What the Quiet Week Held

1. Prologue: The Candle Still Burning

Brenda stood in the doorway of the spare room with the old sweater pulled down over her hips and both arms folded tight beneath her breasts. The single candle still burning inside the porch pumpkin sent a thin, wavering orange line across the hallway floor and stopped at the threshold. She had told herself she was only checking that the heat had come up. The lie sat in her mouth while she watched Jason push himself upright against the headboard, the sheet sliding to his waist.

The room smelled of the cinnamon candle she had lit earlier in the kitchen and of the cold night that kept seeping under the front door. Her sweater—Mark’s, stretched soft from years of wear—held the warmth of her own skin against her stomach. She felt the familiar heaviness there, the way the fabric pulled when she breathed, and crossed her arms higher so the swell of her breasts pressed against them. The heat that rose in her face had nothing to do with the low thermostat.

Jason’s eyes found her. He didn’t speak. The quiet between them had grown thicker each night of the week, the kind that filled with the small sounds of the house settling and with everything neither of them had said after the first time she had stayed. She shifted her weight. The floorboard under her bare foot creaked. The sound seemed loud.

“Heat’s still low,” she said. Her voice came out thinner than she wanted.

He nodded once. The sheet moved with the rise of his chest. She saw the line of his collarbone, the place her mouth had rested three nights ago, and the memory of the taste of his skin made her thighs press together under the sweater. She stayed in the doorway. Leaving would have been simple. She had already turned away twice tonight and walked back to the kitchen both times, arms still crossed, telling herself the dishes needed rinsing.

Jason lifted one hand and set it on the mattress beside him, palm up. Not a gesture that asked. Just open. Brenda looked at it. The candlelight caught the inside of his wrist where the skin was thinner. She felt the same place on her own wrist throb, the spot he had touched in the kitchen that morning and then again after Mark’s call. Her arms tightened. The soft give of her stomach pressed against them and she hated, for a second, how much she wanted the weight of his hands there instead.

She stepped inside. The door swung most of the way shut behind her; the orange line on the floor narrowed to a thread. The air in the room was cooler than the hallway. It raised the fine hairs on her calves. She crossed to the bed and sat on the edge, careful, the mattress dipping under her. Her hip met the side of his knee through the sheet. The contact was small. It traveled up her spine and settled low in her belly, warm and insistent.

Jason’s hand stayed where it was. Brenda looked at it again, then at the place where the sheet covered his thigh. She uncrossed one arm. The sweater shifted. Cool air touched the strip of skin above the waistband of her underwear and she almost pulled the arm back. Instead she set her palm in his. His fingers closed, slow, around hers. The heat of his grip moved into her wrist and up her forearm. She heard her own breath catch and tried to steady it.

“Brenda.”

Only her name. Low. She turned her face toward his shoulder so he wouldn’t see the flush that had reached her throat. The sweater’s collar rubbed the soft skin under her jaw. She leaned until her forehead rested against the curve of muscle there. He smelled of the soap from the downstairs shower and of the cold that clung to his clothes from the ladder. Her free hand stayed pressed to her stomach, holding the sweater flat. Under it she could feel the slow, heavy pulse between her legs.

Jason’s other hand came up and settled at the small of her back, over the wool. The pressure was steady. She felt the soft flesh there yield under his palm and a sound escaped her, small and rough. She shifted closer. The sheet dragged. Her thigh slid along his. Through the thin cotton of her underwear she felt the heat of his leg and the unmistakable hardness higher up, half-covered. The knowledge of it made her clench. A thin slickness gathered and she pressed her knees together, trying to contain it.

He didn’t move his hand from her back. She stayed with her forehead against his shoulder, breathing the scent of his skin, while the candle on the porch guttered and the orange thread on the floor trembled. Her fingers tightened in his. The arm across her stomach loosened by a fraction. Under the sweater the ache had spread, low and liquid, and she knew she would not stand up again tonight.

The quiet held. His thumb moved once across the inside of her wrist, a slow stroke that followed the line of her pulse. She exhaled against his neck. The sound was barely there. Outside, the pumpkin candle burned lower, and the house kept its ordinary dark around them.

1. Chapter 1: The Hardware Bag

Jason’s truck pulled into the driveway just after the light had gone flat and gray. Brenda heard the engine cut and the door slam, then the heavier sound of the tailgate. She stood at the kitchen window with a dish towel in her hands and watched him lift the hardware-store bag from the bed of the truck. The bag looked heavy. He set it on the concrete, rolled one shoulder, and glanced toward the house.

She dried her hands longer than necessary. The sweater she wore—Mark’s old gray one—hung past her hips. She tugged the hem down once, then crossed her arms under her breasts so the fabric wouldn’t pull across her stomach when she moved. The house had been quiet since Mark left for the job site. Quiet in the ordinary way, the refrigerator cycling, the clock above the stove ticking. She had spent the afternoon wiping the counters and telling herself the week would be simple: repairs, meals, the spare room made up with clean sheets.

The front door opened. Cold air came in with him, smelling of metal and the ...