Raising Wrecker - By Summer Wood Page 0,101

step forward. And against one part of her will but in accord with the rest of it she stepped forward to meet him there, in the middle, and together they sidestepped—it wasn’t a waltz, but it might have looked that way, to a stranger—to Willow’s bed.

At first they were overcome with a rank urgency, their clothes still on and their bodies exacting the penalty of their anger from each other.

And then they rested, not touching, not talking, not looking at each other.

The second time Willow let Len draw her clothes from her slowly, sliding her silk shirt through the thin gap between their bodies. She let him lay his face in the crease of her neck and against the swell of her belly, felt his desire rise with the scent of her skin. When he reached for her she climbed onto him and held his wrists against the sheets and dragged the sway of her breasts across his lips; and when he couldn’t—would not—wait any longer she let go of him so he could grasp her hips and slide himself inside her. He watched her move above him, watched his own work-hardened hands run up her sides to lay dark on her pale breasts, and then he turned and carried her beneath him, drawing out the sweetness for as long as he could last.

The third time, she took him in that other way and he came again so suddenly and violently she thought that he would shake apart.

The fourth time was no time at all. They had slept for hours. Len woke first when the faintest light glimmered through the east windows, and he gazed at Willow for a long time. She opened her eyes to find him like that. Willow reached a hand to stroke the stubbled line of his jaw. She felt him stir against her thigh. But her face changed, softer still, and she moved away from him and slowly eased herself from the bed.

Wearily, Len rose.

She threaded his arms through his shirt. She snapped the buttons together with tenderness and care. He pulled on his jeans and Willow fastened the buckle of his belt. Then she sat him in the armchair and she gently eased on each sock, fit each boot to each foot, and wept.

“Go,” she said, pointing to the door.

And Len did.

Willow slept then, for some time. She was pretty sure a day had elapsed—a whole day of sun and heat and brilliance and the night that followed it, lost to her—and that when she woke it was not the same dawn but a new one. It helped her to believe that. It seemed to lend a kind of hope to the prospect that she might make it through.

She finished packing, and then there was one final thing to do.

She sat at her desk and opened the box. Slowly, thoughtfully, Willow gazed at each of the photographs. She spread them across her desk so that no one obscured another. Her son Teddy at nine, the lead in the school play. David at thirteen, stiff in a suit and tie, going off to a debate tournament. Emily before she could walk. All three of them holding a large carved pumpkin the year she left, grinning their goofiest grins, the black patch covering Teddy’s eye. Dozens of photographs, her children caught posed or candid by the camera lens, alone, with each other, with Ross, with herself, all together as a family, without the slightest thought that harm would come, that something—a small thing, really, what did it matter?—would rise up to split them from one another, send them to live separate lives.

And the one that didn’t match. The little blond boy in the baseball jersey and cap, eating an ice cream cone on a set of cement stairs, his mother beside him.

Willow shuffled the others gently back into the box and closed the lid. The last one she left before her on the desk. She drew a sheet of paper from the desk drawer and lifted a pen from the cup. Dear Wrecker, she began.

It seemed important to me to leave you this photograph. I think you can guess who the people are, in it.

She didn’t know how, exactly, to speak to him of this. But she was leaving, now. She had to do this. For him. For Lisa Fay. For Melody, she hoped; and not against her. Willow dipped her head and continued, trusting to what would come.

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