the day. She missed it when they couldn’t find time for it—like yesterday. Thirty minutes and then she would go back to the office where there was no money for any of her plans.
Cass dropped her sandals and scooted up. “Page one,” she said.
But before she could read the first word, May began from memory. “In the town there were two mutes, and they were always together.”
Stretched out on May’s bed as if she were a child, listening to the words lift and unfold, Cass looked around this room that seemed bigger than it usually did. She closed her eyes. May’s steady, melodious voice grounded and soothed her in a way nothing else could. Cass loved Howell House. It gave her something she couldn’t give herself, something not even Ethan could give her—a layer above her.
6
In the light of day, Cass would be able to think straight, she knew that, but it didn’t help. In bed now, in the dark, she had only one thought, and it wouldn’t let her go. She turned toward Ethan, scooting closer, reaching her arm around him. As he turned toward her, moonlight fell through the windows.
They faced each other on separate pillows.
“You shine, did you know that?” Ethan said, draping an arm across her hip.
She needed more air but wanted to keep his arm where it was. Like a clock hand with a fixed center, she scooted her upper body a little away from him, out of the moonlight, without moving the part of her where his hand rested. But even with several ticks of distance, her heart continued to beat too fast. She was less comfortable, not more, and pulled herself away from him to stand. At the window, she looked past the giant moon to the vast darkness where the lights were minuscule and inconstant. “Someone’s going to have to give up too much,” she said. “I don’t know what we were thinking.”
He came up behind her and rested his chin on her shoulder, not leaning against her, not touching her anywhere else, just the bony part of his chin to the bony part of her shoulder. “We were thinking we were worth fighting for.”
“I’m afraid,” she said.
“Of what, babe?” His words brushed her ear. “Tell me.”
She wasn’t sure she could say it. Through the top corner of the window, she looked straight at the moon. “I don’t want to be the woman who stopped you from going.”
He lifted his chin. “You’re not stopping me. It’s my choice. I choose you.” And he kissed her neck and trailed his mouth along her skin.
She turned to him. “I’m afraid the agreement kills the clearest, strongest part of you.”
He took a step away, then turned back to her, as she knew he would.
“Without you, this me disappears. Besides,” he said, opening his hands, “we may not have even gotten to the clearest, strongest parts yet … of either of us.”
“We want different things.”
“We want each other.”
She was still unsettled and turned back to the window.
But he turned her back to him. “This is middle-of-the-night talk. You need something else to think about.” And with one arm, he tightened his grip around her waist and held her close. With his other hand, he began to tuck strands of her hair behind her ear.
When his fingers came close to her face again for what she thought would be another strand, instead, with one finger, he started at her middle part and traced a line down her forehead, her nose, landing above her lips, parting her lips, backtracking to her tongue, and pausing before he continued the same slow motion down her chin, her neck, her chest, stopping between her breasts. Cracking her open.
Then he moved his whole hand sideways.
“What are you doing?” she whispered.
“Searching for your heart,” he said, surprising her.
“Love is not the answer to everything.” But her knees gave way, gave her away.
He held her tighter, supported her. “Yes,” he said. “It is.”
7
A couple of days later, Cass made time to call Goodwill about Lois’s red shoes. The woman she spoke to said she would see what she could do, and Cass could tell by her questions she really would try to find them. Lois’s son could only describe the closets and drawers of stuff he hadn’t even
