"I know."

He searched for a way to express the fullness in his heart. But there was no way. To an orphan turned drifter, a drifter turned prisoner, a prisoner turned hired hand, a hired hand turned stand-in daddy, there was no way to express what the last five minutes had meant to him. Will could only waggle his head in wonder. "That’s somethin’, isn’t it?"

She understood. His surprise and wonder said it all. He had never expected the right to her children to come along with the right to her house. Yet she recognized his growing affection for them, saw clearly what kind of father he could be-gentle, patient, the kind who’d take none of the small pleasures for granted.

"Yes, it is."

He dropped his hand and lifted his head. A soft smile curved his lips. "I really like those two, you know?"

"Even after the way they acted at supper?"

"Oh, that-that was nothin’. They’d had a big day. I reckon their springs were still twangin’."

She smiled.

He did, too, briefly before sobering. "I want you to know I’ll do right by them."

Her voice softened. "Oh, Will… I know that."

"Well," he went on almost sheepishly, "they’re pretty special."

"I think so, too."

Their gazes met momentarily. They searched for something to say, something to do. But it was bedtime; there was only one thing to do. Yet both of them were reluctant to suggest it. In the kitchen the radio was playing "Chattanooga Choo Choo." The strains came through the lighted doorway into the shadows where they paused uncertainly. Across from the boys’room, their own bedroom door stood open, an oblique shadow waiting to take them in. Beyond it waited uncertainty and self-consciousness.

Eleanor fiddled with her hands, searching for a subject to put off bedtime. "Thank you for the movie, Will. The boys will never forget it and neither will I."

"I enjoyed it, too."

End of subject.

"I liked the popcorn, too," she added hurriedly.

"So did I."

End of subject, again.

This time Will found a diversion-the boys’ clothes, still balled in his hands. "Oh, here!" He thrust them into hers. "Forgot I still had ’em." He rammed his hands into his pockets.

Looking down at Thomas’s milk-streaked shirt, she said, "Thanks for helping me get them ready for bed."

"Thanks for letting me."

A quick exchanged glance, two nervous smiles, then silence again, immense and overpowering, while they stood close and studied the collection of clothes in her hands. It was her house, her bedroom-Will felt like a guest waiting to be invited to stay the night, but still she made no mention of retiring. He heard his own pulse drumming in his ears and felt as if he were wearing somebody else’s collar, one size too small. Somebody had to break the ice.

"Are you tired?" he asked.

"No!" she replied, too quickly, too wide-eyed. Then, dropping her head, "Well… yes, I am a little."

"I guess I’ll step out back then."

When he was gone, her shoulders wilted, she closed her eyes and pressed her burning cheeks into the stale-smelling clothes. Silly woman. What’s there to be skittish about? He’s going to share your mattress and your quilts-so what?

She freed her hair, washed her face and got ready for bed in record time. By the time she heard him reenter the kitchen she was safely dressed in a white muslin nightgown with the quilts tucked to her armpits. She lay stiffly, listening to the sounds of him washing up for bed. He turned off the radio, checked the fire, replaced a stovelid. Then all remained quiet but for the beat of her own pulse in her ears and the tick of the windup alarm clock beside the bed. Minutes passed before she heard his footsteps cross the front room and pause. She stared at the doorway, imagining him gathering courage while her own heart throbbed like the engine of Glendon’s old Steel Mule the time she’d ridden it.

Will paused outside the bedroom doorway, fortifying himself with a deep breath. He crossed the threshold to find Eleanor lying on her back in a proper, white, long-sleeved nightie. Her brown hair lay free against the white pillow and her hands were crossed over the high mound formed by her stomach beneath the quilts. Though her expression was carefully bland, her cheeks wore two blots of pink, as if some seraph had winged in and placed a rose petal upon each. "Come in, Will."

He swept a slow glance across the room-curtainless window, homemade rag rug, hand-tied quilt, iron bedstead painted white, a closet door ajar, a bedside table and kerosene lamp, a tall bureau with a dresser scarf and a picture of a man with large ears and a receding hairline.

"I’ve never seen this room before."

"It’s not much."

"It’s warm and clean." He advanced two steps only, forcing his eyes to range further until they were drawn, against his will, back to the picture.

"Is that Glendon?"

"Yes."

He crossed to the bureau, picked up the framed photo and held it, surprised at the man’s age and lack of physical attractiveness. A rather beaked nose and a bony, hollow-eyed face with narrow lips. "He was some older than you."

"Five years."

Will studied the picture in silence, thinking the man looked much older.

"He wasn’t much of a looker. But he was a good man."

"I’m sure he was." A good man. Unlike himself, who had broken the laws of both God and man. Could a woman forget such transgressions? Will set the picture down.

Eleanor asked, "Would it bother you if I left the picture there-so the boys don’t forget him?"

"No, not at all." Was it a reminder that Glendon Dinsmore still held a special place in her heart? That though Will Parker might share her sheets tonight, he had no right to expect to share anything else-ever? He faced the wall while pulling his shirttails out, wanting to impose nothing upon her, not even glimpses of his bare skin.

She watched him unbutton his shirt, shrug it off, hang it on the closet doorknob. Her fascination came as a surprise. There were moles on his back, and firm, tan skin. He was tapered as a turnip from shoulder to waist, and his arms had filled out considerably in the two months he’d been here. Though she felt like a window-peeper, she continued gaping. He unbuckled his belt and her eyes dropped to his hips-thin, probably even bony inside his jeans. When he sat down the mattress sagged, sending her heart aflutter-even so slight a sharing of the bed felt intimate, after having it to herself for over half a year. He hoisted a foot, removed a cowboy boot and set it aside, followed by its mate. Standing, he dropped his jeans to the floor, then stretched into bed with one fluid motion, giving no more than a flash of thighs textured with dark hair and an old pair of Glendon’s shorts before the quilt covered him and he stretched out beside her with his arms behind his head.

