Chapter One

The First Hellos

The moving truck groaned up the street just after noon on a bright Sat, tires crunching over the old mineral pitch. Evelyn heard it first — the low diesel rumbling pulling her away from her crossword puzzle. She glanced up from the solarium, her reading spyglass perched on the end of her nose.

Walter was in the backyard, fussing with his tomato works — she called him in through the blind door.

"Looks like soul finally bought the Carter stead,"she said, peering through the lacing curtain.

Together they stood in the den, side by incline, watching through the big sliding chalk door that opened onto their sloping grounds. The carter house sat just downhill — its rachis window lined up perfectly with theirs. No fencing, just a extensive stretchiness of grass and a low hedge soul planted old age ago, more for ornament than privacy.

Evelyn squinted."Oh my…"

She didn't even try to blot out the smile that curled across her lips.

First, they saw her.

The young woman hopped down from the hand truck's side railing, a cardboard box balanced on her hip. She wore tight jean shorts that left a pure crescent of sun-kissed thigh and a blanch pinko tank top that clung to her pectus when she bent over to slide the box onto the driveway.

She stood, brushed her haircloth back — long, unleash waves the color of honey, bouncing over her shoulders like a shampoo commercial. savannah. They didn't know her name yet, but the name would stick to her even before she introduced herself — she looked like a Savannah : sweet, soft, promiscuous to imagine laughing in the sun.

Evelyn felt a piffling bloom of envy, then something more elaborate. savanna had that unimaginable, thoughtless young — the blush cheeks, the blind drunk pelt at her thighs, the careless way she tugged her shirt down when it rode up, not caring if someone caught a glimpse of monotone belly.

"Pretty girl,"Walter murmured, trying not to stare too obviously.

Evelyn elbowed him, half teasing, but her eyes stayed on the missy, too.

Then he stepped out.

Tall — so tall he looked like he might scrape the truck's roof with his shoulders. He carried two big moving boxes stacked richly, arms roped with musculus, forearms veined like a man who never needed to ask for assistance. His peel was smooth, inscrutable Brown, catching the late sun like polished bronze.

Jax set the boxes down and stood back, deal on his hips, shirt damp with sweat already. His T-shirt — old, soft, clinging just enough — stretched tight across his chest. He laughed at something Savannah River said and reached to tug her ponytail like a tease.

Evelyn felt her throat go dry. There was something so well-to-do about the way he moved — like he owned that yard already. Not cocky. Just… confident. Walter made a soft oink of surprise. He'd never admit it, but the young man's size of it made him sense minuscule in a way he hadn't felt in years.

"Lord,"Evelyn said under her breather, feeling a Dame Muriel Spark low in her belly she didn't dare speak out loud."Well… they're… they're lovely."

Bruno Walter cleared his throat."well-disposed enough, you think ?"

Evelyn's mind wandered. Friendly enough for what, exactly ?

It took a week for the first-class honours degree waving across the yards.

Evelyn watched them every few eve — the little girl dragging boxes inside well after dark, the man carrying a elephantine headboard all by himself, laughing when Savannah fussed at him to be careful.

One good afternoon she found herself in her garden just as Savannah was watering a few drooping rose bushes by her new porch. They caught eyes. Savannah waved that Henry Sweet, easy Wave. Evelyn waved back, cheeks warm.

By the end of the week, they were exchanging polite hello. Walter even wandered over one morning with an old garden hoe.

"Need a script ?"he asked Jax.

Jax's smile was wide and boyish, but his handshake nearly swallowed Walter's whole.

"Nah, we got it, sir — but thank you."

Evelyn stood behind the CRT screen, biting her lip as she watched. Savannah hang to tug a box open, hair falling like a curtain around her boldness. Jax's hand brushed the small of her back — protective, genitive. There was something electric about them, even when they didn't know they were being seen.

That nighttime, Evelyn lay beside Walter in their big bed. She could still see the shape of savanna's legs in those lilliputian underdrawers, the unruffled specialty in Jax's arms. She closed her eyes, surprised by the warmness pooling in her belly.

She wondered, half-dreaming : What did they look like when the sun went down ?

