The 37th Hour by Jodi Compton Page A

darkened living room to see the tragic lodging of the bed.

 

    chapter 4
    Shiloh was a morning person. I tended to stay up late. As long as we’d lived together we’d pulled at each other like tides. I got up earlier because of him; he stayed up later because of me. The day I left for Mankato, though, he didn’t wake me; I didn’t feel him slip out of bed at all.
    In the end, Shiloh’s words had weighed on my conscience— You’re her partner —and I’d taken his suggestion. I’d called Genevieve, and also spoken to her sister, Deborah. It was arranged: a quick overnight trip on Saturday, time enough to assess Genevieve’s state of mind and, hopefully, raise her spirits. Not long enough so that the time would drag if nothing I said could rouse her from her dark mood.
    When I came out of the bathroom, dressed and wet-haired from my shower, Shiloh was sitting at the living-room window, which had a wide sill and faced east. He’d opened it and the fresh air was making the room cold.
    It had rained in the night. In addition, the temperature had dropped sharply enough to create sleet; there had been a brief ice storm. Outside the window, the bare branches of our trees were coated with silver shells of ice. The snows weren’t due for another two weeks or so, and yet our neighborhood had turned into an icy wonderland, something a set dresser would be proud of.
    “Are you all right?” Something about his stillness made me ask.
    Shiloh looked over at me. “Fine,” he said. He swung his legs down. “Did you get enough sleep?” He followed me into the kitchen.
    “Yeah,” I said. It was nearly ten by the clock over the stove. “I wish I’d woken up earlier.”
    “It’s not like you’re on a tight schedule. You’ve got all day to get there, and it’s only about a two-hour drive.”
    “Yeah, I know,” I said. “Look, it’s not too late for you to come along.” I poured water into the coffeemaker.
    “No,” he said. “Thanks.”
    “I’m just afraid I won’t know what to talk about. You always know what to say in hard situations. I never do.”
    “You’ll do fine.” Shiloh rubbed the back of his neck, his gesture for stalling and thinking of how to phrase something. “I’m supposed to report at Quantico on Monday. I don’t want to cut it that close, if we were to have trouble getting back. My plane ticket’s not transferable. Or refundable.”
    “What kind of trouble would we have? I mean, you’re already willing to count on me to give you a ride to the airport.”
    “I’m not counting on you. It’s a two-thirty flight. If I don’t hear from you by one, I’ll call a cab.”
    The coffeemaker made its choked gurgling noises. I’d already known I wasn’t going to convince him. When Shiloh made up his mind, it was like making water flow uphill to change it. He took my travel mug down from the shelf and handed it to me.
    In the bedroom, I pulled my duffel bag out from under the bed and checked what I’d packed. A change of clothes, something to sleep in, something to wear if I wanted to go for a run. That was all I needed, but when I lifted up experimentally on the handles, the sides drew in, concave. The bag was about a third full, ridiculously thin.
    I felt and heard Shiloh kneel down beside me on the bedroom floor. He scooped hair off the nape of my neck and kissed the skin underneath.
    It was a quick thing. We didn’t even get undressed, really.
    A lot of things had changed for us in the past year: Kamareia gone, Shiloh heading to Virginia, his career to take him God knew where after that. He must have felt the world tipping out of balance as much as I did. It had been Shiloh who’d first brought up marriage, in the same conversation in which he told me he’d passed his Phase II testing and had been given a place in the next class at Quantico.
    Shiloh’s proposal had been an attempt to solidify at least one part of a world gone too fluid. I had understood that, and realized that in