"Yes?"
"Not this year. Possibly not next year." I'm laughing, and my eyes are streaming, which is a condition I have grown extremely accustomed to since I met this woman. "But yes."
We stand there a while, watching the light go.
And then Cat reaches down, snaps off a stem of lavender, holds it up between two fingers — and my whole chest turns over.
"No," I say.
"Yes."
"Absolutely not."
"You've had a year." She points the stem at me. "I've been patient. I have beenextraordinarilypatient." A beat. "What did you write?"
That first night. This field. The two of us flinging our arms at the sky like children, and neither of us willing to say.
"You go first," I tell her.
"I asked you first."
"You're older."
"I amsignificantlyolder, Iris, and I will die on this rise."
I look at her — my wife, filthy from the fields, lavender in her hair, holding a stem up like a wand with no intention whatsoever of backing down.
"Fine," I say. "Together. On three."
"On three."
"One—"
"Two—"
And we both lift our arms and write it across the sky, big, the way she taught me. The way her grandmother taught her.
Four letters.
The same four letters.
STAY.
I lower my arm.
Cat is staring at me.
"You wrotestay," she says. Her voice has gone entirely.
"So did you."
"I wrote it aboutyou."
"I know." My throat closes. "I wrote it about you, too. I'd known you five weeks and I stood in a field and asked the sky to make you keep me."
Cat presses both hands over her mouth.
"I'd known you five weeks," she says, from behind them, "and I stood on that terrace and asked it not to let you go."
