Chapter 2: What the Dark Does Not Invent

I fell asleep too. That is the part I still have trouble defending.

When I woke, my fingers were tangled in Allie’s hair as if they had found a job and refused to clock out. The Hitchcock film was gone. Opening credits for something with Joan Crawford crawled up the screen in a font that wanted to be tragic. Allie had turned in her sleep so her face was toward my belly instead of the television. She made a small sound when I started stroking her hair again—contentment, or the ghost of it.

The nightie had ridden up.

Not dramatically. Not like a scene that knows it is a scene. Just far enough that the tops of her thighs were bare in the cheap blue light of the television. I looked because I was tired and because she was there and because looking felt, for a stupid second, like a continuation of looking after her.

Then I kept looking.

The wine from earlier sat warm in my throat. My neck felt hot. I studied the line where the cotton stopped and skin began and told myself I was only noticing that she had grown up, which was a fact, which made it innocent.

It was not innocent.

I wanted to put my hand on her thigh. I wanted the simple information of her skin under my palm. The thought arrived fully formed, like a guest who does not knock.

I looked back at Joan Crawford serving breakfast to an actor whose name I could not remember. I watched for a full minute the way you watch a fire exit.

Then I looked at Allie’s legs again.

They were slightly parted. She shifted her hips in her sleep, chasing comfort, and the nightie slipped another inch. I put my hand on her back, below the shoulder blades, and rubbed in small circles. She softened into it. Nested closer. The kitten comparison was embarrassing and also accurate.

I took inventory because my mind, traitor that it is, loves a list. The dip of her waist. The place where her back became the curve of her ass. Thighs that looked soft and were, I knew without touching, also strong. She had become a woman in the years I had been gone, and the fact of it fascinated me with a heat I did not want to name.

I tugged the nightie higher.

A hint of white panties. Plain cotton. The kind of thing you buy in a three-pack and do not think about. Her ass was beautifully made. The desire to put my hand there arrived with the same bluntness as the first one. And then the next thought, worse: if I was already that close, I could slide my fingers under the elastic. Warm skin. The cleft of her.