She comes in from the garden as the rain decides to be more than mist. Her sturdy feet, the knuckles and lifeline of her hands, wear the beauty of hard, honest labor in the soil. Tendrils of hair fall across her face, rubbing against the smudges left on nose and cheeks when she tried to brush them back. I’m a dirty old woman, she says, and he laughs around a smile at the paired meanings, at the thought of growing old with her. She settles on the couch, stretching like the cat that yields its place. He rises from the rocker handed down through the women in her family, goes to the kitchen and hums an old love song she taught him as he fills a basin with warm water, lavender soap, a cloth. Coming back to her, he kneels on the worn wood of the floor and begins to wash the dark earth from her feet. It’s her turn to smile, and she does.