The Barter by Siobhan Adcock

tingling as if someone were tickling the roof of her mouth.
    â€œLike you’re an animal who wants to eat me.” John grinned. He was joking, of course. His sense of humor, famous, irrepressible, even when she wished he’d be serious. “I recognize that look. I shot a mountain lion once for giving me that look, on a hunting trip with my father.” But he did not move away from her; he stayed close, where she could study his face, his
brightness
—the term she’d begun to attach to a phenomenon she’d noticed early in their engagement and kept noticing, even when it made her unhappy. When she looked at John sometimes, in the mornings or evenings, it was like looking at a gem underwater. Parts of his face would seem to glint at her, like a mermaid’s hair glimmers to a drowning sailor, and she saw now where it originated: around the eyes, yes, but also at the corners of his mouth, sometimes—yes, just there. And his arm, still around her waist, and she, still so close to him, but she could step closer, couldn’t she? Yes, to be sure.
    John’s smile had faded, but the brightness was still present. They were still for a moment, and then Rebecca seemed to feel as if she’d been holding her arm aloft, and then simply let it fall, softly, so thather hand rested on his chest—with that same sense of muscular relief she experienced when she realized she’d been sitting hunched over a book or a piece of handwork and simply stretched her neck and pulled back her shoulder blades.
    When he spoke, his voice was hoarse. “Are you all right, sweetheart?”
    â€œYou had better kiss me, John,” she said raggedly. “My heart—”
    â€œMine, too,” he said. He smiled at her, with what they both knew to be false bravery. He brought his lips to meet hers. To her surprise—and his, she thought—a small sound escaped his throat as their lips touched, and her body tensed in response to his. It broke her heart.
    *   *   *
    A t the altar in the Lutheran church. Everyone at the ceremony looking at the two of them, seeming to know something they didn’t know, seeming to nod at her wisely, smile at her encouragingly. Rebecca had never known before what terror was, and now, when she most needed her heart to beat true, she felt almost faint with heat and the rush of blood. She felt glittering and thin like a soap bubble.
What am I so afraid of,
she kept asking herself.
What could it possibly be.
When the priest invited them to kiss after announcing that his incantations had worked their invisible, unsurprising results, Rebecca turned to John so quickly, seeking his strong mouth, that the congregation laughed, approving. She had wanted that mouth, more of it, ever since his kiss in her yard (even though that night she’d broken away and excused herself with a hot, blushing inarticulateness, and raced upstairs to throw herself into her room in the dark and stare out the window and listen to her heart, her heart, her heart).
    John looked more handsome than she’d ever seen him, in a dark-gray suit, his eyes sparkling, and she knew herself she was pretty today, wearing an ivory embroidered dress with lace at the sleeve tips and collar. She kept John close to her throughout the wedding reception that afternoon, leaning on his arm when she could and leaning to keep him within sight when he had to move away. He brought her cold tea, fried chicken, sweet light peach cake that Frau and some other women had made for the party. The Doctor’s house was fairly turned upside down. The old man was nowhere to be seen.
    At five o’clock Rebecca and John were to leave for the farmhouse. Frau showed the young men, John’s friends, where Rebecca’s trunks were—her clothing and books and small possessions, and the wedding gifts that had been sent to the Doctor’s house. John told Rebecca that there was a pile of presents waiting