Deleted scenes from the cutting room floor: Sisterwives
When I woke he was gone, and the only thing was the faint light filtering through the curtains, lemon-tainted. It’s as though I dreamed the whole thing – the night of the Sealing, the walk from the Meeting House in darkness, the sounds of our wedding party drifting over the Piece. Climbing the stairs together, with Tobias catching my hand; inside, sitting me down on the bed. Taking down my hair.
Frania never told me. She’d never said about that weight of wanting, about the anticipation like a stone inside me. My own mother and she didn’t warn me how, always from now, I’d be bewitched by it. Tobias encircling me; the pressure of his fingers on my thighs.
If I closed my eyes, it’s as though I could hear Rebecca breathing, the other side of the wall.
But, alone, the next morning. Tobias risen early and gone already to the dust and heat of his workshop. The sounds below of the rest of the house. Martha’s fractious crying, Naomi trying to calm her. The family tiptoeing around each other, around my absent presence in the kitchen. Lying alone upstairs I wanted to hold on to it: the space where Tobias’s body had been, through the night, all night and the impression it left behind in my brand new bed.
