Chapter 32: The Morning of Welcome

The darkness was absolute when consciousness found me, thick and velvety, unbroken by any hint of dawn. I surfaced from sleep in stages, my body heavy, my mind slow, aware first of the warmth beside me and then of the hand on my shoulder, gentle but insistent.

“Sam.”

My mother’s voice, soft in the quiet. I blinked, orienting myself to the familiar shapes of my bedroom, the dresser, the desk, the pale rectangle of the window where the yellow dress still lay, a ghost in the gloom.

“Sam, wake up.”

I turned my head. Mom was sitting on the edge of the bed, nude as always, her face barely visible in the darkness. Beside me, Ash stirred, her eyes opening instantly, her body tensing with the alert readiness she had perfected over weeks of service.

“What time is it?” My voice was thick, sleep-clogged.

“Twenty-six minutes before five.” Mom’s hand squeezed my shoulder. “April is here. She’s in the living room with her mother.”

I sat up, the sheets falling away. Ash rose with me, already moving to the edge of the bed, already reaching for my clothes.

Mom continued, her voice calm, unhurried, as if she were discussing the weather. “Her mother is holding the dress you asked April to wear. April herself is wearing nothing. Just her purse.”

I absorbed this, my mind clearing. The dress. The simple dress I had asked for. And April, naked, waiting in my living room at not yet five in the morning.

“She wanted to show you something,” Mom said, and there was something in her voice of approval, perhaps, or the recognition of a kindred spirit. “She wanted you to see her as she is before she puts on anything you’ve chosen.”

I swung my legs over the side of the bed. Ash was already holding my boxers, my jeans, my shirt. She dressed me with the efficient grace that had become second nature, her hands sure, her movements fluid. When she finished, I turned to the bathroom, and she followed.

We relieved ourselves in the quiet, the sounds intimate and unremarkable, the way they had become. Then I washed my hands, and she washed hers, and we stood before the mirror for a moment, two figures in the dim light: me clothed, her naked, her collar dark against her throat.

“Ready?” Mom asked from the doorway.

I looked at Ash. She nodded.

We walked downstairs together, the three of us, our footsteps soft on the carpet. The house was still dark, the only light coming from the living room where a single lamp cast a warm glow over the couch and the figures sitting on it.

April’s mother was a woman I had seen before, at school events, at the grocery store, a pleasant-faced woman with April’s dark hair and April’s nervous hands. She sat at one end of the couch, fully dressed in jeans and a blouse, and in her hands she held a simple, pale blue dress, almost white, the kind of thing a girl might wear to a summer picnic.

And April sat at the other end of the couch, naked.

She was beautiful. I had known she was pretty, had noticed the way her eyes crinkled when she smiled, the way her hair fell across her forehead. But seeing her like this, without the veil of fabric, without the armor of clothing, was something else entirely. Her body was pale in the lamplight, her breasts small and high, her hips curved, her legs long and slightly parted. She sat with her hands in her lap, not hiding, not covering, just waiting.

Her eyes found mine the moment I entered the room, and they did not leave.

I crossed to the couch, Ash a half-step behind me. I sat beside April, close enough that our thighs almost touched, and Ash settled at my feet, her back against my legs, her hand on my knee.