3 CANDICE MORROW TOUCH J ohn and Lilly arrived home from a disastrous date, each quietly surprised at how peaceful their house appeared from the outside. John stalled the sedan at the mailbox to admire the moon’s illumination of delicate icicles hanging from the window boxes. The iron loveseat Lilly had insisted they move from their Texas porch was covered in snow, the seat’s back a coiling pattern of perfect white hearts. The view’s only stain was the living room window, a long, reflective rectangle that would have been beautiful if not covered in bars. The previous owner installed the bars, and from the beginning Lilly had said they “screamed prison.” She insisted John remove them by summer. To her, they kept things in. To John, they kept things out. He couldn’t say precisely what things, as there was little threat of robbery in Hardin. But when he left for work each morning, he imagined the thick fog that rolled down from the mountains circling his house, looking for entry. The fog was everything he wished to keep from their six-month-old daughter. It was doubt and pettiness and betrayal. Its edges were green with the world’s greed. He knew it was silly to imagine morally destructive moisture attacking tiny Sylvia, collecting in her lungs and maturing her from the inside out. Even more ridiculous was thinking a bit of metal could stop the process. Yet each time their home began to shrink in his rearview mirror, he felt relieved knowing the bars were on the windows. “Not a snowflake out of place,” John said. Right now, Sylvia would be sleeping in the nursery at the back of the house, and their sitter, Teeny, would be draped tiredly over the crib’s edge, humming a lullaby in the soft glow of a Cinderella night-light. “Can we go inside?” Lilly said. “Tonight, maybe?” He parked in the driveway, the garage being full of their before -baby lives. Workout equipment, hunting equipment, sewing equipment—all crammed into a damp, one-car space. At dinner, he’d joked to Lilly that the only equipment they needed colorado review 4 now was a pacifier and two sets of earplugs. Funny, he thought, but Lilly’s smile had wilted, her eyes becoming fixed to her water glass. That was during the appetizer; by the time the entrees arrived, the air was completely thickened at their table—a familiar, insufferable thick. Cutting his steak was a challenge, the knife working through the added weight of forced conversation . “Thank you for a lovely evening,” Lilly said as he switched the engine off. The words ballooned from her mouth in small clouds of mist, and John couldn’t determine the amount of sarcasm in them. The evening was anything but lovely, which she knew—right? If so, why pretend now, and if not pretending, why resort to passive cruelty? “You’re welcome.” He tried mimicking her tone and immediately regretted it. Lilly slammed her door and stomped through snow to the house’s side entrance where she shivered with arms crossed, waiting for him to bring the keys. He had insisted they reinstate date-night, though they were forced to spend it in one of the town’s four restaurants or in the small (only two screens) theater. Hardin, Montana, was not Houston, Texas. Still, they’d enjoyed several small successes. Two weeks ago they strolled down the short main street, holding hands and laughing while a dog got his face stuck in a yogurt cup. Three weeks before that, they saw a romantic comedy, and Lilly put her hand on his thigh while the heroine stumbled into a kiss with the hero. Tonight John was not so lucky. What happened to the Lilly who curled against him in bed and whispered, “You’re my bff,” while trying to twirl his untwirlable hair? Her body was plump and soft before and during her pregnancy with Sylvia. Her hands—“earth hands” she called them—were thick but gentle, and he often imagined their movements over him like those of small woodland creatures, nipping here, petting there. He wondered if it was her...