Unremarried Widow Read Free Page B

could . . . ?”
    The passenger door stood open to the afternoon and the air was hot and damp, an exhaled breath.
    â€œIf we were quick,” he said.
    â€œIf we were quick.”
    â€œBut how would we—”
    â€œLike this?” I said.
    Miles whispered, “Is that—”
    â€œJust like that.”
    We were all talk until suddenly we stopped talking. The day stilled except for a light breeze at the tops of the trees. They leaned together, talking in whispers. A bird called out. Then silence. Miles’s breath echoed in my ear, and I watched a droplet of sweat bead on his forehead and run down to his ear. It hung there for a second before falling to my chest and sliding beneath my shirt. I kissed him and his mouthtasted like salt water. Beneath us the caves reached down to the earth’s molten center, the place where the planet is hottest, and the ground heaved up and collapsed onto itself with a shudder that left fissures in the pavement.
    Afterward we drove twenty miles west. I navigated on the folded map and Miles held my hand as he drove. He looked over at me from time to time and smiled. I smiled back. We were like cats licking our paws, slow and content. We found the lake tucked back behind a stand of pines, three hundred yards off the main road. By then the sky had clouded over and a cold wind coursed over the surface of the water. A single family gathered on the man-made beach at the water’s edge. In a folding camp chair a heavy woman with oily skin and red splotches high on her cheeks sat surveying the lake. Her hair was short and wispy, the color of old copper. I walked to the edge of the brown water and stood with my hands on my hips. I looked over my shoulder at Miles.
    â€œDo we go in?” I said.
    He scanned the dark lake. “I don’t know, babe.”
    The woman in the camp chair leaned forward.
    â€œYou all thinking about going swimming?”
    â€œThinking about it,” Miles said.
    â€œMight better wait awhile,” the woman said. “My boys seen a water moccasin just a few minutes ago.”
    I took a step back.
    â€œHere?”
    The woman pointed to a spot by my feet.
    â€œRight over there.”
    I backed out of the water and ducked beneath the sheltering beam of Miles’s arm.
    â€œShould we go back?” I said.
    Miles surveyed the water and the almost deserted beach. My skin pricked with goose bumps.
    â€œLet’s go home,” he said.
    That was how life felt then, danger lurking in the sweetest days.
----
    On a Friday afternoon a few weeks later I left work early and drove west through Tallahassee and north into Alabama to the outskirts of Fort Rucker. Outside Miles’s apartment in the late afternoon I stood on the tips of my toes and felt above the light for his spare key. My fingers came back covered with dust but otherwise empty. I lifted the rug in front of the door and hunted beneath the lip of the step and in the corners, but no key. I checked my watch. Miles wouldn’t be home for another hour. I thought about sitting in my car and cranking the AC, but I hated to waste the gas. Instead I fetched a book from the backseat and settled myself on the staircase beside Miles’s door. Before long, gravel crunched under tires and gave off the sound of rubber rolling in. I looked up to see not Miles’s pickup but another, smaller truck. Jimmy Hyde. He climbed out of the cab of his truck and hoisted a pack over one shoulder, and as he moved up the walkway toward the building I turned back to my book.
    â€œHey, there,” he said.
    He stopped in front of me and pushed his sunglasses to the top of his head.
    â€œHey, Hyde.”
    â€œJimmy,” he said. “I hear ‘Hyde’ all day. You locked out?”
    I raised my hands in front of me, palms open.
    â€œLocked out,” I said. “Am I in your way?”
    â€œYou’re fine.” He dropped his pack to the ground.