Mom rubs her hand across her brow. “I really don’t want to get into this right now. I’ve had a long day.”
I know I should stop. Mom doesn’t like to talk about Dad, especially anything concerning him and the wood. But I need to know. “Mom.” I set my hand on top of hers. “It’s important.”
She hesitates. “He did keep one,” she says, “a long time ago. When we were first married, he used to take it with him everywhere he went. But then, as the years went by, I began to see it less and less, and then I never saw it again.”
“Do you remember the last time you saw him with it?”
She shakes her head. “You were young, a toddler maybe, when I started to see it less, but the last time? It must have been right around when you started your lessons.”
“Do you know why he stopped writing in it?”
“No, I don’t.”
“But—”
She slams her hand on the table. “You saw how he was, Winter. Why do you think he stopped writing in it?”
I stare at her, speechless.
She picks up her bowl and dumps it in the kitchen sink. Her fingers curl around the counter, her shoulders shaking.
“Mom.” My voice comes out croaky and awful. “I didn’t mean to—”
“I know.” She wipes the back of her hand underneath her eyes. “Just—just go upstairs, okay? I need a second.”
I swallow. “Mom—”
“Winter, please.”
I get up from the table. I grab the rest of the bread from the basket, but she doesn’t notice. I head up to my room, quietly closing the door behind me.
XXII
While Mom’s busy doing the dishes, I grab a pair of Dad’s old jeans and a green cable-knit sweater from her closet, pushing the hangers together to hide the gaps they leave behind. Mer texts me as I shut Mom’s door quietly behind me, the clothes draped over my arm.
I’m here, she says. Where r u?
Be there soon, I text back, leaning against the faded blue wallpaper. Getting ready.
When I open the door, I find Henry sitting on the edge of my bed, flipping through a scrapbook of this last summer that Mer made for me as a back-to-school gift. He stops at a picture of me at her parents’ Fourth of July party. I’m wearing shorts and a vintage polka-dot halter top. My skin is tan and bare and everywhere. He pushes his hair back, his lips parting as he stares at Summer Me. A rush of breath flows from his mouth in a gentle whoosh. It reminds me of this archaeologist friend of Mom’s I saw at an ancient pottery exhibit on campus, the way he stared at the artifacts like they were too beautiful to really exist.
I clear my throat.
Henry jumps, knocking the scrapbook to the floor. He clutches his hand to his chest. “You frightened me.”
I grin, but it’s a fragile thing. My palms are too sweaty and my stomach too queasy for it to be anything more than ephemeral. “Here,” I say, handing him the clothes. “These will help you fit in.”
He takes the jeans and rubs his thumbs along the denim. “These are breeches?”
I nod. “Hopefully they’re long enough.” I think they should be; he’s about the same height as my dad was. The sweater is more concerning. Henry has a small, tapered waist like Dad, but his chest is wide and his shoulders could carry dinner trays. Something tells me he does a lot more manual labor than I would have expected of a baron’s son.
“They are much too wide in the leg.”
“That’s how they’re supposed to be.”
“Do men of your time not find them cumbersome? Does it not impede their trade?”
“Well, men of my time who are your age don’t usually have a trade yet. They just go to school and sit at desks all day and, I don’t know, talk about sports and boobs over fried cheese sticks at lunch.”
“Boobs?”
“Never mind. The point is, this is what we wear in my time, and if I’m going to take you to a bonfire where you’ll be surrounded by a horde of teenagers who can smell ‘different’ from a mile away, you’re going to wear what I tell you to wear. Got it?”
He smirks. “As you wish, my lady. I am here to serve.”
Now if only all men saw it that way.
He stares at me. I stare back at him. He spins his finger as I did earlier and says, “Turn.”
“Oh.” Heat rushes to my cheeks as I turn my back on him. “Right.”
There’s a lot of fumbling noises, followed by curses muttered under his breath. I catch his shadow on the wall from my desk lamp as he struggles to tug on the sweater, and I have to bite my lip to keep from laughing. But when his shadow starts to work on getting his pants off, the laughter dies in my throat and I shut my eyes tight, my heart beating faster.
“Do not turn,” he says after another minute of jostling. “I have managed to don the shirt, but I…” He exhales, stumbling over his words. “I cannot seem to, uh—that is, what is to be done about the metal triangle?”
“The metal triangle? The—oh!” The zipper. “Um.” I grab the muddy jeans I wore earlier from the top of my hamper, then take a couple steps back while keeping my eyes squarely on the wall. I angle my hands toward him so he can see the jeans over my shoulder. His hair brushes my neck as he leans forward, and his scent, that earthy campfire smell, envelops me.
I demonstrate how the zipper works on my pair, which is followed by the sound of the zipper on his jeans zipping up and down, up and down. Just like the drawstring.
Zip, zip. Zip, zip.
“Got it?” I ask, still staring at the wall.
“I believe so,” he whispers back.
“Can I see?”
He doesn’t say yes, but he doesn’t say no, either. I slowly turn on my heel, and— All my breath leaves my body.
The sweater’s snug on him in the chest, but the sleeves and hem are long enough, and, God help me, I like the way it looks, clinging to him like that. A large would just swallow him up. And the jeans fit him in the leg but they’re a touch too baggy in the waist—not really a big deal since that’s how a lot of guys wear them anyway, but where you might typically see the top band of a boy’s underwear from too-baggy jeans, there’s skin.
A pretty thick slice of it.
My cheeks warm and I press my hand to the side of my face, looking away. “Underwear,” I say. “You need underwear. And a belt.” God, I’m an idiot.
“Underwear?”
“You know. Undergarments? Clothes you wear under your clothes?”
He blushes again. I catch our reflection in the full-length mirror on my closet door, and there we are, the two of us looking like boiled lobsters. “I assumed people of your time did not wear them. Have I made a mistake?”
“No!” I say quickly. “It was my mistake.” The water in the kitchen sink is still running, and I can hear the clatter of dishes being set on top of one another. “You just sit tight and I’ll be right back.”