The commercial refrigerator in the basement of First Methodist had a new, metallic rattle that made the folding tables vibrate. On the edge of the nearest table, my mother’s silver-plated cake stand was slowly sliding toward the linoleum floor.
I caught the stand by its fluted pedestal just before it tipped, then adjusted the paper doily on top.
Clara, my closest friend from the church choir, pointed at me with her reading glasses.
“You have powdered sugar on your chin, Eleanor,” she said.
I reached up to wipe it away, my fingers automatic as I smoothed the fabric of my apron down over my skirt.
“It is just from the lemon bars,” I said, lifting the heavy glass dome to set the yellow squares in neat, concentric circles.
The heavy wooden door at the top of the basement stairs groaned on its hinges.
Heavy, slow footsteps came down the wooden steps, too heavy to belong to the pastor or the youth minister.
A tall man stepped into the fluorescent light of the basement, his gray hair brushed back neat and his dark wool coat looking too thick for the damp April morning.
He stopped by the stack of folding chairs, a crooked smile forming on his face as he looked across the room.
“Eleanor,” he said.
My hand froze over the cake stand, a lemon bar still balanced between my fingers.
It was Garrett.
Fifty-three years had softened his jawline and put silver at his temples, but the slight tilt of his shoulders was exactly the same as the day he left Oakhaven.
Clara let her glasses drop to her chest, her eyes darting from him to me and back again.
“Garrett?” I whispered.
He took three slow steps forward, his leather shoes making no sound at all on the linoleum, unlike the squeaky sneakers of the church volunteers.
“I heard you still helped with the Saturday bake sales,” he said, his voice carrying that same smooth, nostalgic cadence that used to fill the back row of our English class.
“We are setting up for the afternoon bazaar,” I said, finally placing the last lemon bar on the tray and wiping my hands on my apron.
“I can see that,” he said, his crooked smile widening as he reached the edge of our table.
He looked at Clara and gave a polite nod, but his eyes returned to me immediately, studying my face as if he were trying to match it to a photograph he had carried for a very long time.
“May I buy one?” he asked, pointing a manicured finger toward the stand.
“They are for the bazaar, Garrett,” Clara said, her voice rising in that warm, gossipy lilt she used when she wanted to find out something private. “But I suppose we can make an exception for an old friend.”
Garrett reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a leather wallet, sliding a twenty-dollar bill onto the table with an easy, practiced motion.
“Keep the change for the choir fund,” he said.
I looked at the bill, then at his hand, where a heavy gold watch glinted under the fluorescent tube.
“We do not have change for a twenty anyway, Garrett,” I said, my voice softer than I intended.
“Then it is a donation,” he said, his eyes locking onto mine. “Are you free for a cup of coffee, Eleanor?”
I looked at the half-filled trays, then at Clara, who was already nodding so hard her earrings jingled.
“Go on, Eleanor,” Clara said, leaning forward to adjust a stack of paper plates. “I can finish the cookies.”
I untied my apron, my fingers suddenly clumsy with the knot behind my back.
“I suppose a short break would be fine,” I said.
By eleven-thirty, we were sitting in a vinyl booth at the diner on Main Street, where the steam from the dishwasher smelled of old dish soap and grease.
The waitress set two thick white mugs of black coffee between us without speaking.
Garrett picked up his spoon, turning it over in his hand, his eyes tracking the light reflecting off the metal.
On his right ring finger, the heavy gold of our 1972 high school class ring caught the light, the blue stone in the center scratched but still deep and dark.
He wore a tailored gray suit jacket that fit his shoulders without a single wrinkle, and the fabric looked much too fine for the cracked red vinyl of our booth.
“You still take it black,” he said, nodding toward my mug.
“Some habits are too hard to break,” I said, wrapping my hands around the warm ceramic. “You look well, Garrett.”
“I am managing,” he said, rubbing his left wrist with his right hand, a quick, anxious gesture that drew my eye to his expensive gold watch. “The years have a way of catching up, but being back in Oakhaven makes them feel a little lighter.”
“I heard you moved away to the city,” I said. “That you did very well for yourself.”
“I had some luck in manufacturing,” he said, dismissing the thought with a small wave of his hand. “But luck does not keep you warm at night, Eleanor.”
“Patricia passed away, didn’t she?” I asked softly. “I saw the notice in the county paper two years ago.”
“She did,” he said, his voice dropping. “It was a long illness. The house has been very quiet since she went.”
“I am sorry, Garrett,” I said. “My husband, Thomas, passed away last year. The silence takes some getting used to.”
He reached across the table, his fingers tapping the edge of my saucer.
“I remember sitting behind the football bleachers with you during the homecoming game in November of our senior year,” he said, his crooked smile returning. “It was freezing, and I told you I would buy you the biggest diamond ring in Indiana one day.”
I looked down at my bare hands, the pale band of skin where my wedding ring used to sit before my fingers swelled.
“We were nineteen, Garrett,” I said. “We did not know anything about the world.”
“Some promises take fifty-three years to keep, Eleanor,” he said.
He looked at me with an intensity that made me pull my hands back to my lap, where I immediately began to smooth the fabric of my skirt.
