“Are you?”
She looked into his eyes, but her nod of affirmation must not have been convincing, because he didn’t move. Nor did she. They continued to stare at each other until she began to feel the same tightness in her chest that she’d felt last night when she’d held the gift of his book in her hands, until her veins throbbed with blood suddenly gone feverish, until her eyes stung with fresh tears, and she had to clamp her teeth over her lower lip to keep it from trembling.
He took a step nearer. She saw her name, Ella, form on his lips, but she couldn’t hear it for her pulse drumming in her ears.
Slowly, he raised his hands and placed one on each side of her face, curving them to fit her cheeks. He lowered his head. Feeling his breath warm on her face, she made a weak mewling sound. He touched his lips to the corner of her mouth.
Her breath caught.
Then he kissed the other corner of her lips. She closed her eyes, squeezing out tears that felt very wet, very hot on her cheeks.
“Don’t cry,” he whispered.
The brush of his lips across hers sparked a longing deep within. It didn’t unfurl gradually, or come to life drowsily after its long repose. It erupted. So that when he kissed her mouth fully, she began making such hungry sounds, he backed her into the room and gently closed the door with his foot.
With the door at his back for support, he pulled her to him, and for the longest time, they clung to each other. She reveled in the feel of his arms around her, his breath quick against her neck. She leaned into him, feeling his hard bones and the solidness of his form in thrilling contrast to the softness of hers.
She pressed her face into the vee of his open collar and touched his throat with her lips. His skin was warm. She breathed deeply of his smell, so familiar to her now, but so very forbidden until this moment, when she didn’t deny herself indulging in it, drinking it in, taking it into herself, committing it to memory for life.
He eased her away and combed his hands through her hair, watching as the undisciplined strands celebrated their freedom by coiling themselves around his fingers. He seemed fascinated by the abundance of her hair, its texture and length, and she got the sense that he would enjoy playing with it for hours.
Then his eyes settled on hers. His remarkable eyes. Blue and pure, the most beautiful eyes she had ever seen, or would ever see again in her lifetime. She would vow to that.
“I love you, Ella.”
She closed her eyes for a brief few seconds, and when she opened them again, she whispered shakily, “I know.”
“I would never do anything to damage you.”
“No, you wouldn’t.”
“So if you tell me to leave, I will.”
She laid her cheek against his chest. “If you left me now, I wouldn’t survive my regret.”
He sighed her name as he tilted her face up and slanted his lips across hers.
Ella thought she might die of the pleasure that coursed through her. But then he lowered his hands from her face and untied the belt of her wrapper. When his hands were inside it, bracketing her rib cage, and she could feel the pressure of each of his long fingers, she realized that his kiss was only a prelude to the pleasure he could give her. And when he moved his hands up and down over the slippery fabric of her slip and they brushed the undersides of her breasts, she became certain of it.
She didn’t have a mirror, and it would have been too dark in the bedroom to see her reflection anyway, but she knew that, as she gazed into his face, her eyes must have been glassy with wonder. “I had no idea.”
He was equally intent on his study of her face. “What?”
“That I could feel, that anyone could feel, something that extraordinary, and live through it. How is it possible?”
“It was one of the Creator’s finest hours.”
She smiled and nuzzled his shoulder, then laid her head on it. “It was nothing like that with my husband. So unlike it I can’t even compare the two experiences. I didn’t love him. Perhaps that’s why.”
“If you didn’t love him, why did you marry him?”
“I’d already rejected Conrad. I suppose I was afraid that, if I continued turning down suitors, I soon wouldn’t have any. I didn’t want to wind up the old-maid landlady of a boardinghouse.” Pensively, she added, “Of course that’s what happened. Essentially.”
“You have Solly.”
“Yes.”
Mr. Rainwater took a strand of her hair and rubbed it between his fingers. “Your husband must not have loved you, either, Ella. If he had, he wouldn’t have left you.”
“He loved me, I think. In his way. The best way he knew how. But he just couldn’t handle what was happening to Solly. Maybe he was frustrated because he was powerless to fix it. Maybe he considered Solly a poor reflection on him. Or perhaps he looked into the future and saw what having a child like Solly would mean to our lives, and he simply had to escape. But I don’t suppose I’ll ever know for certain what drove him to leave.”
