CHAPTER 30 #2
Darlin'. I went down to the southeast lip at dawn. The bee-balm has come back at the new stone. I cut a sprig. He set the clay pot on the dresser. For the bedroom. For tonight.
He did not say in place of the spectacles.
He did not have to. The reading-spectacles were under the new sandstone since September.
In my chest I felt the place where Eliza's spectacles had used to live on a windowsill — steel-rimmed, the right earpiece slightly bent — and the lay-down of them under the stone, and the bee-balm in the clay pot was the throughline.
I lifted the clay pot the way I had held the watch and set it beside the Mason jar.
Tate. Thank you.
Darlin'.
Levi came in behind with the bone-and-rawhide horse-charm in his open left hand — the foal's polished molar, the four-strand rawhide, the faint copper twist of Mercy's mane.
He had taken it off Ardent's bridle that morning.
He came to the east bedpost and tied the charm at head-height with a horseman's hitch.
Levi.
Love.
Beck came in last with the brass lamp and set it on the bedside table. The lamp-light came up across the pale gold posts and the cream-and-green quilt and the bee-balm and the horse-charm. The cabin was clear-lit for the first time in five months.
Wife. Yes or no.
Yes.
Darlin'. Yes or no.
Yes.
Love. Yes or no.
Yes, yes, yes.
Then come to bed.
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I undressed myself.
The green-and-cream travel dress at the six buttons, counted because I counted them. The shift over the dress. The bone pin stayed in my crown braid. My mother's second pin stayed in the other. The pins were part of me tonight, not something to be set down.
The three men undressed. Beck's Sunday wool coat over the chair-back. Tate's Highland coat over the rocker, the silver buttons winking once at the lamp. Levi shed the Hudson Bay shirt across the foot of the bed.
We sat on the new four-poster. The wedding-ring circles linked across each other in the calico the way the four of us linked now.
Beck came to me first — by the order of first heat.
The brothers' rotation we had spoken at the table on Wednesday: Beck first because the July storm-kitchen was the body's door; Tate second because the August loft was the healing; Levi third because the August barn was the wild that had become the home.
He kneeled behind me. I lay on my side, the quilt drawn to my hip. His scarred left palm came across my ribcage and laid flat at the curve of my waist. His right hand brushed the hair from the back of my neck where the bone pin held. His mouth went to the bend of my shoulder.
Look at me, sweetheart.
I turned on the pillow. His hazel-green eyes were brown in the lamp. His thumb came to the corner of my mouth — the old kettle-kitchen gesture — and stayed.
I have been winding a stopped watch for fourteen years and tonight I have started winding it forward. I am with you.
I am with you.
He entered me slow.
The give of my body around him was the slow give of the calico to the iron pressing-block. He bottomed out. He held. He breathed through his teeth. He moved.
Long strokes. His right thumb came around my hip to the slick at my clit and held there. My foreman's left palm flat at the line of my waist. My foreman's mouth at my shoulder. My body opening around his cock in the lamp-light.
I came around him with one long shake, my hand at the back of his neck.
He said, soft, against my temple, Good girl.
The second of the two times he had ever said it. The first had been at the wash-basin in the lean-to in the July storm. I had been counting both since June.
He came inside me with the low groan into the angle of my shoulder. Christ. Christ. Willa. Three breaks. The third was my name lifted out of the curse. He held. He stayed.
He withdrew slow, moved to the foot of the bed, sat on the quilt's edge. He scratched the scarred palm once and waited.
Tate came next.
I rolled to lie on my back, the bone pin still holding the crown braid against the pillow.
Tate moved above me. The lamp caught the silver streak at his left temple and the burn-mark down the inside of his right forearm.
His mouth came to my temple — the August-loft place his mouth had been at the first night he had let himself want again.
Darlin'.
Tate.
Look at me. Let me see you.
I opened my eyes. His were full blue.
I did not know I could want again — and now I want forever.
I felt the small bright shock of it in my throat, the August ache extended out across the rest of my life, and I said against his temple the only German my father's voice had ever lived in my mouth — mein Liebling — and Tate's eyes closed for one beat longer than they should have.
He entered me slow. Eye to eye, missionary. His hand came between us at my clit, the thumb slow and even. His mouth at my temple. His breath at the bone pin. He held the full weight on his elbow against the linen.
I came around him slow, the long climb extended by the four months of arc, the gold band warming where my hand was caught against his sternum at the cleft of his ribcage where his late wife's stone used to ride.
He held inside me. Willa. One syllable. One pause. He came inside me with his breath stopping for one beat at the start of my name and resuming at the end of it. He stayed.
He withdrew slow, pressed his forehead to mine. Mo chridhe. He moved to the side of the bed and sat on the summer quilt beside Beck — the two men in their own clean separate stillness, watching the lamp-light, while the third came to me.
Levi.
He lay back and grinned up through the lamp-light, the freckled face, the sea-blue eyes, the copper-red hair across his shoulder.
Love.
Levi.
Yes?
Yes.
Then come and have me, lass. Slow. We have all night.
I climbed across him — the wild position, the August-barn saddle-blanket echo, but the floor was a new four-poster and the wild was gentled by five months and three men. I lowered myself onto him slow. The give. The long fill. His freckled hands at my hips, his thumbs at the bone of my hipbones.
Look at me.
I looked at him.
Ours.
He said it without flinching. The August slipped-out ours had become an October owned ours, spoken plain in the bed of his wife in the cabin of his brothers. I rocked once on him. He laughed once, soft, against my throat where I bent to him. The laugh I loved.
I came around him with my hand spread at the cleft scar at his sternum, the way my thumb had gone to it on the August saddle-blanket floor. His freckled hand splayed wide at my belly under me — the same belly-press — and he held me through it.
He came inside me with the long whisper of love love love that ended in the laugh against my shoulder, and he stayed.
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We lay down together under the wedding-ring quilt. Tate at my back. Beck on my left. Levi on my right.
The lamp burned low and clean. The new chimney pulled even.
The bee-balm in its clay pot breathed in the cabin's slow air.
The horse-charm on the east bedpost moved a quarter-inch and settled.
The watch in Beck's vest on the chair ticked steady — the small alive sound that had not been in any cabin in fourteen years.
My belly was the meeting place.
Beck's scarred left palm came across my hip and laid open against my low belly under the quilt.
Levi's freckled right palm came across from the other side, the cleft scar visible above where his shirt had come off, and laid across the back of Beck's hand.
Tate's right hand with the burn-mark came over my shoulder from behind and laid across both.
My left hand with the gold band came up and joined them.
Four hands at my belly. They did not touch each other in any way the bond did not allow; they layered at my body like four warm leaves on a creek-stone.