Chapter 3

It was Saturday the next morning, and after breakfast – which I didn't eat – I took Darlia out for a walk. Though it was the last weekend in October and the nights were chilly, the days were still warm and pleasant, and I didn't even need a jacket, though I get cold easily. I went out in my usual clothes – bullrider hat on my head, cowboy shirt, jeans, brass belt buckle with the "End of the Trail" picture on it, and my scuffed boots that were getting pretty down at the heel. I'd have to get new heels for that pair pretty soon, but I've got several pairs, and the place where I take 'em is just a short walk from home.

In fact, one of the reasons I love where we live is that the only thing that's not within easy walking distance is a grocery store. There are two malls, the shopping center where I take my boots and get my hair cut, three parks, and a branch of the library within the Hoffmantown neighborhood, and there's a church building just across Pennsylvania, though it's not my style, nor Cecelia's either.

One of the parks is Inez Park, right across the street from the house. Darlia and I walked out onto the grass. She's 10 years old, had turned 10 back in May, and she's a hefty chunk of kid. She's taller and heavier and stronger than most girls her age, and had tried out for the young girls' soccer team at school. She'd made it too – she's not a speedy runner, but she's got stamina, and she can kick with amazing force. I'd been to a couple of her practices, and she'd need to get some control, but if she could do that she'd be a good player I thought. I don't know much about soccer, but I find it's at least as interesting as football, which I watch only when the Baltimore Ravens are playing.

For now, though, there were no black and white balls around, and she held my hand as we crossed the grass, still green in the slanting sunshine. We were about halfway across the park when Darlia spoke. "Daddy, were you and Mommy doing kissy-kissy last night?"

I grinned down at her. "'Lia, we do that all the time, night and day, you know that. Though I gotta tell you, that way of saying it is beginning to get old."

"Oh. Maybe I'll stop it. It is a little girl thing, isn't it? Anyway, last night, I woke up, and ... I heard you, I think. And it sounded like a real lot of kissy-kissy, or whatever you want me to call it."

Oops. I had known the time would come when Darlia would take notice of how husbands and wives are together, but I sure hadn't planned on it being this way – nor yet this soon. But there it was, and Cecelia and I have made it a point never to lie to Darlia, nor to pretend about things. She knows about death, and she's seen animals mating on trips to visit my brother in Washington and when we've made our annual trip to Alabama to see Cecelia's parents, and this would have to be the same way. I wasn't going to go into clinical detail, but I wasn't going to pretend that Cecelia and I don't love each other.

That went through my mind in a flash, and I grinned down at my daughter. "I'm sorry if we woke you up. We didn't try to, and we'd have been quieter if we'd known you were sleeping so lightly. Come to think of it, normally you sleep like I do. And you could call it, oh, I don't know, kissing or something, though I know you mean more than just that."

"I don't know what woke me up, Daddy, but I did." She was focusing on the main point of the conversation.

"That's all right, 'Lia." I thought for a minute. "You know that Mommy and I love each other."

"Yes! You love Mommy so so so so much!"

"And she loves me the same way – and of course we both love you."

"But you and Mommy love me different from how you love each other."

"Right." We'd discussed that before – I couldn't remember just when, but I remembered explaining that parents love their children in a different way than they love each other, though the love is just as real and just as intense. "Well, when Mommy and I love each other, we show it in different ways – we hug, and we kiss, and sometimes we do things with our bodies that show love."

"And that makes noise?"

I laughed. "Sometimes, yeah. We don't think about it, anymore than you think about how every bite crunches when you're eating potato chips. It just happens. Though what I'm thinking of might be different from what you're thinking of, given how you described it."

"Oh." She thought for a few seconds. "When I grow up and get married, will I love my husband that way?"

I knelt down and took both her hands in mine. "I'm absolutely sure you will, and that he'll love you too. And whoever he is, being your husband will be the greatest blessing he'll know on this earth."

"Are you being ser'ous, Daddy?"

"It's 'serious, ' 'Lia, with an I in the middle. But yeah, I am."

"Well I don't want to be ser-i-ous." She said it very carefully. "I want to go for a walk."

So we did.

When we got back Cecelia was out in her shed in the back yard, pushing a lot of metal around. She's been lifting weights since she was a girl in Alabama – she started out with a length of pipe, some wire, and coffee cans filled with dirt – and she has the musculature to prove it. She's about as big around as a toothpick, but every bit of her is solid, strong muscle. It was the first favorable thing I noticed about her. I didn't care for her face, which I thought looked like the business end of a hatchet; or her attitude, which I found annoying; or her build, for I don't care for skinny women; but I noticed one day when she was a client that her forearms looked like they had actual muscle on them. They do, too – as well as her thighs and calves and upper arms and back. She's not all bulky, she doesn't look like a body builder, but she's all muscle.

I sat down on the seat of one of her machines – most of them I don't know the names of, even after all these years – and watched her. She was sitting on another machine doing curls. I was afraid to check the weight, lest I feel like a 98-pound weakling in comparison. Her biceps grew hard as rocks, bulging against her dark skin, and relaxed, and bulged again, over and over. I knew she saw me, but she was counting reps and wouldn't say anything till she was done. There are few people more serious than Cecelia while she's working out.

Eventually she reached whatever goal she'd set for herself, and let go of the handle. She wiped her face with the towel that hung around her neck and said, "Darvin, you look like you've inhaled entire truckloads of nitrous oxide."