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"Cow."

"I got that. Define slight."

"She was on Fenner Road. Standing in the middle of it. Kieran and I spent twenty minutes trying to convince her to move." He hangs his hat on the peg, unclips his belt, and sets it on the bench beneath the coat tree with the care of a man who has done it nine hundred times. "She wasn't hurt. She was offended."

"Of course she was."

"She looked right at me, Carolina. Like I'd said something about her mother."

I'm laughing so hard I put my forehead on my knees. I hear his boots cross the hall and stop at the foot of the stairs. When I look up he's standing one step below me, close enough that the lamp from the hall catches his eyes and turns them very blue. His hand comes to rest on the banister beside my hip.

"You smell like cow," I say.

"You love it."

"I tolerate it."

"I know you do." He bends and kisses me. It's slow and warm and tastes of coffee. The hay in his beard scratches my chin. I put both hands in his hair and feel the day go out of him like a held breath.

When he lifts his head, I take hold of the pocket of his shirt, reach in, and come out with a pair of thin dark glasses.

"You were doing the log in the cruiser."

"The overhead light was bad."

"Put them on."

"You say that every Friday."

"It works every Friday."

He puts them on. They sit a little crooked. He pushes them up with one knuckle. The sight of it goes through me the way it did at a kitchen table with a report spread out in front of him and a pen between his teeth. He looks at me over the top of the frames, steady and amused.

"Is this part of the exam?"

"Left shoulder."

"It's fine."

"Prove it."

He raises both arms. Lifts them all the way up, slowly. When they're fully extended he lowers them to either side of me and grips the railing, one hand on each post. I'm caged in the narrow space with my back against the wall and his chest a few inches from my face. The left arm moves exactly like the right. It has for a long time now.

"Full range," I say.

"Is that clinically acceptable?"

"It's within normal limits."

"Within normal limits." He repeats it very low, and leans in. My head tips back against the plaster.

His mouth finds my throat, just below my ear. Where there's no mark anymore but where I always feel one. His beard drags softly over my skin. One of his hands leaves the railing, slides over my knee and up my thigh, warm and broad through the thin cotton of my leggings. I make a sound I'd deny in front of a jury.

The stair under me creaks. He lifts his head and we look at each other, his eyes bright behind the glasses. Then we're both laughing, helplessly, with our foreheads together.

"Honest," he says.

"Always."