He woke one August midnight to the bed alone, the room cool with pewtered moonlight. He lay waiting even as he knew she was not in the house. Finally he rose and went to the window to stand and was there more than an hour before he saw her coming down from the granite ledges of the high sheep pasture, wearing the old shirt of his that she slept summers in. Still stood as she came into the house and he saw the faint flare of light from a kitchen lamp spread from the window below onto the dark of the yard, stood listening long enough to know that she was cooking something, baking something, and would not be back to bed, not soon.

When he rose again at four-thirty and went downstairs the kitchen was seasoned with steaming loaves and a pair of blackberry pies and he thought She was up there picking berries in the dark. She was still wearing only her nightshirt and was turning eggs in the pan, coffee already hot on the stove. He went to her and held her from behind, his elbows against her sides and his hands over her breasts and so felt the familiar new weight to them even as she spoke, her voice steady as her body was tight. “Trying again, Norman.”

“That’s right,” he said. “That’s good.”

She slid the egg pan to the cold end of the stove. She didn’t turn around to face him. She said, “You got to tell me it’s going to be all right.”

“Sure,” he said. “Sure it is.”

She still wasn’t moving. Letting his hands hold her, letting his body come up against her backside, but not giving anything into this embrace. She said, “No. You got to promise me.”

He didn’t understand. “We just have to see I guess.”

She turned then, still inside his arms and took his shirtfront in her fists, the hands small hard-curled knobs, tugging him toward her and pushing him back, a wild rocking, her eyes sprung wide and flaring. “You got to promise me Norman. You got to promise me.”

He stood there while she pummeled him, making no effort to stop her as if he deserved this, as if it were all his doing, his fault, as if he deserved not this simple sharp beating but something far worse; pressed between grinding stones. He held her until her breath was gone to sobs and her hands lay flat and still on his chest, all the while keeping his hands at rest against her back and when she was done and cried against him he still said nothing. Just held her standing there in the kitchen ripe with yeast. Then soft to a near silent whisper he said, hating himself for not being sure of it, not able to believe himself but sure it must be said, “I promise”.