James entered carrying a plain glass of water, his limp heavy on the floorboards. He set the glass down on the small wooden nightstand beside the bed.
He looked at me for a long moment, his face in the shadow of the doorway.
“You can sleep, Sarah, I won’t touch you, not until you are ready,” he said.
He turned toward the far side of the bed, moving with slow, careful steps so he wouldn’t disturb the blankets.
I pulled my coat off and lay down, my back to his. The quiet sound of James’s steady breathing on the far side of the mattress as the rain continues to fall.
The grey light of sunrise showed the cracks in the plaster above the bureau. When I stood up, the floorboards were cold enough to pinch the soles of my feet. James was already gone from his side of the bed. The sheets were pulled straight on his side, flat and neat, as if no one had slept there at all.
In the kitchen, the air smelled of cold woodsmoke and iron. A small tin tray sat on the yellow oilcloth table. On it was a clean glass of milk, two slices of bread spread thick with butter, and a square of paper torn from a ledger.
The pencil writing was small and tilted. I will be at the shop on Main Street early to fix the tuner on the Henderson television, it read. Do not hurry with the dishes.
I sat down and held the paper between my thumb and finger. The glass of water from the nightstand was still upstairs, untouched, but the milk here was cold and fresh. He must have walked to the dairy depot at five in the morning to get it before the truck left for the state road.
I ate the bread in the quiet room. The smallness of his handwriting stayed in my mind, each letter upright and careful, like the diagrams he kept in his repair manuals. Why did he need to leave before the sun was up on our first morning? I wondered if he regretted the promise he made in the bedroom.
