couples on the street, in the park, lolling on the steps in Union Square, with renewed interest. He wondered if each of them had undergone a moment—or many—that would remain forever inexplicable to anyone else but was understood within their universe of two, rendering them bound in a new way. After a moment like that, you were helpless, purified, this yet another of the thousand facts his boys would never, could never, be told.
KNOX
AT THE AIRPORT, Ned reached around her waist, hooked his fingers through a couple of her belt loops, and hiked her jeans over her hip bones. She leaned into his chest for a moment.
“These are falling off you,” he mumbled into her hair. “You need to fatten yourself up.”
“Well, I hear New York has a lot of fancy restaurants.”
“You know what I mean,” he said. He was keeping his voice light, had been trying to keep it light ever since the last time they were both here, when Ned had picked Knox and her parents up at the nearby private terminal. He had driven them back to the house, seen her parents inside, then brought her back to his dim bedroom, his mouth taut, wrapped her up in the unzipped sleeping bag with the flannel lining he used for a duvet, and rocked her to sleep, talking to her all the while about nothing: the objects in his room, the Earl Scruggs interview he’d listened to on the radio in the barn that day, how the newest stallion was getting along after having kicked at his stall wall the week before, inflaming the hell out of his front left pastern. In the morning, he had scoured his tub with Comet while she slept and then run her a bath, held her hand tight as she descended into the hot, clear water. She had stayed over at his place for several nights, sleeping or trying to sleep, Ned talking to her slowly like he did to his horses. She was sure they had made love more often in the two weeks since Charlotte died than they had in the two months, give or take, before all this happened. Her breasts and stomach were rubbed red; the skin on her upper thighs felt sticky to the touch when she dressed in the mornings. She had her theories. She had lived in his bed and he’d fetched her things from his kitchen: bread and cheese sandwiches, bananas sliced into bowls of milk and peppered with cinnamon; these were the things Ned fixed for her; she was so ravenous all the time.
He’d let Knox push her ice-cold feet under his thigh to warm them while she ate, let her eye the outlines of his handsome, fleshy face as he talked. She had always seen the child in him; that was one of the things she loved about Ned: she could see sweetness and an old petulance at once on his lips and imagine all the things they had begged for and whispered at three, at seven; she could make out, clearly, a willingness to please behind his eyes with their hooded lids, their long, straight lashes that the secretaries in the farm office loved to swoon over, embarrassing him on purpose. Everyone had something indelible in them, lodged deep in their features; Ned’s something, she thought, was kindness. It seemed he was doing his best to save her life. She kept meaning to tell him this, but he’d cover her with his warm body, and she’d forget the words to whatever little speech she’d put together. She’d listen to the breath in her ear, to the blood pumping in her own head. She held herself still (how recently she used to pride herself on the energy she could bring to fucking, on twisting herself into positions that would keep them both safe in the knowledge that at least her skill in bed couldn’t be questioned, even if her commitment could be), and tried to be thankful that, despite what her head thought it wanted in her worst moments, her limbs seemed to not want to be dead, not yet. This took no small amount of focus. When she came, she didn’t make a sound. She closed her eyes. She shuddered.
It would take another month for Ethan and Ben to receive the requisite shots; and after the time they’d had to spend in the NICU, no one was about to rush Bruce or ask him to take any chances, just to get