Page 57 of Blood Hymn

He looks down at me.

"They interviewed a woman in Houston for the segment." I keep my eyes on the flames. "She came forward in the spring after the ledger went public. She said she went to the state police in Alexandria about her little sister, who disappeared from the gathering, and a week later a man drove her out Parish 12 with her hands tied. She said she thought she was going to die. She said she prayed the whole way. And the man drove right past the curve where he was supposed to stop and let her go at a truck stop outside Bunkie with two hundred dollars." I turn and look up at him. "Her name is Jolene Tate. She works for a women's shelter now. She's got three kids."

He goes very still.

The fire moves on his face. For a long time he doesn't say anything at all. His jaw works. I watch him try to get something out and fail, and try again.

"She lived," he finally manages.

"She lived. She said she's looked for that man her whole life. She said she wanted him to know she named her first son after the truck stop, because it was the only thing she could think of. Bunkie. He goes by Bud." I put my hand flat on his chest. "She said she hopes he's alive. She said she hopes somebody's been good to him."

He puts his hand over his eyes. His shoulders shake once, hard. I stand there with my palm on his heart and let him have it. I don't say anything, and the fire burns.

When he takes his hand away, his face is wet and he doesn't wipe it.

"Somebody has," he tells me.

We stay at the ring until the oak burns down to a bed of coals, glowing and pulsing like something breathing. Then we go inside, and we go to bed.

The dream comes at three.

It always comes, some version of it. Tonight it's the basin. Black water to my chin and the masks all around me, calling my name, and I'm swimming for the steps, and my arms won't move. Delilah stands on the church steps in her nightgown with a candle, watching me, and she doesn't know me. I open my mouth to tell her who I am, and the water pours in⁠—

A hand settles on my throat.

It isn't tight. It's warm and wide and certain, the palm resting across the hollow of my neck and the thumb finding the pulse beneath my jaw. It's the only thing that has ever worked. Being held doesn't help. Being talked to doesn't help. This does.

"Breathe," Silas murmurs in the dark.

I breathe. His thumb stays on my pulse and walks it down, beat by beat, slower, slower. The water drains out of the room. The masks go under. It's our bedroom again, pine boards on the ceiling, the window cracked for the cold, the smell of woodsmoke drifting in from the yard.

"There you are."

"I'm here."

We go out onto the porch with coffee, the way we do. I'm in his flannel shirt with a quilt around my shoulders. He's in jeans and nothing else, because cold has never touched him the way it touches me. We sit on the top step with our shoulders pressed together. Out in the yard, the coals are still glowing in the stone ring, a small red eye in the black, and over the pines the stars are so thick they look spilled.

Neither of us talks. We drink. After a while, I set my cup on the step and turn to him.

He's already watching me.

He stands and holds out his hand. He can't carry me, not with the scar, and I wouldn't let him if he could. I take his hand, and he leads me down the hall to our room and shuts the door against the cold. In the gray light from the window, he unbuttons the flannel shirt off my shoulders one button at a time, without any hurry, as if there's nowhere in the world either of us needs to be.

There isn't. There hasn't been for a year. I still don't know how to believe it.

The shirt drops. He looks at me standing in front of him in nothing, and he doesn't touch me yet. He just looks. His eyes move over my collarbones, my breasts, the curve of my hip, the old white marks on my shoulders from the church wall, and I feel it like heat everywhere they land.

"Silas."

"I'm looking."

"You've seen me."

"Not enough." He steps close and lays his palms along my ribs, warm, rough from engines and fence wire. "Not nearly enough."

He kisses me standing up. Slowly, deeply, his hand coming up to cradle the back of my head, his tongue sliding against mine. I rise on my toes, wrap my arms around his neck, and press my whole body against his bare chest. The carved words are warm against my breasts. I can feel his heart.

I reach down, work his jeans open, push them off his hips, and he steps out of them. His cock is hard against my belly, hot and heavy, and when I close my hand around it, he breaks the kiss with a rough exhale against my mouth.