“You don’t know if he’s dead or alive?”
She shook her head, then lifted it from his shoulder and, looking down on him, smiled wanly. “It’s likely that I’m an adulteress. Willfully and gladly I’ve committed that sin tonight.” Her eyes began to fill. “Is loving you God’s way of punishing me?”
He touched her lips with his fingertips, then drew her to him, saying, “No, Ella, no. It’s His blessing.”
It was inevitable—morning came.
As the eastern sky began to turn gray, Ella woke up. She lay perfectly still, reveling in the feel of him against her, in the gentle sound of his breathing, in the knowledge that, if she lived to be a century old, she would never forget the sweetness of this dawn.
Begrudgingly, she woke him. He groaned a protest but knew he had to leave her room before they were discovered. They got the giggles as he searched in the dark for his clothes, and then he buttoned his shirt wrong, and she had to unbutton it and do it for him.
“Hurry,” she said, stifling her laughter as she hustled him toward the door and passed him his shoes. “You don’t want the Dunne sisters to catch you sneaking out of my bedroom.”
“How do you know I haven’t been sneaking out of theirs since I moved in?”
That set her off again, and she had to cover her mouth to trap the giggles inside. He removed her hand and tried to kiss her, but she dodged it. “Go! I want to take a bath before I start the day.”
“You feel unclean?”
“No, I feel sore.” Even in the dim light, she saw his grin. Slapping his arm softly, she said, “Don’t look so pleased with yourself.” He kissed her again before she could protest, and when the playfulness of it began quickly to evolve into a kiss of a different sort, she pushed him away. “If you want biscuits for breakfast—”
“I’m going.”
He was the first to come downstairs. He had washed, shaved, and changed clothes. Her eyes gobbled him up, and she continued to be greedy for the sight of him, resenting each time she had to return to the kitchen while serving breakfast.
She missed Margaret’s helping hands, but, despite the reason for her absence, Ella was glad she wasn’t there this morning. Surely Margaret would have sensed the change in her, in the house, in everything.
The atmosphere crackled with invisible currents each time she and Mr. Rainwater made eye contact. Whenever she was near him, she craved to touch him, and only the strongest act of will kept her from doing so. She knew he was feeling similarly; he looked at her with patent yearning, his eyes following every motion.
The spinster sisters seemed oblivious to the dramatic differences between yesterday and today, which Ella found incredible. To her it was obvious that nothing smelled or tasted or sounded or looked or felt or was the same as it had been only hours ago.
She swore she could feel her blood coursing through her veins as though dams that had been holding it back all her life had been opened, unlocked by Mr. Rainwater’s touch. All five senses were heightened. Her nerve endings were sensitized. Her body tingled and ached deliciously, in a way it never had before.
Were these overpowering physical sensations what the preachers called lust? If so, she now realized why they were warned against from pulpits around the world. They were more powerful than the sweetest narcotic, more intoxicating than the strongest liquor. She now understood how easily and happily one would relinquish control to them until they governed one’s whole being.
Little had she known, or ever even imagined, that what men and women did together could be so breathtakingly sweet, so beautiful to body, mind, and soul.
She finished her chores as quickly as possible so she could spend time with him and Solly. After lunch, he invented an errand for himself and invited her and Solly to go along. It was a contrivance to get the three of them out of the house and alone, leaving the Dunnes with a plausible explanation for their absence.
They drove into the countryside and found a shady, pleasant spot in a grove of pecan trees that grew alongside a creek. There they spread a quilt. For a time, Mr. Rainwater engaged Solly in card games that he made up as he went along, and they marveled at the progress he’d made.
“He’s grasping concepts, Ella,” he said excitedly when Solly responded successfully to a challenge. “I’m sure of it.”
“So am I.”
She was equally sure that Solly wouldn’t have come this far if not for Mr. Rainwater, and that made her feel both ashamed for her failure and grateful for his kind interference. She was no longer jealous of it, only immensely thankful.
They could not, however, coax Solly to wade into the creek with them. He got visibly upset when they tried to remove his shoes, so they returned to the quilt and gave him the deck of cards. He played with them while Mr. Rainwater laid his head in Ella’s lap and read aloud to her from the Hemingway novel.
