Tully and Johnny both turned.
Kate stood in the open doorway behind them, bundled up in a huge terrycloth robe. Bald and impossibly thin, she looked like a child playing dress-up in her mothers clothes. Shed said things like this to both of them before; they all knew it, but this time she was smiling. She looked somehow both sad and peaceful.
"Katie," Johnny said, his voice raw, his eyes shining. "Dont . . . "
"I love you both," she said, not moving toward them. "Youll comfort each other . . . take care of each other and the kids . . . after Im gone—"
"Dont," Tully said, starting to cry.
Johnny was on his feet. He gently picked his wife up and kissed her for a long, long time.
"Take her up to your bed, Johnny," Tully said, trying to smile now. "Ill sleep in the guest room. "
Johnny carried her upstairs with so much care she couldnt help thinking that she was sick. He put her on her side of the bed. "Turn on the fire. "
"Are you cold?"
To the bone. She nodded and tried gingerly to sit up as he crossed the room and flicked the switch for the gas fireplace. With a whoosh, blue and orange flames shot up from the fake log, tinting the dark room with a soft golden light.
When he came back and settled in beside her, she reached up slowly, traced the outline of his lips with the tip of her finger. "You first ravished me on the floor in front of a fire, remember?"
He smiled; like a blind woman, she felt his lips curve with the sensitive pad of her finger. "If I remember correctly, you were doing the ravishing. "
"And what if I wanted to ravish you now?"
He looked so scared that she wanted to laugh, but it wasnt funny. "Can we?"
He took her in his arms. She knew they were both thinking that shed lost so much weight there was almost nothing left of her.
Nothing left of her.
She closed her eyes and tightened her hold around his neck.
The bed seemed so big suddenly, like a sea of soft white cotton compared to the bed downstairs that had become hers.
Slowly, Kate took off her robe and peeled out of her nightgown, trying not to notice how white and sticklike her legs were. Even worse was the battlefield that had been her breasts. She looked ruined, like a little boy, only there were the scars.
Johnny stripped out of his clothes, kicked them aside, and climbed back into bed beside her, drawing the covers up to their hips.
Her heart was thumping hard as she looked at him.
"Youre so beautiful," he said, and leaned forward to kiss her scars.
Relief and love cracked her open inside. She kissed him, her breath coming hard and ragged already. In their twenty years of marriage theyd made love thousands of times, and it was always great, but this was different; they had to be so gentle. She knew he was terrified of breaking her bones. She hardly remembered later how it had all happened, how shed come to be on top of him; all she knew was that she needed every part of him, and everything that she was, that shed ever been, was irrevocably tied up with this man. When he finally entered her, slow and easy, filling her, she came down to meet him, and in that glorious second, she was whole again. She bent down and kissed him, tasting his tears.
He cried out her name so loudly she silenced him with her palm; if shed had any breath left she would have laughed at his outburst and whispered, The kids!
But her own orgasm, seconds later, made her forget everything except the pleasure of this sensation.
Finally, smiling, feeling young again, she snuggled up against him. He put an arm around her and pulled her close. They lay there a long time, half sitting against the mound of pillows, watching the firelight, saying nothing.
Then, quietly, Kate said what had been on her mind for a long time. "I cant stand to think of you alone. "
"I wont ever be alone. Weve got three kids. "
"You know what I mean. Id understand if you and Tully—"
"Dont. " He looked at her finally, and in the eyes she knew as well as her own she saw a pain so deep she wanted to weep.