They stared at the ceiling, lying like matched bookends, making sure not so much as the hair on their arms brushed, listening to the tick of the clock, which seemed to report like rifle shots.

"You can turn down the lantern some. It doesn’t need to be that bright."

He rolled and reached, tugging the bedclothes. "How’s that?" He peered back over his outstretched arm while the light dimmed to pale umber, enhancing the shadows.

"Fine."

Again he stretched flat. The silence beat about their ears. Neither of them risked any of the settling motions usually accompanying the first minutes in bed. Instead they lay with hands folded primly over quilts, trying to adjust to the idea of sharing a sleeping space, dredging up subjects of conversation, discarding them, tensing instead of relaxing.

Presently, he chuckled.

"What?" She peeked at him askance. When his face turned her way she fastened her gaze on the ceiling.

"This is weird."

"I know."

"We gonna lay in this bed every night and pretend the other one isn’t there?"

She blew out a long breath and let her eyes shift over to him. He was right. It was a relief, simply acknowledging that there was another person in the bed. "I wasn’t looking forward to this. I thought it’d be awkward, you know?"

"It was. It is," he admitted for both of them.

"I been jumpy as a flea since suppertime."

"Since morning, you mean. Hardest thing I ever did was to open that door and walk into the kitchen this morning."

"You mean you were nervous, too?"

"Didn’t it show?"

"Some, but I thought I was worse that way than you."

They mulled silently for some time before Will remarked, "A pretty strange wedding day, huh?"

"Well, I guess that was to be expected."

"Sorry about the judge and the kiss-you know."

"It wasn’t so bad. We lived through it, didn’t we?"

"Yeah, we lived through it." He crossed his hands behind his head and contemplated the ceiling, presenting her with a hairy armpit that smelled of Ivory soap.

"I’m sorry about the lantern. It’ll keep you awake, won’t it?"

"Maybe for a while, but it doesn’t matter. If you hadn’t slept in a real bed for as long as me, you wouldn’t complain about a lantern either." He lowered one hand and ran it across the coarse, clean sheet which smelled of lye soap and fresh air. "This is a real treat, you know. Real sheets. Pillow cases. Everything."

No reply entered Eleanor’s mind, so she lay in silence, adjusting to the feeling of his nearness and scent. Outside a whippoorwill sang and from the boys’ room came the sound of the crib rattling as Thomas turned over.

"Eleanor?"

"Hm?"

"Could I ask you something?"

"Course."

"You afraid of the dark?"

She took her time answering. "Not afraid exactly… well, I don’t know. Maybe." She thought a moment. "Yeah, maybe. I been sleepin’ with the lantern on so long I don’t know anymore."

Will turned his head to study her profile. "Why?"

Her eyes met his, and she thought about her fanatic grandparents, her mother, all those years behind the green shades. But to talk about it would make her seem eccentric in his eyes, and she didn’t want to be. Neither did she want to ruin her wedding day with painful memories. "Does it matter?"

He studied her green eyes minutely, wishing she’d confide in him, tell him the facts behind Lula’s gossip. But whatever secrets she held, he wouldn’t hear them tonight. "Then tell me about Glendon."

"Glendon? You want to talk about him… tonight?"

"If you do."

She considered for some time before asking, "What do you want to know?"

"Anything you want to tell. Where did you meet him?"

Studying the dim circle of light on the ceiling, she launched into her recollection. "Glendon delivered ice to our house when I was a little girl. We lived in town then, my mother and my grandparents and me. Grandpa was a preacher man, used to go out on circuit for weeks at a time." She peered at Will from the corner of her eye, gave a quirk of a smile. "Fire and brimstone, you know. Voice like a cyclone throwing dirt against the house." She told him what she chose, winnowing out any hints of her painfully lonely youth, the truth about her family, the bad memories from school. Of Glendon she spoke more frankly, telling about their meetings in the woods when she was still a girl, and of their shared respect for wild creatures. "The first present he ever brought me was a sack of corn for the birds, and from then on we were friends. I married him when I was nineteen and I been livin’ here ever since," she finished.

At the end of her recital, Will felt disappointed. He’d learned nothing of the house in town nor why she had been locked in it, none of the secrets of Eleanor Dinsmore Parker. The truth seemed strange: she was his wife, yet he knew less about her than he knew of some of the whores he’d frequented in his day. Above all, he wanted to know about that house so that he could assure her it made no difference to him. Given time, she might tell him more, but for now he respected her right to privacy. He, too, had secret hurts too painful to reveal yet.

"Now your turn," she said.

"My turn?"

"Tell me about you. Where you lived when you were a boy, how you ended up here."

He began with sterile facts. "I lived mostly in Texas but there were so many towns I couldn’t name ’em all. Sometimes in orphanages, sometimes people would take me in. I was born down around Austin, they tell me, but I don’t remember it till I grew up and went back there one time when I was doing some rodeoing."

"What do you remember?"

"First memories, you mean?"

"Yes."

Will thought carefully. It came back slowly, painfully. "Spilling a bowl of food, breakfast cereal, I think, and getting whupped so hard I forgot about being hungry."