Did he lift her up with those big hands, spread her across the sheets, that inviolable back rippling above her ? Evelyn felt a spectre of her dancer's body — the tightness she'd once had, the hunger she hadn't felt in decades.

Beside her, Walter snored softly, unmindful. But Evelyn lay awake, the window cracked open to the summer breeze, wondering just how practically those wide chamber windows really showed after dark.

Chapter Two

The flicker

The summer weeks drifted by like flower petal on pee — quiet, affectionate, familiar.

savannah and Jax settled in well. The last of the box seat vanished. The lawn got its first clean cut. Small talk by the fencing turned into friendly wave when they crossed paths at the mailbox.

Sometimes Evelyn found herself standing in her garden just to catch Savannah in the sunlight — her legs bare under a sundress, the hem swaying around those diffuse thighs. Sometimes it was Jax she'd ticker : the stretchiness of his arm as he carried patio furniture on one shoulder like it weighed nada at all.

Bruno Walter would cod her, saying she was fussing over the roses too much, but he didn't credit how he'd stand by the sliding glass door with his coffee cup, watching Jax mow the yard in his tight T-shirt, perspiration dripping down his neck.

-- -

It was recently one nighttime when Evelyn woke up athirst — the window open, the air sticky against her skin. She slipped out of bed, careful not to wake Walter. The house creaked around her, floorboard sighing like they always did. She padded barefoot into the den, her gown on the loose around her hip joint, and poured herself half a glass of cheap red wine.

The backyard lay soft and dark, the hedge a black silhouette under the Sun Myung Moon. Evelyn almost didn't notice the faint glow at for the first time — that single warm lamp inside Savannah and Jax's bedroom window. She squinted, her shabu hovering near her lips.

There they were.

Or part of them, anyway.

She could see the corner of their bed — rumpled canvas, savanna's soft silhouette on her articulatio genus, kissing her married man with that dessert, thirsty insistence of her rima oris against his jaw. Evelyn felt a twinge in her dresser she couldn't name. She told herself she'd just watch a back. Just a second.

savanna broke the kiss, smiling at Jax — and then she slid off the bed, bare and glow in the lamplight, crossing to the window. Evelyn saw her reach for the pall, probably about to pull it shut. But Jax followed her — so promptly, so sure. He caught her hips from behind, kissed her shoulder, and pressed her palms flat against the glass.

Evelyn's breath caught. She should have looked away — but she didn't. Savannah's foreland tipped forward, her hair falling in a soft golden spill. Jax moved in behind her, big hands sliding to her waist. Savannah pushed her articulatio coxae back into him like she wanted every inch he could give her.

Evelyn's lips parted as she watched him sink into her — the slow up roll of his hips, the way Savannah's dead body jolted just a slight with each deep drive. Her decoration stayed braced on the window. Her intimation made a diminutive cloud on the crank. Evelyn felt warmth gather low in her belly, her thighs pressing together as she studied every silent particular — the bed rightfulness there behind them, but the window so much closer, so much More exposed.

She didn't hear Walter step in until his breast brushed her back. He didn't say anything — just slipped his arm around her, his hint warm at her ear as he followed her gaze. Evelyn felt him toilsome against her hip, heavy than she'd felt him in twelvemonth. She trembled when he tugged her gown up, pressing her hired man to the cold glass as he bent her just enough to consider her.

She couldn't look away. Savannah River's back arched. Jax pulled her hips back into him, slack at first, then faster — Savannah's headspring dropping lower, her ramification trembling. Evelyn's breath smudged the looking glass as Walter drove into her, matching that rhythm she could see but never hear.

When she came, it broke out of her in a gasp she had to live with against her carpus. She felt Walter's finger's breadth dig into her hips, holding her tight. exterior, Savannah's physical structure gave a little final shudder, and Jax carried her rear to bed like she weighed zip at all.

The lamp clicked off. The windowpane went dreary. But Evelyn's pulse kept humming, her trunk still pressed to the shabu — warm in places she'd almost forgotten. And Walter stood behind her, panting like a man who'd just remembered he was still animated .