carried himself with gravitas.
“Ta-da,” Clara said, spreading her arms, when he came in.
He raised an eyebrow. “Who killed Tweety Bird?”
“This, my darling, is Lemony Surprise.” She wanted a happy color with the baby due in December. An antidote for the long, dark winter of the child’s birth.
“It’s a surprise, all right. Looks like someone threw up creamed corn everywhere.”
She drew in a deep breath, which should have calmed her except for the chemical fumes of the paint. She hoped there was no lead in this cheap stuff, nothing that might harm the baby. The fumes burned inside her nose. “I’m almost done. The ceiling took forever. There must be a million nooks and crannies in these textured ceilings. God, when these walls were still that awful gray color it was like being in a cave.” With a stroke of her brush she covered the final gray spot and stood again, her hands on her hips. Logan hadn’t said anything, so she turned to him. “Did you finish your sermon?”
“It’s as finished as it’s going to get,” he muttered. “It’s the end of Pentecost, and I’m preaching from the Book of Acts instead of the lectionary. I don’t know what possessed me—the Book of Acts is not exactly easy to preach on.”
Red was the color of Pentecost, she remembered. For a moment she pictured doing this room up in red, saw herself standing inside it like standing within the bloody chamber of a great heart. “It’s because you don’t like the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost is all over the Book of Acts.”
“Holy Spirit,” Logan corrected. “And I like him well enough. It’s a blasphemy to say otherwise.”
Or her, she thought. Clara knew the word for spirit translated from the Greek as “wind” or “breath,” and she liked those translations best of all, something fierce and invisible moving in the trees, her hair. A caress in spring, a slap in winter. And the two of them living in a country of wind out on the prairie.
Logan crossed the room and pulled the curtains shut. “Doesn’t look so bad in the half dark.”
“Like swimming in a big custard pie.” The thought made Clara’s stomach grumble.
He turned to her, smiling. “And look at you,” he said.
“I know I’m a mess.” Paint freckled her arms and face.
“A glorious mess, yes. Beautiful. With your hair up in that kerchief you’re like some homey vision from the past.”
“Are you saying I should dress like this more often?”
He wrapped her in his arms, the shelf of her big stomach an awkward barrier between them. “Thank you,” he said.
“For what?”
“For this.” He spread his hands to encompass the room. “And for putting up with me when I behave like an ass.”
“I’m sorry for my own part.” There were those notes, which she still hadn’t thrown away, but she knew in that moment that she would never speak of them. There were all the ways she felt she had failed him as a wife. The pregnancy. The kittens. The boy she had not been able to save. Bringing them here to this place.
Her eyes were damp again, but this time he kissed her tears away. “I need you,” he said, and he led her back to the bedroom. He undid her kerchief and Clara shook out her hair. He kissed her mouth, her throat, the hollow above her breastbone before unbuttoning her shirt. He even let his hands linger on her stomach, but the baby was quiet inside her, asleep. Clara helped him undress, and then they climbed under the sheets together, Logan pressing against her from behind, his teeth against her shoulder blades, his hands reaching around to cup her breasts.
Outside, Clara heard the trash cans tip over. A neighbor’s dog barking and then silence. Logan’s lips along her shoulder, his face in her hair, his teeth nipping at the softness of her neck. Then he shuddered; they both did. It had been so long, so very long, and never like this, from behind, with such urgency. He kissed the lobe of her ear and moaned once, softly, a sound that was almost like an apology.
THE NEXT MORNING CLARA dropped the notes into a Folgers coffee can sitting on the garage floor, lit a match, and let them burn. “Yes, I know it’s not a practical disposal method,” she said to Loki, the smallest of the kittens, who circled her ankles, purring, “but the Danes would have approved.”
The kittens now occupied a box in the garage, their litter