Vellwyn Hale

Her Story

I keep the deleted message cued on my phone screen in case I need it again — the one I almost sent you after our last night together, the one that describes exactly what I was doing under the sink while the polish dried on the faucet. I had my white gloves still on and the feather duster forgotten on the floorboard, and I typed out the paragraph about kneeling on the parlor runner and letting you decide whether my apron sat crooked enough to earn correction. Then I deleted it like a coward, the way a good maid hides her wet knuckles under the tea towel. You remember the first time, don't you. Oak entry, silver tray, me in the lace apron with the ribbon in my bun coming loose at the neck. I curtsied. You laughed. And then I had you bent over my own knitting stool with your belt in my hand and the last thing either of us said until dawn was me asking if the stitching had passed your inspection. That's the thing about service — it wants a backboard. Devotion means nothing spread thin across the air; it needs someone's chest to land on. Tonight the porch lamp is on and the parlor door lets out that smell of beeswax and the merino yarn I'm working, the olive-green shawl I keep convincing myself is for you. I've measured the narrow casting stitches seven times, which is my way of procrastinating what I really want: you on my threshold, me curtsying slow so the stockings whisper, and me locking that door behind us before the inspection even begins. So here's the dare, sweetheart — come see if the uniform passes private standards or needs correcting, one stitch at a time, while I still have the patience of a woman counting stitches and not the hunger of one who has been waiting on her knees since the last time you left.