Betty turns left onto Third Avenue and the short slope brings her to Franklin. She turns right again and walks the level stretch to Chicago. It isn’t a long walk to Northwestern Hospital, but today it takes her longer to cross that small space of the city that has been hers for twenty years. Once she starts walking she tunes out the trucks and commuter traffic. With the snow and ice completely covering the cement it could be any path or road, her feet any feet, her anguish that of any mother contemplating the murder of one son and the incarceration of the other. The tragedy has felt like hers alone. Lester is dead and Simon has his guilt and punishment to comfort him. You have driven me this day away from the ground; and from your face I shall be hidden; and I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will slay me. But her? Hate is a pale substitute for Lester’s shy smile and Simon’s head-hanging. Death was not a choice for her. Irma and Caroline cowered and held each other in their sweaty sleep, and they needed her. No amount of explaining would be enough, nor was soothing with tender tears or hard love the antidote. So Betty had made her bed wide and shored it with discarded plywood and piled the blankets on. She fluffed the pillows and brought each girl in there with her, where they listened to the radio until they fell asleep. It was in that fraught rest that she was finally of use to them, was finally the mother they needed. She placed one arm around Irma’s rigid body and coaxed her, as the night drew on, into a more relaxed slumber. When Caroline curled into a ball on the far edge, Betty held her so she wouldn’t fall off. The bed was quiet, empty of the loudness and tumble of men. And who held her as she slept? The quiet house and silent girls made her long, just long for the man beds had been made for. She yearned for Jacob’s chiseled back and tender thumbs that pressed her here. And here.

On their first night together he spoke with his hands. He had changed the shape of her flesh. Lovers can do that. Like snowshoe makers they can turn what is knotted and hard into the grace of a curve.

“Iw ina giwaabandaan?” he asked as he pressed her hip. Her dark, milk-smooth skin held the shallow shape of his thumb. Lover’s talk.

Yes I do. There wasn’t much light, for which she was thankful. Though even she, through her modesty and tight-eyed look, could see her flesh hold his touch.

“Giwaabandaan ina iw? Endaso-giizhig igo ge-izhi-izhichigeyaan.”

Every day?

“Gabe-giizhig,” he said, and he pushed again and held her ribs, his fingers resting in their grooves as on the top of another pair of hands.