“No. I promised myself I wouldn’t have any and I don’t. You?”
“Not a one.”
“The sofa?”
“All right. One.”
“We could take turns, you know. Daily or weekly. Whatever suits.”
“Let me spend at least one night on the sofa and I’ll let you know.”
She nodded. “Clay asked me what he should call you. I distracted him until I could speak to you. We didn’t discuss it.”
“He asked me the same thing. I told him you and I would talk about it. What did he call his father?”
“Father.”
“Not papa? Not pa?”
“No. He might refer to him as ‘pa,’ but he called him ‘father’ when speaking to his face.”
“I’d rather the children stopped calling me Mr. Shepard, but Roen is too informal.”
“And disrespectful,” said Lily. “I won’t abide that.”
“I don’t like pa. Papa makes feel as old as my father. What about da?”
“Da?”
“The Irish use it.”
“We’re not Irish.”
Roen affected an accent he’d perfected while working with Irish laborers. “Sure, and I have a proper bit of the blood in me veins from me sainted mother’s side.”
“Da,” she repeated, trying it out.
“Short for ‘dada.’ Why use two syllables when one will do?”
“Of course. I think it’s fine if you like it.”
“It’s more important that I remember to answer to it, but I like it well enough.” He rose and got out the cups, the saucers, and the ivy-patterned teapot and set them on the table. He waited by the stove for the water to boil. “What is your nightly routine?” he asked.
“I go to my room soon after the children are abed. SometimesI fall asleep reading to Lizzie and stumble off to my room later. Not often, but now and again, I sit in the front room and do mending and hemming until I nod off and prick myself with a needle. What about you?”
“I am usually up quite late. That schedule suits me.” He glanced up at the ceiling. “I don’t hear anything moving up there.”
“I’m not surprised. They were exhausted from excitement and Ben’s extensive repertoire of magic tricks. Hannah and Lily are each sleeping with a slice of cake and their bouquets under their pillows.” Unexpectedly, tears welled in her eyes. Lily bent her head quickly and dashed them away. She didn’t know Roen had seen them until a crisp white handkerchief appeared in her line of vision. She murmured a thank-you and took it. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what—”
Roen curled his fingers around her delicate wrist and drew Lily to her feet. It would have been difficult and uncomfortable for both of them if she had resisted. She didn’t. She came out of her chair and stepped into the circle of his arms as if she belonged there, as if it were where she wanted to be. At that moment it was.
“Shh,” he said. His chin moved back and forth across the crown of her head. “You’re exhausted, too.”
She was, but it didn’t account for her tears. She had started to tell him that she didn’t know why she was crying, but his gesture of comfort had interrupted her lie. She did know, and she believed now that he deserved to know the same.
“It’s your kindness that moved me,” she said against his shoulder. The fabric of his jacket muffled her words, but they were intelligible. She knew that because his hands tightened at the small of her back, and for a moment his chin only rested against her hair.
“You deserve kindness, Lily,” he whispered.
