You Believers by Jane Bradley Page A

somewhere. She was ready. She looked up, hoping to make another wish, but saw only a few blurred stars in a dull black sky. The humidity, she thought. Her daughter was always telling her to sell the farm and move to a place with milder weather. She sent a prayer to her husband, asked him to give her a sign to tell her whether she should give up the place and move or hang on and stay. I’ll know when it’s time , she thought. And then she thought maybe those were his words in her head. Patience was his favorite word. You’ll know when it’s time . That was exactly something he would say.

Love Calls Us to Things of This World
    Billy woke in the dark, a jolt in the spine and a wide-eyed stare at the ceiling. Day three and she wasn’t back yet. He sat up, looked at the clock: 3:30 A.M. As usual. Somewhere between 3:30 and 4:30, he would wake. She was always home by then, even when she worked late at the bar, partied with the wait staff. He stared into the dark. Not a sound in the house. Most nights he’d hear the clicking of ice as she brought her glass of ice water to bed. When she worked late, she always came in quietly, took a shower, brushed her teeth, and he never heard a thing but the clicking of her ice water as she set it on the side table, slipped so quiet, soft, and damp into their bed.
    Three thirty A.M. What does a man do at 3:30 A.M. ? Five thirty is a civil time to rise. That was what Katy said: “Five thirty is a civil time to rise.” Farmers did it. Fishermen. Even those yuppies with some 6:00 spinning class at the gym. She said that getting up before 5:30 meant you were anxious or a nut of some kind or a workaholic. Katy liked sleeping in. In her ideal life, she said she’d like to be able to rise clean and clear-headed with the sun so she could watch the night turn to day. She said that as if she believed it. But Katy never got up early unless she had to. She wanted to be the kind of personwho got up early, greeted the day just for the beauty of it, but people did that only in the books she liked to read.
    If she were there, she’d reach, stroke his back softly with her nails. She’d pull him to her where he could smell coconut, amber, some sweet-smelling cream she used. He’d nuzzle at her neck while she softly rubbed her fingers across the back of his head. “Come to bed,” she’d whisper, even when he was already there. He’d just nuzzle closer, breathing her sweetness.
    He flicked on the light, threw a t-shirt over the lampshade to soften the glare. Katy hated when he did that, said he’d forget the shirt one day and burn the place down. Right now he didn’t care. He looked around the room as if looking would reveal some sign of her, as if all that time he was looking she was right there, the way you looked for a drill bit you needed in a toolbox. You looked and sifted and looked, and you gave up, made some other drill bit work. You went to put it back, and there it was—the drill bit you needed was sitting right there.
    He ran his hands over the tangle of sheets. Katy would have had them smooth, tight, and clean. He could see a stain. She hated stains on a sheet, kept saying she wanted new sheets. And so he’d bought these eight-hundred-thread-count sheets she’d wanted. He was saving them for a wedding present. Their first night married, they’d sleep on those ivory-colored eight-hundred-count sheets. “Katy,” he said, “I got you those great sheets you’ve been wanting. Come home.”
    The cops had said it was probably prewedding jitters. He was worried she had run back to Frank, the asshole who never remembered her birthday or Valentine’s Day. Frank, who seemed to want her just enough to hurt her. Some guys were like that, and some girls just couldn’t leave it alone. And now there was this other guy called Randy. Who the hell was Randy? Katy’s mother suspectedFrank. But even Olivia—he could hear it in her voice—was scared. Olivia didn’t know about some guy named