the opposite. Two hundred years back, this farm had been over a thousand acres, and the Stolens ran things in Rowan County.
“Lot of history in this bed,” I said.
“Yep.” She nodded. “Lot of love, too.” I said nothing, and the silence spoke volumes, an old tale. She loved me and on good days understood that I loved her, too. Why I could not admit that was the problem. She didn’t understand and I was too ashamed to explain it to her. So we existed in this horrible undefined state, with nothing to cling to when the nights were cold and endlessly successive. “Why are you here, Jackson?” she asked me.
“Do I need a reason?” I replied, feeling cheap.
“No,” she said with feeling. “Never.”
I took her grasping hand. “I’m here to see you, Vanessa.”
“But not to stay.”
I remained silent.
“Never to stay,” she continued, and I saw tears in her eyes.
“Vanessa . . .”
“Don’t say it, Jackson. Don’t. We’ve been here before. I know you’re married. I don’t know what came over me. Just ignore me.”
“It’s not that,” I said.
“Then what?” she asked, and I saw such anguish in her face that I lost my voice. I was wrong to have come. So very, very wrong.
She tried to laugh, but it died halfway. “Come on, Jackson. What?” But I couldn’t tell her. She stared into my eyes for a long second and I watched as the fire burned out of her face and the resignation settled in. She kissed me, but it was a dead kiss.
“I’m jumping in the shower,” she told me. “Don’t you dare leave.”
I watched her as she padded barefoot and naked from the room. Normally, we’d be in the shower together, her body alive under my soapy hands.
I drained my beer and lay weakly, listening to the birds outside. I heard the shower run in the bathroom and pictured Vanessa’s face upturned to water straight from the well. It would taste fresh on her skin. I wanted to wash her hair, but instead I got up and went downstairs. There was more beer in the refrigerator and I carried one to the front porch. The sun felt good on my naked skin and it dried my sweat. Farmland stretched to the distant tree line and I guessed I was looking at strawberries. I leaned against the post and closed my eyes to the breeze. I didn’t hear Vanessa come downstairs.
“Oh, my God. What happened to your back?” She moved quickly onto the porch. “It looks like somebody beat you with a bat.” She put light hands on me, tracing lines of my bruises.
“I fell down some stairs,” I told her.
“Were you drunk?”
I laughed. “A little, I guess.”
“Jackson, you need to be careful. You could have killed yourself.”
I wasn’t sure why I lied to her. I just didn’t want to tell her the whole truth. She had enough problems. “I’ll be all right.”
She took the beer from my hand and sipped. She was in a towel, her hair still wet. I wanted to wrap her into me and promise that I’d never let go. I wanted to tell her that I loved her, that I would spend the rest of my life just like this. Instead, I put one inadequate arm around her shoulder, and even that felt like a stranger’s arm. “I love this place,” I told her, and she accepted my words without comment. It was the closest I could come to sharing the truth of my feelings for her, and in some small way she knew this. Reality, however, had never been so simple.
“Are you hungry?” she asked, and I nodded. “Let’s go to the kitchen.” We went into the kitchen and she pulled a robe from the laundry room on the way. “Go put your pants on,” she told me. “You can do anything you want naked except sit at my table.” She popped me on the rear as I passed by.
She had a trestle table that dated back to the 1800s. It was dented and scarred. Sitting at it, we ate ham and cheese and spoke of little things. I drank another beer. I told her about Ezra’s safe and the missing gun. She hesitated for a minute and then asked me how he died. Two bullets to the head, I told her, and she looked out the window.
“Do you feel any different?” she finally asked.
“I don’t understand.”
She looked at me then. “Does your life feel any different now that Ezra is dead and