14. The Rainstorm

The fabric is delicate and it takes a little time to get the tension on the thread just right so that it won't all snag. The colour isn't quite the same as in the magazine, more pink than red, but it has the same summer-fruit tone and she prefers it. Head bowed over the sewing machine, eyes focused on the material feeding across the plate and the needle's furious motion, she is content.

The rain had swept in in the early hours, cloud hanging so low it obscures the mountains, a mantle of grey enveloping the house.

It feels like they're the only two people left in the world.

The country music station plays soft - a mix of old favourites and newcomers - and now and then the rustle as a page is turned. A leaden-grey weekend in Harlan County and he's out of work and she had expected that he'd be out of the house, burying himself somewhere she'd rather not know about, but he hadn't and he isn't. They had taken breakfast together, reading sections of the slightly soggy newspaper the paperboy had flung onto her porch while they ate eggs and the cinnamon cured bacon he loves so much. Now she sits and sews and he reads and the rain drums hard against the roof.

She concentrates on her hands but it doesn't take all of her thoughts. She thinks about the night he had come to her, making his apologies without any real hope of forgiveness. That was the last time, she thinks, that he has mentioned Bowman; and she thinks about the times before that, when he had been there and he had seen the bruises on her face and he had said nothing and his eyes had been flat and opaque and unreadable.

He's apologised for what he didn't do and she isn't sure exactly what he could have done but in the middle of all of that there were times when there had been something, even if he doesn't know it or it doesn't fit with what is in his head.

They had been arguing, they were always arguing but she remembers this. It had been a day almost like this one- But no, she thinks, no it had been overcast but not raining. Humid, sticky and she had been longing for rain, something to relieve the pressure, but it never came. Maybe that had been the row. Because it was too hot, because it was too cloudy, just because. Bowman never really needed a reason.

She'd known the look in his eyes, seen the flexing of his hands at his sides and known what was coming next. Sometimes he would try to curb his temper but he never tried very hard and it never worked anyway. She had been determined to stand her ground, partly because there was always the slight hope - stupid, she'd think later - that he would hold back, and partly because running always made it worse. Then he'd get mad because she'd made him chase her. So she stood, chin up, waiting.

Tension crackling through the house, she hadn't heard anything else: not the truck pulling up, not the tread of boots on the porch steps, nothing until the screen-door opened and Boyd sauntered in like he owned the place.

'What the hell are you doing here?' Bowman, still belligerent, his fists balling and his face reddening, the flush creeping down his throat to the open V of his shirt like he knew he'd been caught out.

'Came over to watch the game.' Calm, unconcerned. 'You're going senile in your old age, brother - you should invest in some of that brain-training they keep advertising in all them infomercials.'

Sitting himself on the sofa with no invitation and he'd kept talking, then: 'Hey, Ava, what's a man got to do to get a cup of coffee out of you these days?'

She'd escaped to the kitchen, leant against one of the counters, hands gripping the edge, until her heart stopped hammering.

When the coffee was finally ready she didn't need to take it to them because Boyd came out to get it, planting himself in the middle of the room so that she had to keep moving around him and watching her, all of the time, with that unblinking relentless gaze that shredded her skin. He'd taken the mugs from her hands, fingers brushing hers for a little too long, standing a little too close, then gone again.

Voices from the living room, falling into the rhythms of the game they were watching.

Later, Bowman had come shuffling into the kitchen for beer, sheepish, pressing a kiss into the back of her neck while she did the dishes. Two bottles clinking together, he'd gone back out and she could hear again the cadences of Boyd's voice. And she'd been glad.

Lightening forks the sky, thunder following immediately after it, rattling the window-panes in their frames. The clouds have blackened and the light on the sewing machine isn't enough anymore; she flicks the desk-lamp on and there's a faint answering click from behind her and another pool of light. She glances over her shoulder.

He looks at home, she thinks, here in her house, book angled under the lamp, long legs stretched out on the rug. At home, content.

And she's glad.