So Long, Chester Wheeler(73)

“Turns out,” I said, “there’s something sentimental here after all.”

“What was he sentimental about?”

“You. And your brothers.”

“No, that’s impossible.”

“I’m holding impossible in my hands,” I said.

And I told her a little bit about what I’d found.

“But . . . ,” she began.

The thought apparently had no ending, though.

“I’m going to send this to you,” I said. “I need your address.”

“But he didn’t . . .”

Again, no apparent finish.

“What didn’t he?”

“He didn’t pay any attention to us. After Mom threw him out of the house, he never paid any attention to us at all.”

“Actually . . . he paid attention to you, Ellie. Just not to your faces, where you would know about it.”

A long silence on the line.

“Ellie? I just need your address.”

“I’ll have to call you back,” she said.

It was clear from her voice, and from her enunciation of the words, that she was crying.

I opened my mouth to try to say something helpful and supportive, but she had already ended the call.

I sat on the bed for a few minutes, trying not to think of my own lost father. Trying not to wonder if, on his death, someone would find proof that he had kept tabs on me in some unexpected way. Also, failing at that.





Chapter Twenty-Four:




* * *





Serve

I walked down to my favorite coffee place, and sat out on the patio, and waited. I was a little early. The weather was cool, and I was wearing a light jacket, which felt good after sweltering for so long on that overheated trip.

For a second, I had a pang of regret. Maybe I was wrong to do this—to try to meet somebody new when I hadn’t even sorted out the somebody old.

And then it hit me. Just all at once like that. Like the proverbial ton of bricks.

I was taking Tim’s treatment of me personally.

Maybe I wasn’t wrong, or bad, or defective. Maybe I was just wrong for Tim.

It left me reverberating inside, wondering why I hadn’t thought to extend my Chester Wheeler lesson just a little bit further. At least, until that exact moment. I just sat there for a time, feeling the echo as it passed through. Feeling the inside of me return to stillness.

There was an umbrella above the table, casting shade. I almost got up and moved it, to get some sun on me. I was feeling a trifle chilled. Instead I got distracted by wondering if it was 2:00 yet.

I turned over my phone and glanced at it. It was 2:01.

When I looked up again, he was standing at the other side of the table.

“Lewis?” he asked.

“Brian,” I said.

“You don’t have coffee.”

“I was waiting for you.”

“I’ll get us something. What do you want?”

He wasn’t exactly what I’d call handsome—he wasn’t a head-turner—but he was pleasant enough to look at. His hair was brown and just that perfect amount of tousled. I wasn’t sure if he rolled out of bed with it looking that way, or if he spent hours working to achieve the impression of “natural.” But if it wasn’t effortless, he certainly made it look that way. His eyes were dark brown and just the tiniest bit askew. It was so slight that I almost wasn’t sure if I was imagining it. He wore jeans and a plaid flannel shirt with no jacket.

“Let’s see,” I began. “I’ll have . . . the largest café mocha they’ve got.” Like Chester, living it up. “Nonfat,” I added quickly, because unlike Chester I would still be around in a week or a month to regret my excesses.

He went off to get them.

I could see him through the coffeehouse windows the whole time. I could watch him without him watching me watch him. He seemed at home in his own skin, but that was just a first impression. He had a slightly oversize nose, but it worked with his face.

He was older than I was—fairly significantly, I decided—but definitely not old. Maybe thirty, or even in his early thirties. He had a young energy, so it was hard to tell for sure.

He ordered and paid, then came back out and sat across from me.

“Well,” he said.

And I said, “Well,” too.

“Sorry if it’s awkward.”

“I thought it would be,” I said. “But now that we’re here doing it, not so much.”

It’s possible I was lying, though. Or at least exaggerating. Because I immediately opened my mouth and asked a question I would not have asked if I’d been able to think of a single better thing to say.

I asked, “So what do you do for a living?”

Ironic, huh? The one thing I truly feared he would ask me.

“I’m a registered nurse,” he said.

“Huh. That’s interesting.”

I thought, The universe is having its way with me. I didn’t say so out loud.

“Interesting how? I know it’s interesting to me, because it’s my livelihood. It’s my calling. I’m curious as to why it’s interesting to you. Unless you just said that to be polite.”

“No. I didn’t. It really is interesting.”