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Adele’s memories of James surged up inside her like floodwaters behind a dam.

She opened the sluice gates and let them pour free.

Charles listened. Someone, probably her mother, twitched the kitchen curtains aside and peered out.

But no one called from the door to say that it was late, it was dark, that surely Charles ought to be heading out.

Adele told Charles everything she knew about James, and when she finished, Charles said, “Well, now I wish I’d known him even more. But at least I’ve gotten to know John. The war was good for that anyway. And I’m hoping I’ll get to know you better too.”

After seeing him off, Adele hesitated before entering the house.

Her mother lay in wait on the other side of the door, ready to pounce and demand a full account of their conversation.

Well, she’d just tell them all that she and Charles had talked about James.

It was true, and it would shut them right up.

But when she stepped, blinking, into the bright kitchen, they barely glanced at her.

John dried the silverware, sorted it into the drawer.

Her mother wiped down the drainboard. Neither of them said a word. “Well, good night,” said Adele.

“Good night, dear,” said her mother. Adele lingered, surprised to realize that she wanted them to ask. But John kept fiddling with the silverware, and her mother kept swiping away at the drainboard. Adele finally turned to go, but not before she caught John winking at their mother.

Never mind that her brother was a schemer. Adele liked Charles. She hadn’t realized how isolated she’d become. Susanna and Franny had houses and babies and husbands. Like Pauline, they had disappeared into secret domestic worlds of their own.

Spinsterhood had been easy to choose at age eleven. Before she understood the loneliness it would entail. Now Charles came to supper several times a week. They took drives and had picnics and sat in the Clemson parlor listening to Mrs. Clemson play her most romantic repertoire.

“I don’t sew,” Adele told him one afternoon as they drove out to see a piece of land he’d recently acquired and intended to drill on.

“I don’t care,” said Charles.

“I can make a pot roast with potatoes, but not much else. Well, there was a pie once. Apple. That was years ago, though,” said Adele as they tramped through the brush to a creek bed he wanted to show her.

“Yes, your mother has mentioned the pie. More than once. See that scum along the edge of the water there? A lot of men would just drill right there.”

Adele dipped a finger into the scum and sniffed it—oil. “But not you.”

“Not right off, anyway.”

“Because you’re waiting for the soil samples to come back.” The other wildcatters sneered at Charles’s deliberations, his fascination with scientific methods. They accused him of wasting good money and time when anyone could see there was oil right underfoot.

Adele asked whether it bothered him, and Charles laughed.

“I spent a year in a trench, every day swearing that if I made it out, I’d make my own decisions.

Not listen to the foolish old bastards who put me there.

Life’s too short to worry about what other people think. But you already know that, don’t you?”

He took her hand and pulled her toward him and kissed her.

The week before he had asked her to marry him.

Adele, who’d wanted to say yes immediately, had only allowed herself to say she’d consider it.

In the meantime, she was sampling Charles, doing her own analysis of what it would be like to be his wife.

She pushed back from him. “I like wearing trousers.”

“I know. You’re wearing them right now. Surprisingly fetching.” He pulled her toward him again and kissed her neck, whispering, “I already have a cook. I don’t care whether you ever sew a stitch. Say yes, Adele. I promise you won’t be sorry.”

Adele wanted the wedding as soon as possible.

She was eager to sleep with Charles, but, because her virtue was the one thing about her that the women in town had never questioned, she was waiting for her wedding night.

When Susanna had rushed down the aisle, everyone whispered that she must be in the family way.

Susanna’s baby had come “early” and yet entered the world with a full head of hair and a good half pound on any of Pauline’s babies.

Adele, who already knew that women laughed at her—laughter underlaid with more than a little envy given Charles Ector’s bank balance—didn’t want them whispering that she’d forced him down the aisle.

To speed things up, she vetted her mother’s plans based on how fast they could be implemented.

No, she wouldn’t wait for a full trousseau to be sewn.

Mrs. Clemson insisted on sewing a new nightgown for Adele.

Adele insisted it be a simple one, with as few frills and tucks as possible.

No, she wouldn’t wait for roses to come into season; hyacinths would suit her just fine.

Yes, she’d allow the making of a travel suit and a wedding dress, but only of the simplest patterns.

Mrs. Clemson stitched Valenciennes lace onto the bodice of the dress while Adele was out.

Ripping it off and refinishing the dress with simple satin edging, Adele’s preference, would have only caused delay.

There were worse things than an itchy dress.

Standing at the front of the church, she resisted pulling at the lace around her neck.

She wished the preacher, who rattled on about wifely duties, would get to the vows.

The sooner the ceremony concluded, the sooner she could change into the comfortable serge travel suit.

She took a deep breath and eased her grip on the flowers so as not to crush the stems and release their juice.

She’d never successfully kept a pair of gloves clean for more than a day.

But on this, her wedding day, she was determined to at least get through the ceremony without staining them.

At last, the preacher ran out of things to say about wives submitting to their husbands.

He turned to Charles and asked if he promised to love, honor, and cherish Adele.

“I do,” Charles answered firmly.

Then the preacher turned to Adele and asked if she promised to love, honor, and obey Charles.

Adele flinched. Why hadn’t she thought about the vows?

She’d watched Pauline promise to obey Claude Demmings.

No doubt her mother had promised to obey her father.

And yet Adele had witnessed both her sister and her mother disagreeing with their husbands and doing what they pleased.

What was the point of this promise if everyone felt free to ignore it?

She herself planned to ignore it, but even so, it seemed an unfair thing to ask.

Did Charles expect her obedience? She widened her eyes at him.

He winked and shook his head. The preacher ahem-ed.

“I do,” said Adele. Then she whispered, softly so that only Charles could hear, “Except for that third thing.”

They exchanged wedding bands, were pronounced man and wife, and Adele rushed her new husband up the aisle and out into the fresh air, where she could breathe again.

It was a relief to change into the travel suit, to free herself from the itchy lace and constraining stays of her wedding dress.

Her gloves, she was proud to see, were still spotless.

As she climbed into the passenger seat, someone in the crowd murmured, “See, she’s already coming around.

” The engine turned over once and died. Adele sprang out of the car, ignoring the groan of disapproval from the crowd—she’d show them coming around .

She tossed her gloves on the ground, lifted the hood, fiddled with this and then that, turned the crank, and instructed Charles to engage the choke, slowly this time.

The car rumbled to life. She hopped back in the passenger seat and waved goodbye, leaving her gloves where they lay.

Changing out of the travel suit and into her new nightgown—“It doesn’t suit you at all,” said Charles. “Let’s take it off.”—brought even greater relief: letting her body, finally, have what it craved.

The night before, her mother had dithered on about the physical aspects of marital duty without ever managing to say exactly what those physical aspects entailed.

Pauline, several days earlier, had been only somewhat more forthcoming when she told Adele, “It hurts at first, but you get used to it.” Adele had seen plenty of animals engage in the “physical aspects of marital duty.” None of them seemed too out of sorts about it.

She had also, years ago, discovered certain rewarding ways of touching herself.

She was delighted, on her wedding night, to find that Charles knew these ways of touching too.

“How did you know how to do that?” asked Adele, once she got her breath back.

He turned pink. His eyes flitted about the room, looking anywhere but at her.

Ah, she thought. He’s done this before. When he cleared his throat, she realized he was about to tell her the truth, as he always did.

And also, that she didn’t want to know it.

She put her fingers over his lips and whispered, “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. ”