The Perfect Letter by Chris Harrison

after supper, late at night, a few minutes in the hayloft, where they could talk in secret, where they could kiss and cling to each other, promising their love, making plans for the day they’d get out of there, the day they’d break free. Instead of keeping them apart, Gene’s orders only cemented their connection to each other.
    It was only a few days after Gene issued his decree, in fact, that Leigh and Jake slept together for the first time. She’d come home after school one day and found Jake gone. His father had sent him into town for some feed and other supplies, and Leigh, disappointed yet again, had gone into the house to do her homework and sulk. Her grandfather must have seen her bedroom door closed and knocked twice, softly. “Just checking in,” he said, opening the door a crack.
    She could see his face, tanned from the sun, out of the corner of her eye. He looked sad, but she would not give him her forgiveness, not yet, not after what he’d said and done. “Just checking that I’m alone, you mean,” she said. She was lying on her stomach with her math book open in front of her. She wouldn’t look him in the eye.
    â€œWatch your tone, Leela,” he said. “I put up with a lot of sass from you, but you know I’m right about this.”
    â€œYou are not right about this.”
    â€œEnough,” he said. Then he stomped back up the hallway and down the stairs while Leigh, in frustration, flung her book at the closed door.
    She stayed in her room right through dinner and would have stayed in there all night if there hadn’t been a knock on her window just past eleven, when she was starting to get sleepy and hungry, when the big house seemed as silent and lonely as a tomb. Then the tap, tap of pebbles hitting her window. She looked out, and there was Jake standing in the bright moonlight, in a clean blue T-shirt and jeans, grinning at her like a crazy fool. She raised the sash a little and said, “Are you nuts?”
    â€œMust be,” he said. “Come on out here.”
    â€œI can’t. He’ll hear me.”
    â€œClimb on out the window.”
    â€œOh sure, no one will hear that.”
    â€œThe longer we argue about it, the more likely he is to hear you.”
    Leigh groaned. “All right. Hold on.”
    She turned the light off in her bedroom to make her grandfather think she’d gone to bed, then raised the sash on the window and swung herself out onto the windowsill. Jake reached up and took her around the waist. She leaned back into him, and he eased her down, then spun her around to face him. “Look at that,” he said. “I was wrong about you, that first day. You aren’t a horse; you’re a monkey.”
    â€œAnd you’re still a talking ass.”
    â€œAh, but I’m your talking ass.”
    â€œLucky you,” she said. She kissed him.
    A noise around back startled them, and they went completely silent: it was her grandfather opening the window in his bedroom.
    â€œThe barn,” Leigh whispered, and they went around across the lawn toward the stables, keeping to the shadows and away from the bright glow of the moon rising orange over the hills, staying low. In a minute they heard the scrape of the window closing again.
    The stables were dark for the night and smelled of dust and creosote and leather polish and horseflesh. The horses nickered softly when they heard footsteps in the aisle, but Leigh gave them a reassuring whoa there, hey there, and they went quiet.
    They went down to the tack room and found a stack of clean wool blankets. She took one, but under the bottom blanket she could just feel the cool metal of her grandfather’s .357 Magnum. She picked up the corner of the wool and showed the gun to Jake.
    â€œOne of these days,” she said, “the old man is going to get brave enough to open my door and realize I’m not there. When that happens, you’d