Chapter 12
I could tell you all the beautiful things we saw that day, how the sun was bright and he led me down into a gully where we saw deer. I could go on about how at ease he put me, and how glad I was that we hadn't left after I hurt myself, or even that morning. But the truth is, when I look back on that weekend, the butterflies and the ferns are not the first thing I think of. I think of Richard and I, naked in the woods, separated from the world we knew and experiencing this new world as just two people that loved the big silences, and the familiar, smaller silences of each other.
There was a crumbling pass over a river we had to cross, and I thought nothing at all of taking his hand to steady myself. We continued holding hands until well after we'd left the bridge.
"Your palms
