Chapter 1 #3
When he opened his mouth to say something nasty, she raised her hand.
“Stop,” she said. “Stop with the antics. You’re not rebelling by misbehaving.
Stop looking at my chi-chis, stop being unruly with Margaret at Mass and just go talk to her.
” He looked startled by her understanding.
“Your father knows you’re a hard worker; show him he can depend on your sensibilities.
Show him you’re the kind of man he is—decent, kind, respectful—and he’ll give you what you’ve earned. ”
Adam dropped his eyes to his plate and didn’t say another word. But he went outside for a long time while she cleaned the kitchen and when he came back in, he made sure the screen door didn’t slam and thanked her quietly for dinner.
MaryAnn went to her room with a feeling she’d never felt before, a feeling she hadn’t even known she craved.
The following evening with Roslynn was a horror of awkward conversation and physical bumblings.
MaryAnn burned her hand and Roslynn broke a mug.
Even the animals were fractious, Tucker wiping his butt on the best rug and Cat howling to be let out one second then screeching to be let in the next.
It was their first time alone in the house together, and MaryAnn’s desire and fear felt like it was pulling her in two.
She didn’t want to leave. She didn’t want to do anything that would get her sent away. But she desperately wanted Roslynn.
Her sister-in-law went to bed without saying goodnight, and MaryAnn wept into her pillow. When Carl showed up the next night, MaryAnn understood the order of things. She made a plan.
She scrubbed the farmhouse until it gleamed and gathered branches of honeysuckle in milk bottles to sweeten the air.
Samuel had shown an inclination for the food of her family, so she made fresh frijoles and arroz and a salsa for the chile con carne.
She yanked the tub into the kitchen from the porch, set up the screen in front of it, then spent half the day hauling in water.
By the time the sun was near the horizon, MaryAnn was in the lilac dress Samuel had married her in, her black hair with only a couple of strands of silvery grey was brushed and trailing down her back, and candles were lit on the set table.
When the screen door opened behind her, the steak was sizzling in the pan and the final bucket of bath water was starting to steam.
She readied a welcoming smile and placed a hand on her chest to staunch the feeling of betrayal. The only reason she could do this, she knew, was because Roslynn was away.
She felt a movement at her skirts. Cat was rubbing against her calf.
MaryAnn whirled around.
Roslynn stood two paces into the room, filthy, holding her arm and looking staggered.
Her glorious eyes, green and huge, took in the table, the candles, the honeysuckle bobbing on the sideboard, the steam coming up from behind the screen, and then MaryAnn.
She looked at MaryAnn with so much gladness, and MaryAnn knew that regardless who she’d been expecting this evening, it’d been the dream of Roslynn she’d created this for.
“My horse…it…it saw a prairie rattler and bucked me off,” Roslynn said, wide-eyed and stuttering. “Samuel…he…made me come home.”
MaryAnn hurried to her. “Are you hurt?”
“Just tender,” Roslynn said, seeming to get her bearings. “Samuel popped my shoulder back into place.”
“Then you need a bath,” MaryAnn said, making a quick and resolute decision. “A bath then liniment, dinner, and bed.” Tonight, it was just the two of them. “You’ll be right as rain in the morning.”
Tonight, she could take care of Roslynn, indulge in the fantasy of this beautiful woman coming home to her without jeopardizing their reality.
That concept was immediately thrown into question when her sister-in-law gave a pained groan from behind the screen. Even walking closer to it spiked MaryAnn’s temperature. “Roslynn?” she called softly. Getting no answer, she peeked around it.
Roslynn stood next to the tub, in the alcove the screen created near the fogged kitchen windows, still dressed with her head bowed. MaryAnn could immediately see the problem: one side of her overall bib hung down but she was unable to unhook the other side with her injured arm.
“Do you need some help?” she asked gently.
Roslynn nodded without raising her head, her fuzzy auburn braid sliding over her back.
MaryAnn approached as slowly as she would approach a nesting hen.
And just as quick and careful as she snuck eggs, she slipped her fingers under the overall strap, felt the top of Roslynn’s soft shirt and warm breast, and slipped the hook from the catch.
The action she’d dreamt of for weeks felt better than any erotic dream.
But even with the bib collapsing to Roslynn’s hips, MaryAnn saw what other challenges she faced with her hurt arm.
Her sister-in-law needed to unbutton her shirt.
