“I never forgot that afternoon,” he said.
“A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then,” I said, looking out the diner window at the gray clouds gathering over the grain elevator across the street.
“Water flows, but the riverbed stays the same,” he said.
“Why did you come back, Garrett?” I asked.
He picked up his coffee mug, taking a slow sip before he answered.
“Because I wanted to see if you still had that blue ribbon in your hair,” he said.
By twelve-thirty, the wind had picked up, blowing dry oak leaves across the asphalt of the church parking lot.
Garrett walked beside me, matching his long strides to my slower pace as we approached my faded blue Buick.
He reached ahead of me to pull the heavy metal door open, his hand steady on the handle.
“Thank you,” I said, sliding onto the worn fabric seat.
“Take care of yourself, Eleanor,” he said, leaning down slightly so his face was level with mine. “I will be calling you.”
He closed the door with a firm, solid thud, the old-fashioned chivalry of the gesture making me feel younger than I had in decades.
He stood by the fender until I started the engine, his hand resting in his coat pocket.
As I backed out of the space, I looked toward the church entrance.
Clara was standing on the top step of the concrete stairs, her winter coat buttoned to her chin and her purse tucked tight under her arm.
She pointed at me with her glasses, her eyebrows raised high in a silent, urgent warning.
I tapped my horn once and drove out onto the county road, the steering wheel cold in my hands.
Through the rearview mirror, I watched Garrett walk toward a long, black sedan parked near the back of the lot.
The car looked shiny and clean, completely out of place against the gravel dust and the rust-bitten trucks of the parish elders.
A young man in a dark suit stood by the rear door of the sedan, opening it as Garrett approached.
I slowed down at the intersection, wondering why a man who grew up in a three-bedroom ranch on Elm Street needed someone to open his car door for him.
The kitchen clock was the only sound in the house when I sat down at the table at seven o’clock that evening.
The tea in my mug had gone cold, a thin film forming over the dark liquid.
I reached for the shelf in the hallway and brought back the 1972 Oakhaven High School yearbook, its padded blue cover smelling of old paper and basement dampness.
I flipped through the pages, past the basketball team and the library club, until I found the senior portraits.
There he was, fourth row down, his hair a little longer than the principal preferred, his smile already crooked and confident.
Under his name, the list of achievements was short: track team, drama club, and nothing else.
He looked so simple then, a boy who worked at the local lumber yard on weekends and wore flannel shirts with frayed collars.
I touched the glossy page, my finger tracing the black-and-white ink of his jawline.
He had seemed so real in the diner, yet the expensive gold watch and the driver in the black suit felt like a story from another town entirely.
A sudden draft shook the kitchen window, making the glass rattle in its old wooden frame.
I wondered if he was looking for the girl I used to be, or if he was simply lonely in that large, quiet life he had built.
A man with that much polish did not usually look backward unless he was searching for something he had lost along the way.
I closed the yearbook, but the boy behind the bleachers refused to stay in the past.
The cherry pie at the Korner Kitchen always had too much cornstarch, but Garrett did not seem to mind. He scraped the last of the red filling from his plate with his fork, his movements slow and deliberate.
“Margaret calls every Sunday afternoon at exactly four,” Garrett said, setting his fork down with a small clink. “Daniel is usually on the extension from his office in Indianapolis, though he mostly just mumbles his hello.”
The crooked smile I had known since 1972 did not appear. Instead, he rubbed his left wrist, his fingers tracing the leather strap of his watch.
“Are they asking about your health?” I asked.
“They are asking about the properties,” he said. His voice had a flat, dry cadence that I had never heard him use when we were teenagers. “Margaret wants to know if I have spoken to the county assessor about the tax valuations on the Oakridge mansion. She says she needs to plan for her own future.”
“She is your daughter, Garrett. It is natural to worry about the future.”
“It is not worry, Eleanor,” he said, looking out the window at the passing traffic on Main Street. “It is calculation. They talk as if I am already a set of keys they are waiting to inherit.”
He reached across the laminate table, his hand resting near mine. I smoothed the fabric of my skirt, feeling the familiar wool beneath my palms.
“I told them about us,” he said.
My hand went still on my lap. “What did they say?”
