“Yes. It’s in my pack.”
And so Amy Raye filled the stove with kindling and wood and lit the fire. She knelt in front of the stove, watching as the small flames caught. She added more kindling, closed the door to the stove, rubbed her hands together until they warmed, and then joined her husband.
He had poured hot coffee into each of the cups and had arranged the food on the table. He pulled out a chair for his wife.
Farrell had packed the food that morning. He’d gotten the children ready to go to his sister’s as well. He’d told Amy Raye to sleep in, but Amy Raye never was one for sleeping in. Instead, she’d lain in bed listening to the movements of the children in the house, their footsteps going up and down the stairs, the exchanging of words between them and their father. She rose from bed, dressed, went down to join them, wrestled Julia and Trevor in her arms, made faces, even flirted with her husband. He was making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, whether for Amy Raye and him, or Julia and Trevor, she didn’t know. She dipped her finger in the peanut butter jar. “Hey,” Farrell said, pushing her away with his shoulder. With a flirtatious spin, she dabbed the peanut butter on his nose, then on the noses of Julia and Trevor, then on her own, challenging each of them to touch their noses with their tongues, when she already knew Trevor was the only one who could. They all laughed at each other’s efforts, and Farrell took Amy Raye in his arms and kissed her nose and licked the peanut butter off her face.
Only weeks before, Farrell had asked her, “Are you still in love with me?”
They’d been lying in bed. Amy Raye thought he’d been asleep, the two of them having turned in hours before. Her breath tightened when he’d asked her this, tightened itself deep down in her lungs like a heartache, because for a split second she wondered if he knew, if perhaps he’d known all along.
“I love you, but I don’t know that I’m in love with you,” Amy Raye said. When too much silence followed, she continued. “Everyone wants love to be this great, life-altering experience, their feelings to be so special, so unique, so dramatic, so beyond anything anyone else has. Is that even possible?”
She was trying for a moment of truth, and yet even as she spoke the words, she couldn’t tell the difference between truth and what she’d created.
“You are my love. You are my all,” Farrell said. “It’s simple for me.”
“Is love really that simple, Farrell? Tell me, Farrell, exactly what you think love is. I’ve been spending lots of thoughts on this, and all the answers make love seem so common, and if love is common, does that make it any less? Love should be common?”
Farrell was on his side, facing her. “I care for you, Amy. There are different levels to the way one cares for someone. The intensity varies. That’s what makes it more or less common.”
Amy Raye felt the weight of her back pressed hard against the mattress. “You can’t expect one person to be everything. You can’t expect one person to meet all your needs,” she said.
Farrell’s body retreated, though he did not leave the bed. “All I want to do is soar with you,” he said. And then he became too quiet.
Until that night, perhaps Farrell had hoped that whatever the distance was that had prompted his question about her loving him was related to something outside them, like work or the global warming of the atmosphere, or something with the children. Without asking, he could have believed whatever he chose to believe. Without asking, there was hope. Amy Raye wondered if she would have asked the question had she been in his shoes. Yes, she thought. She would have demanded to know.
And now they were in this cabin, protected from the inclement weather. There was stillness about them despite the sounds of the rain slapping on the metal roof. Amy Raye sat next to her husband and held the mug close to her mouth, letting the steam warm her face. “Sing to me,” she said.