Sarah set the tray on the table beside Leon’s bed. She was about to speak his name and touch his shoulder when her own feeling stopped her. She was a feeling woman, but one who was usually in command of what she felt, who seldom caught herself in any sudden welling of emotion. But now her eyes smarted and her throat thickened, and the very surprise of it made her want to howl with grief and rebellion, she did not know why. She looked at her husband’s sleeping face. The reddish blond hair that framed it was matted and dull, and the overnight growth of stubble-beard showed darkly. But the lips were rounded, rosy, and sweetly curved, the nose straight and strong, the chin full but clearly indented. His eyes were closed, the lashes darker than his head hair, the color, she remembered, of his pubic hair. Thinking of this, she saw that he had an erection that showed under the cover. The one hand that showed outside the quilt that came nearly up to his chin as if he would hide in it was relaxed, but it was a firm, man’s hand, with nothing soft about it, and none of the scaly look she had seen on the backs of some other men’s hands. To Sarah his face looked innocent and vulnerable and sad.

She blinked her eyes dry and shook his shoulder. “Leon?”

His eyes opened gradually.

“Coffee’s here. I don’t want any. Will you get up and see them all through breakfast? I don’t think I feel up to it.”

He pulled the quilt up, and when he let it fall again, his erection was gone. His eyes were now not only open but awake, and he took one of her hands. “Are you ailing?” he said.

She shook her head and smiled. “No!—only a little off for humoring everyone.”

He yawned. “I’ll get up and go down,” he said. He threw off the bedcovers as she stood back and swung himself up to sit on the side of the bed, his feet just touching the floor, his night gown caught and bunched under him in such a way that the bottom hem cut across his thighs. “I’ll make Aunt Nell eat a dozen batter cakes and half a dozen slices of ham.”

Sarah laughed and turned toward the door.

“Won’t you have coffee?”

But she was at the door and smiled and shook her head and left.

In the hall she found Sharon frowning and knocking at Lauretta’s door. “She don’t answer,” Sharon said timidly, as if it might be her fault.

“She may be sleeping still. Just leave the tray on the floor outside.”

“Yes’m.”