Chapter Sixteen
Daphne said, “I have to pee.”
I was already awake, but had been playing possum for some time, my ear against her firm belly, listening to the echo of her heartbeat. My bladder was as near to bursting as hers, but it was not my place to say. Moreover, such a tender moment should not be spoiled, and I was reluctant to disturb her.
Marriage was a development that I had never dared to hope for. My presence in Daphne’s house had been mutually regarded as conditional before then, a fragile arrangement that might have been ended immediately by a word of refusal from me, or simple boredom on her part. Now our life together was to have a permanence, a future, even the imprint of legality. I was delirious with joy.
She patted my head and made a little shooing motion. “Up now. And
