“What?”
Roen opened the drawer in the side table and felt around for the box of matches. Fire flared as he struck a match. He raised the glass globe on the lamp, set the match to the wick, and replaced the globe. He shook out the match and returned the box to the drawer. When he looked over at Lily, she still had a hand over her eyes but was slowly separating her fingers. He waited until her hand fell away from her face before he pointed to a vacant portion of bed near her feet. “May I?”
She nodded but didn’t look at him.
Roen eased himself onto the bed. “Is it the drink, Lily? Is that what explains this?”
“That can’t be an excuse,” she said. “That can never be an excuse.”
It was tempting to pose another question, but Roen decided to allow silence to run its course and see what came of that.
Lily bent her head, stared at her hands. The quiet felt heavy. At last, she said, “I’m afraid.”
Roen stared at her troubled profile. Clearly the admission had cost her, but it wasn’t enough. Not yet. He didn’t speak.
“I didn’t know. That is, I didn’t know how deeply afraid I was or that I wore my fear like a hair shirt for so many years that I no longer felt it chafe. It’s not that meeting you made me unafraid, in fact, the opposite was true, but our situation is different now, and there is something like relief in my heart, an easiness when I breathe that is as unexpected as it is welcome.”
Roen was struck by her confession, for almost certainly that is what it was. None of it was drunken sentiment. Lily’sdeclaration was as sober as she was. He opened his mouth to speak and closed it again when she went on.
“I understand why you wanted to go,” she said. “You were saving me from myself. What I did... it’s embarrassing when I think about it. I’ve never... well, I couldn’t...” Unable to find the right words, she shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Thatwasthe drink, Lily. Not an excuse, an explanation. It was definitely out of character.”
She looked at him then, straightforward and grave. “How do you know?”
Roen was momentarily taken aback. “You just said you never, that you couldn’t...” He didn’t finish the sentence because neither had she.
“Yes, but what if that has nothing to do with my character? What if it’s merely discipline?”
Roen didn’t answer. He reached under his nightshirt for the watch in his pants pocket and opened it. “It’s ten minutes after two,” he said, holding the face out for her to see. He closed the cover and returned the watch to his pocket. “If you still have these questions in the morning, perhaps we could discuss them then.”
“Coward. I heard you tell Clay you’re going out in the field tomorrow morning.”
“Then another time,” he said, not snapping at the word “coward.” He started to rise and stopped when she took his hand. He sat again and studied her from under arched eyebrows.
“You said earlier that you didn’t understand what I wanted,” she told him. “I want you to stay. I haven’t explained it well enough, I suppose, but having you here, in this room, makes my mind easy. My sleep was fitful at best before you came in. I saw the state of my covers when I woke, but I knew such a sense of peace when I realized it was you sitting in the chair.”
“Who else would it be?”
“You know.”
“Tell me anyway, Lily. You’ve said almost nothing about him.”
“Jeremiah,” she said. “I had a moment’s panic when I thought it was Jeremiah.”
“Because you thought you were seeing a ghost?”
She laughed without humor. “Because I thought I was seeinghim.”
Roen considered that. “I understand now.”
“Ghosts, if there are such things, don’t frighten me.”
“All right. I’ll stay. Hand me the blankets you tossed behind you. The one that’s covering you, too. That was mine.”
“I have a better idea,” she said, plucking the blanket off her lap and legs. Instead of handing it to him, she began to roll it.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