Get out of her brassiere. Undo her hair. Wash.
MaryAnn felt like a slavering, belly-crawling thing when she realized how Roslynn’s weakness put her into her hands. Roslynn’s bowed head meant she realized it, too.
“We’re sisters, aren’t we?” MaryAnn whispered, moving tendrils of gold and rose against Roslynn’s temple. “Can I help you?”
Roslynn met her eyes and MaryAnn felt a merry-go-round twirl in her belly. “Yes,” Roslynn whispered, her eyes reflecting the candles’ flame.
MaryAnn’s fingers quickly became busy to hide their trembling. She slipped delicate ivory buttons through their holes, ignored the first hint of Roslynn’s cleavage, kept going even when Roslynn’s brassiere—plain and threadbare over those round, massive breasts—came into view.
She looked into her sister-in-law’s face while she quickly undid the hook-and-eye closures down the front of her brassiere. Roslynn watched her from under her dark eyelashes, green peeking between spikes of black, and a whimpering began in MaryAnn’s gut.
She gave a reassuring smile. Sisters. “Turn around,” she said without looking down at the breasts freed beneath the cotton.
When Roslynn presented her back, MaryAnn carefully, tenderly, pulled the shirt and brassiere down and off, then, controlling her breath, MaryAnn took the thick braid in hand and began to unwind it. Hair like sundown fanned out into kinks and waves over a broad, pale back.
When she was finished, she looked up to discover Roslynn watching her in the reflection of the window. It’d gone full dark. Two candles in the alcove lit them both. Roslynn’s arms covered her breasts, rising and falling with her rapid breathing; MaryAnn could hardly breathe at all.
Neither dropped their gaze.
“Can you manage the rest?” MaryAnn asked.
Roslynn nodded.
“Get yourself in the tub, and I’ll return to wash your hair.”
She focused on feeding the animals and taking the well-done steak off the stove to distract from the slosh of warm water as it surrounded naked skin.
She had long experience washing her mother’s hair.
Her sisters. This need be no different, she told herself as she approached the screen again.
“May I come in?” she asked carefully. Never, once, in the process of washing hair, had she fought an animal urge to fling aside what barred her from looking.
“Yes.” Roslynn’s voice was as soft as the steam.
Wavy auburn hair trailed to the floorboards.
MaryAnn sat an empty pail beneath the hair, then took a bucket of still-warm water and tipped it, wetting the strands into a dark mass.
She was careful as she worked the lathered bar soap into the scalp, mindful it didn’t drip into eyes.
This was any head, she repeated as she massaged the handfuls of hair, wanting it sweet and shiny when she was through. These were any tresses.
Roslynn made a sound that raised goosebumps over MaryAnn’s flesh.
“Too rough?” she asked, the sensations—Roslynn’s hot scalp under her fingertips, Roslynn’s thick hair twining around her wrists—flooding her senses. She begged for a complaint: MaryAnn was washing too hard, the water was too hot, the room was too cold.
“Heavenly,” Roslynn groaned, causing a grip between MaryAnn’s legs as strong as a cramp.
With her sister-in-law’s head laying back on the lip of the tub, MaryAnn rinsed her hair, smoothing her fingertips delicately over her forehead to catch any escaping streams of soap, curving her palm over her scalp, combing her fingers through her long, wavy tresses.
“MaryAnn,” Roslynn whispered.
Her sister-in-law’s head still rested back on the tub. When MaryAnn circled around to look into her beautiful face, Roslynn stared up at her with green eyes that reflected the light of the candles, and rosy cheeks glowing with the warmth of the room.
“Stand, hermana mía,” she said softly, in a voice that couldn’t be her own. “Let me wash you.”
Una vez. Solo una vez.
El Dios, with all of his machinations to put MaryAnn and Roslynn in this place and this moment, surely would forgive this one and only time.
Even cradling her injured arm against her, Roslynn was able to rise from the bath water as strong and steady as the tide, and MaryAnn stood with her, wetted cloth in hand.
This was Roslynn she was going to touch, and if it was going to be this only time, she was going to stamp it into her memory. Brand it into her soul.
With only the thin warm rag between her hand and Roslynn’s skin, she carefully washed over her precious face, washed every freckle, every line, every pale hair and dimple.
She washed behind Roslynn’s ears and lathered up her neck, drawing a twist and a huff from the woman.
Was her tough-as-nails sister-in-law ticklish?