"Me, too. But my metabolism is telling me to eat first and talk later."
I kissed him. "So shall it be." I slid my sweatpants back on and made a dash for the bathroom. Fifteen excruciatingly cold minutes later, I was more or less clean, and I was wearing several layers of clean clothes. I had on two pairs of socks and some rubber boots that Tolliver had pulled off the shelf at Wal-Mart the day before. While Tolliver took his turn in the bathroom, I looked on the shelves above the stove to find a cheap metal pan. I put some water in it and set it on a level place in the large fire. When there was a chance the water was fairly warm, I used Tolliver's folded-over sweatshirt to get the pan off the fire and I poured the hot water into two mugs with powdered hot chocolate in them. We had some Pop-Tarts. Sugar would help restore our energy.
Tolliver smiled when he saw a little steam coming up from the mugs. "Aw, that's great," he said. "Wonder Woman." We sat in the two chairs closest to the fire and drank and ate while we listened to the battery-powered radio. The roads were in terrible condition, and though the temperature would rise above freezing by the midafternoon, roads wouldn't be clear until the next morning. Even then, they'd be patched with ice. Power crews were out repairing downed power lines, which should be reported, and checking on isolated farms. Citizens were urged to check on their elderly neighbors. I glanced out the window. "The Hamiltons are okay, Tolliver," I said.
"Have you tried your cell phone?" he asked.
When I turned it on, I had a few messages.
The first one was from Manfred.
"Hey, Harper, my grandmother got real sick late yesterday, and she's in the hospital here in Doraville," Manfred said. The second message was from Twyla, hoping we were okay out there at the cabin. The third message was from Manfred. "It would be great if you and Tolliver would stop by; there are some issues about Grandmother I'd like to talk about," he said, very much as though he were trying to sound adult but not quite achieving it.
"That sounds bad," I said. "That sounds like turning-off-the-machines bad."
"Do you think we can make it into town?" Tolliver said. "I'm not even sure we can make it up the driveway."
"Did you not notice that I moved the car before the storm hit? It's up by the road."
"Where anyone trying to drive on that narrow road can bash it?"
"Where we won't have to get up an icy slope in it and possibly end up in the lake." Apparently, happy sex and our altered relationship didn't preclude our occasional squabble.
"Okay, that was a good idea," he said. "We'll see if we can get into town around noon, when whatever's going to melt has melted."
Somehow we never got around to talking further about what had happened between us, and somehow that was okay. Tolliver got restless, which I'd expected, and he bundled up and went outside to help Ted Hamilton for an hour or two. When he came back up the stairs, I could hear him stomping snow and ice off his boots. I was reading by the fire, and I was getting a little stir-crazy. I looked up expectantly, and he came over and bent to give me a casual kiss on the cheek, just as if we'd been married for years.
"Your face is freezing," I said.
"My face is frozen," he corrected me. "Did you call Manfred? We saw a car go by while we were out there working, and they made it okay."
"I'll call him now," I said, and found I had to leave a message on Manfred's voice mail.
"Probably has it turned off while he's inside the hospital," Tolliver said.
I opened my mouth to ask a few questions about our new relationship, and once again I saw the wisdom of closing it. After all, why would Tolliver know any more about it than me?
I relaxed and let the tension drain away. We would make this up as we went along. We didn't have to send out announcements. I did have a sudden awful thought. "Ah, this new thing we've got may be a little confusing for our sisters," I said.
I could tell from the expression on Tolliver's face that this hadn't occurred to him. "Yeah," he said. "You know…you're right about that. Mariella and Gracie…oh, God. Iona."
Our aunt Iona—well, strictly speaking, my aunt Iona—had gotten guardianship of our two half sisters, who were much younger than us. Iona and her husband were raising the girls in as different a way as possible from the life they'd led with my parents. And in a way, they were absolutely right. It was much better to be brought up as a fundamentalist Christian than as a kid who didn't know what a real meal was, a kid at the mercy of whatever scum our parents let into the trailer. Because that was the way I'd been brought up after my preteen years. Mariella and Gracie were well clothed, well fed, and clean. They had a stable home to come back to every day, and they had rules to follow. These were great things, and if their early years led them to rebel against this regimen now and then, well, so be it. We were trying to build bridges to the girls, but it was uphill work.
Iona's reaction to our new relationship hardly bore thinking about. "Ah, I guess that's a bridge we'll have to cross when we come to it," I said.
"We're not hiding anything," Tolliver said, with sudden firmness. "I'm not going to even attempt it."
That had a very nice permanent sound to it. I'd been sure how I felt, but it's always nice to know your partner is feeling the same way. I let out a silent sigh of relief.
"No hiding," I said.
We ate peanut butter sandwiches for lunch. "Ted's wife probably whipped up a four-course heart-healthy meal on a woodstove," I said.
"Hey, you eat heart healthy most of the time."
My eating habits had gone by the wayside while we stayed in Doraville, for one reason or another. I'd have to resume them soon. With variable health problems like I had, it paid to stave off as much as I could by following good rules.
"How's your leg?" Tolliver asked, following the same train of thought.
"Pretty good," I said, extending my right leg and rubbing the quads. "I can tell I haven't been running in a few days, though."
"When do you get to leave off the cast?"
"Five weeks, the doctor said. We'll have to try to be in St. Louis then, so I can check with our doctor there."
"Great." Tolliver smiled so broadly that I knew he was thinking of several things that would be much easier when my arm healed.
"Hey, come here," he said. He was sitting on the floor in front of the fire, leaning back against a chair. He patted the floor between his legs, and I eased myself against him. He put his arms around me. "I can't believe I can do this now," he said. If my heart could have wagged its tail, it would have. "It's okay to touch you. I can touch you as much as I want. I don't have to think twice every time."
"Were you really thinking twice?"
"I thought I might scare you off."
"Same here."
"Idiots."
"Yeah, but now we're okay."
We sat there in contentment until Tolliver told me his leg was asleep, and we figured if we were ever going to try to go into town, the time was right.
Ten
SEVERAL times during the trip into town, I was almost sorry I'd turned on my cell phone and gotten Manfred's message. That was the most frightening driving experience I've ever had. Tolliver managed it, but he said every bad word in his vocabulary, even a few I didn't quite understand. We met one other car on our journey, and it was filled with teenage boys, who all have a built-in death wish. As soon as I thought that, I remembered the boys in the frozen ground, and I was sorry.
There were mighty few visitors' cars parked in the hospital parking lot. Snow had covered the sodden yard around the little building, so it looked almost pretty. When we went in, the reception lady was not at her desk, so we wandered back until we found a nurses' station. We inquired there about Xylda Bernardo.