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Ava lay in her bed, listening to the sounds in and around the house. Usually this was comforting, the creaks and chirps and hoots a familiar lullaby. But in the last few weeks there had been added a new set of sounds, the thumps and sighs of the boards as Boyd paced in his room, moving around, doing God-knew-what in there. Ava didn't even want to think about it—but she couldn't help it, lying here awake in the dark every night, a knife hidden beneath her mattress, waiting for him to go back to what he used to be.
By day, it was easy to believe in this transformation, to watch him pack his lunch and head off to the mines every morning, to impatiently put a plate of supper on the table in front of him every night, trying to hide from him how much of a pleasure it was to have someone other than herself to cook for again. He was meek and apologetic, thankful for every scrap of kindness … but he wasn't Boyd. She hadn't seen a flash of those white teeth in that wolfish smile of his since he'd shown up at her door. He hadn't launched into some long tirade full of big words and bigger ideas. He sat quietly, sometimes he read a book, but mostly he kept to himself in his room when he wasn't working.
So she had no business thinking about him what she was thinking, Ava told herself sternly. God knew she understood the need to make yourself over, to become something new. She needed to do it herself, to stop thinking about Bowman, about Raylan Givens, and see who she was without some man in her life … but in the midst of trying to believe in his change would come memories of all the times Boyd had gotten her alone and backed her up against the wall and tried to make time with her, even if she was his brother's wife. All the racist rants, all the religious nonsense, all the brandishing of guns with that same smile, like it was nothing to hold a weapon on a woman. How was it possible a man could change that much? It had to be an act, she would think every night, rigid under the blankets, hand sticking out from under them near where the knife lay, holding her breath every time he moved.
And then she would wake up, and there he would be at the breakfast table, coffee already made, hers poured for her in a fresh cup, all picture-perfect polite, looking still like a beaten dog, and she would be mad at herself and she would treat him better to make up for her night-time distrust.
"Don't you go blowin' yourself up today," she'd say, hoping to make him smile, thinking that would make him seem more like himself. Thinking it would tell her whether he was really changed, that she would see in his smile whether he was still the wolf he used to be.
"I'll surely try not to, ma'am," he would say, ducking his head and refusing to meet her eyes, and she wouldn't know what to think in the daylight any more than she had during the night.
During the day, when he was gone to work, it wasn't so bad. Ava had her chores, her gardening, and she was trying to figure out what kind of a job she could get. By the time Boyd came home, she'd have almost forgotten about him. But then she'd look at him again, filthy from the mines, she'd listen to him going upstairs and hear the water running down the drains, carrying all that coal dust through the pipes and out of the house, and wonder all over again.