The Open Window

Veda moved Roscoe’s book off her chair and sat down with the last of the strawberries.

“That was marking my place,” he said.

“Your place is the other chair.”

“I meant in the book.”

“Then this is a particularly inefficient system.”

He came behind her, put his hands lightly on her shoulders and kissed the top of her head. She tipped her face up for a better kiss. Four weeks of Thursdays had not made wanting him less immediate. It had made more parts of the house available to it.

The kitchen window was open. August air moved through the room, carrying the smell of somebody’s supper from across the yard. Her alarm clock waited upstairs beside his work clothes. There were two mugs on the table, a bowl of strawberries, and the shallow scratch she had noticed when he first offered her the repaired chair.

“How was the shore?”…