At one point, he stopped, tilted his head back, and, seeing the tears in her eyes, said, “This isn’t even the sad part.”
“I’m not crying over the story, or because I’m sad.” She looked at Solly as he stared up into the branches of the tree, seemingly fixated on the patterns the leaves formed against the sky. Those same patterns were reflected in Mr. Rainwater’s eyes when she returned her gaze to him. “I don’t remember a single moment of my life when I’ve been this happy or content. And it’s because of you.”
He sat up and placed his arms around her. They kissed, chastely. But for the remainder of the time, they sat with their arms wrapped around each other, basking in the hazy heat of the afternoon and in the love they’d found when they least expected it.
Ella had to rush to get dinner on the table by six-thirty and guiltily used Margaret’s absence as an excuse for it being a cold supper of sliced ham and various salads. The Dunnes didn’t seem to mind, probably because Mr. Rainwater paid them extra attention and drew them into a conversation about the differences between schoolchildren today and the students they had taught decades earlier. Was there indeed evidence of moral decay among America’s youth? The discussion that followed distracted them from not having a hot meal.
As Ella was finishing up the dishes, Jimmy came to the back door with a message. “Brother Calvin’s funeral is tomorrow at five o’clock.”
“Why so late in the day?”
“So they can have dinner on the grounds after.”
It was a term used for picnics usually held after Sunday services when people tended to the graves of loved ones in the adjacent cemetery. Food was brought and shared in the churchyard.
“The funeral is at the church?”
“Seemed fittin’.”
Ella supposed it did, although she didn’t know how anyone could enter that sanctuary without thinking of the young minister’s body hanging from the beam. Maybe the funeral was an attempt to purify it, rid it of that stigma. “How is your mother?”
“She’s heartbroke.”
“All of us are.”
“Meanin’ no disrespect, Miss Ella. But not all.”
Later, she recounted the conversation to Mr. Rainwater. “I’m worried about Jimmy and other young men. I hope they won’t try and get revenge.”
“I hope they won’t, either, because that would only create more trouble, probably bloodshed. But since they’ve been denied justice, one could hardly blame them if they wanted vengeance.”
Ella’s concerns were justified later that evening.
She and Mr. Rainwater were sitting apart in the parlor, waiting in an agony of anticipation for the Dunne sisters to retire, when he set aside the magazine he was reading and went to the front window. “Something’s burning.”
Ella put down her mending and joined him at the window. The flames could be seen against the night sky. “Something near the highway.”
Just then the telephone rang. As Ella walked toward the back of the staircase to answer it, Miss Pearl appeared in the arched opening of the informal parlor. “Mrs. Barron, we smell smoke.”
“Something in town is on fire.”
“Oh, dear,” whimpered Miss Violet, who joined her sister, holding her hand of cards in her age-spotted grip.
Ella answered the phone. It was Ollie Thompson, and she held her breath, fearing that he would ask to speak to Mr. Rainwater and summon him to the scene of another crisis. But he was only calling to pass along information. She thanked him and hung up. After replacing the telephone, she turned to find her three boarders in the hallway, waiting to hear the news.
“That was Ollie. He knew we had probably smelled the smoke. He called to tell us that the fire is at Packy Simpson’s auto garage.”
“Oh, what a shame,” Miss Pearl said. “He’s such a nice nigra. Always tips his hat to us, doesn’t he, Sister?”
Ignoring them, Ella looked at Mr. Rainwater, who asked, “How did it start?”
“The sheriff accused him of leaving a cigarette burning in an ashtray when he closed up shop. Mr. Simpson dips snuff. He doesn’t smoke.” She let that sink in, then said, “His business is a total loss, but he’s glad the fire didn’t spread to his house. The two buildings are separated by only twenty yards.”
The sisters drifted back into the informal parlor to finish their gin game. Ella motioned Mr. Rainwater back into the front room. Solly was where she’d left him, sitting on the rug stacking spools. “Mr. Simpson is a deacon at Brother Calvin’s church,” she said in a voice that the spinsters couldn’t overhear. “He’s a pallbearer for the funeral tomorrow.”