He smiled and let a lock of her hair slip through his fingers. “This time I’ll write you a nice song. I love you, April. You’ve given me back my daughter and my son. Until these past few months, I’ve been living in a world where all the colors had run together until they were muddy, but when I saw you, everything started to glow. You’re a magical, unexpected gift, and I don’t think I could survive if that gift disappeared.”

He waited for her to give him more trouble. Instead, a smile gradually tugged at the corners of her soft mouth, and her hands dropped to the waistband of her shorts. “Okay. I’ll put out. Take off your clothes.”

He gave a hoot of laughter and pulled her deeper into the barn. They found a mangy old blanket and stripped off their sweaty, paint-spattered clothes. Their bodies had lost the tautness of youth, but her softer contours pleased him, and she drank him in as if he were still twenty-three.

He couldn’t disappoint her. He lay her back on the blanket where they kissed for an eternity. He explored her curves and recesses while the blades of light filtering through the barn’s slats fell in thin golden ropes over their bodies like bondage cords.

When they could no longer tolerate the torment, he lowered himself gently upon her. She opened her legs. Let him in. She was wet, tight. The hard floor tested their bodies—tomorrow they’d pay—but, for now, neither of them cared. He began to move. This was missionary love. Straightforward, love inspired, pure. Without the randiness of youth, they had time to gaze into each other’s unshielded eyes. Time to speak wordless messages and make unspoken pledges. They moved together. Rocked together. Surged. And, when it was over, they rejoiced in the miracle that had happened to them.

“You made me feel like a virgin,” she said.

“You made me feel like a superhero,” he said.

Enfolded by earthy smells of sex and dust, of sweat and long-forgotten farm animals, they held each other. Their joints ached from the hard floor. Their hearts sang. Her beautiful long hair skimmed his body as she eased herself onto her elbow and kissed his chest. He stroked the beads of her spine. “What are we going to do now, my love?”

She smiled up at him through the golden web of her hair. “One day at a time, my love. We’re going to take it one day at a time.”

Being incarcerated wasn’t quite the nightmare Blue had imagined. “I like the sunflowers,” Deputy Carl Dawks said, rubbing his short afro. “And the dragonflies are real pretty.”

Blue wiped off her brush and went to the end of the hallway to check the proportions on the wings. “I like painting bugs. I’m going to add a spider, too.”