Chapter Twelve #3
Her hand wanted to cross the three inches.
She kept it where it was. She drew a breath in through her nose. She slid her palm flat against the wood half an inch closer to him than it had been a count earlier, and she left it there.
Wade looked at her hand.
His own stayed where it was.
The kitchen lamp threw its yellow light across the pine between them. The smell of the boiled milk on the back of the stove sat warm in the air. Somewhere above them on the second floor, a board creaked under a small, bare foot.
Wade lifted his eyes from her hand to her face.
Outside, the Bridger range caught the first direct sun of the morning along its upper ridges, the peaks going briefly pink and gold as they did every morning at this hour, the same morning gift the mountains gave every single day to anyone paying attention.
Through the kitchen window, Zoe watched them.
Wade rose and stood with his back half to her, looking out the window as well.
“Town,” he said, after a while.
“Sorry?” Zoe replied.
“I need to go into Bozeman this week. Hardware. Feed store.” He kept his eyes on the window. “Sadie has been asking about embroidery thread.”
Zoe set her cup down.
“Has she?” Zoe asked, leaning forward by a careful inch with one eyebrow lifting at the back of his coat.
“Since the sampler.” A pause. “I thought you might want to come. Both of you. The feed store is dull, but the mercantile carries thread.”
He kept his back half to her. His profile against the morning window was the profile she had been memorizing: the line of his beard, the set of his shoulders, the size of his hands, the careful working knuckles, and the small white scar at the back of his left thumb.
“I would like that very much, Wade,” she answered.
“Then we will go Saturday,” he replied, still looking at the window.
“Saturday,” she agreed.
Sadie’s bedroom door opened upstairs with its particular creak.
Small feet on the floor. The third stair from the top, then the second, then the rush of the last four at once as she always took them.
Sadie appeared in the kitchen doorway in her nightgown.
Her yellow hair was loose. One stocking was half on.
Her face carried the look of someone who had just remembered the day had started without her.
“Good morning, Auntie Zoe,” she said. “Good morning, Uncle Wade.” Her gaze took in the milk pot and her expression shifted. “Is there milk?”
“There is fresh milk,” Zoe confirmed warmly. “Go and put your other stocking on first.”
She disappeared back up the stairs to retrieve the stocking.
Zoe rose, reaching for a second pot to start on breakfast.
Wade had already taken it from the shelf. They had reached at the same moment, and his hand closed over the iron handle at the same time hers did. The back of his fingers met the back of hers at the curve of the metal.
Both of them stopped.
The iron sat between their palms. The heat of his skin came through the gap in her glove at the back of her wrist, dry and steady and warm in a way the kitchen lamp had nothing to do with. Her breath caught. Somewhere above them on the second floor a small stockinged foot crossed a floorboard.
Wade’s eyes were on the back of her hand.
His thumb moved a quarter inch along the iron and brushed once against the side of her own.
The breath left her in a soft, uneven sound she hadn’t intended to let out.
His eyes came up from her hand to her face.
“Wade,” she said, the word coming out low.
“Zoe,” he answered, lower still.
She lifted her hand off the iron handle by a careful half inch. He lifted his by the same half-inch. The pot stayed where it was on the shelf, and the kitchen held the silence for the count of three more.
Then Sadie’s stockinged foot came back down the stairs and Wade took up the iron handle as though the brushing had been a piece of work like any other piece of work, and the morning went on.
It was very like the barn, and very unlike the barn. Zoe looked at the pot handle for a moment.
Wade was still two feet behind her left shoulder.
She had heard him stop there. She had heard him stay there instead of moving on toward the coat peg, and she had heard the steadiness of his breathing at the back of her hair.
She could feel the weight of his eyes on the line of her neck above the collar of her dress as plainly as she could feel the warmth of the milk pot at her right hand.
She kept her face toward the stove. The line of her shoulder lifted by a careful eighth of an inch under his gaze, and lowered again, and she set her wooden spoon against the edge of the pot with a steady hand that wished, very briefly, to do something other than hold a wooden spoon.
Behind her, Wade's boots shifted on the kitchen boards.
He stayed where he was.
Saturday, she thought. Town. Sadie and embroidery thread and the mercantile.
Fourteen days remaining.
Lord, she thought, quietly, into the warm kitchen air, I think You may have already done Your arithmetic on this. I am beginning to hope I have not been building a room I am going to leave.