Chapter 8: The Test
The oil lamp on Hart’s desk guttered, throwing jagged shadows across the silent faces of the three men. Bob’s heart was pounding against his ribs, a drumbeat of conflict. His father’s hand was still a heavy weight on his shoulder.
“A week,” Hart said finally, his voice low. “You think you can fix this in a week? Alright. A test, then. Me and Sam… we won’t lay a finger on her. Not a touch. You have her all to yourself. You be the husband. See how she feels. See how you feel.” He withdrew his hand and went back to his chair, a king conceding a temporary truce. “Then we talk. For real.”
Bob looked at Sam, who just stared at the floor, his jaw working. This wasn’t a concession; it felt like a trap. But it was a way forward he could stomach. A chance to reclaim something normal.
“Okay,” Bob said, the word tasting thin. “A week.”
He told her that night, as they lay in the dark under the same quilt. He spooned against her back, feeling the delicate bones of her spine.
“It’s just us now,” he whispered into her hair. It still smelled like the lye soap from the bath. “Just you and me. Like it’s supposed to be.”
He felt her entire body soften, melting into the mattress with a relief so profound it was a sound—a long, quiet exhale she must have been holding for months. She turned in his arms, her face wet against his neck.
“Thank you,” she breathed. “Thank you, Bob.”
For the first few days, it was like a second honeymoon. A fragile, desperate one. The prairie sun rose and set on just the two of them. He worked the south field alone, giving Hart and Sam a wide berth at the north end. Emi cooked breakfast and dinner, setting only two places at the big kitchen table. The silence from the other end of the house was a palpable, watchful thing.
At night, he made love to his wife. Gently, at first, remembering the shy girl from his wedding night. She was responsive, eager. She would arch into his touches, whimper his name into the pillow. Her climax on the second night was sharp and loud, her nails digging into his back. Afterward, she cried, clinging to him. “It’s enough,” she sobbed. “You are enough. It’s all I want.”
He believed her. He wanted to believe her.
But by the fourth night, he noticed the shift. It was subtle. A hesitation in her kiss. Her eyes would flutter shut a moment too soon. He learned her body anew, every curve and hollow, but there was a practiced readiness to her that hadn’t been there before. She opened for him too easily, accommodated him too perfectly. It felt less like discovery and more like habit.
On the fifth night, he took her from behind, his hands gripping her hips. She pushed back against him with a frantic energy, a low, aching sound in her throat. Her release, when it came, was longer, shuddering, but it seemed to peak and then fray at the edges, fading into tremors that felt more like frustration than fulfillment. She collapsed forward afterward, her face buried in the sheets, her breathing ragged.
“Did you…?” he asked, stroking her damp back.
“Yes,” she said, the word muffled. “Yes, it was good.”
But he lay awake later, her quiet, even breaths beside him. He replayed that sound she’d made—that aching, needy sound. It hadn’t been a sound for him. It had been a sound for something more.
Down the hall, in Sam’s room, the sounds were a torture.
They were faint, filtered through plaster and lath, but on the still prairie nights, they carried. The creak of the bedsprings. The soft, rhythmic groan of the headboard against the wall. Emi’s cries, sometimes sharp, sometimes a drawn-out moan.
Sam would lie rigid in his own bed, fist clenched in his sheet, staring at the water-stained ceiling. He could almost smell her. He’d punch his pillow and roll over, but it was no use.
On the sixth night, he found Hart on the back porch, smoking a pipe, staring out at the moon-washed fields. The sounds had just quieted.
“You hear that?” Sam muttered, leaning against the porch rail.
“I hear it,” Hart said, not turning.
“Sounds like he’s… I don’t know. Trying to break her.”
Hart took the pipe from his mouth and tapped it against the sole of his boot. A shower of orange embers died on the packed dirt. “He’s not breaking her. He’s just finding her limits. And his.” He looked at his eldest son, his face unreadable in the gloom. “A woman’s body has a memory, Sam. You plant a crop in a field, it changes the soil. You open a woman up like we opened her… you stretch her to fit two men at once… that soil don’t just forget. It craves that same planting.”
Sam shifted, uncomfortable. “You think she’ll… say something?”
Hart chuckled, a dry, rasping sound. “She won’t have to. Bobby’s a smart boy. He can feel it. He’s feeling it right now, lying next to her, wondering why she’s staring at the dark. She’s chasing a feeling he can’t give her alone. She misses the fullness.” He put the cold pipe back in his mouth. “He’ll make his decision soon. One way or another.”
The seventh night was quiet.
Bob touched her, and she responded. She kissed him back. She moved with him. But it was like watching a skilled dancer perform a routine she’d done a thousand times. There was grace, but no surprise. Her climax, when it arrived, was polite. A series of gentle flutters around him, a sigh into his shoulder. Nice. It was nice.
After, she curled into his side, her hand on his chest. “I love you, Bob,” she whispered.
“I love you, too.” He stared at the ceiling.
The silence stretched. He could feel the unasked question in the air, the unspoken need in the slight tension of her limbs. She was waiting for something else. Something that wasn’t coming.
Down the hall, in the study, Hart poured two fingers of whiskey. He didn’t drink it. He just sat in the dark, listening to the heavy silence from the master bedroom, a faint, hard smile on his face. The test was over. The results were in. Now they just had to wait for the boy to admit it to himself.