Flying Solo(15)

“Did she find anything?”

“I don’t know. She said she’d come back when she was done and fill me in. I’m on tenterhooks.”

Laurie shook her head. “It freaks me out that there are so many people here now that I don’t know. I’m sure I lost out on a ton of hot gossip.”

“Well, let’s see. I told you how the team is doing. The community theater did The Music Man this year, it was a hit. They even rounded up a passable barbershop quartet.”

“Did you play Marian the librarian?”

“Cute. What else…we have a new T.J. Maxx on the edge of town that has Calcasset’s third escalator.” He held up three fingers, and she laughed.

“Amazing, I’ll have to go ride it up and down sometime.”

“We have a baseball coach at the high school who used to pitch for the Yankees.”

Laurie turned to him. “How did that happen?”

“His fiancée lives here. Do you remember Evvie Ashton? She was younger than we were, lived with her dad?”

“I don’t. I’ve clearly forgotten everything I ever knew.”

“You should have come back more.”

Laurie sighed. “I know. At some point, I started talking to Dot and June on the phone all the time and I just stopped visiting. Everybody else kind of faded.” She smiled. “You are the exception, of course. I’m very happy to see you.”

He put a hand on his belly. “Well, I am honored. I’m happy to see you too.” He rubbed his chin. “Should I ask you about the wedding? I did hear about the wedding.”

“Everyone knows everything,” she sighed.

“Unintended consequences of an overly connected society,” he said.

“Unintended consequences of my mother having Facebook. Does that service do anything other than trick you into disclosing things you could have just kept secret?”

“In my experience, it will also remind you that eight years ago, you took a really great picture with someone you were married to but aren’t anymore. Of course, you don’t have to say anything about the wedding if it’s particularly sensitive.”

“It’s not particularly sensitive, but that is a conversation that we should definitely have somewhere other than walking past this sign that says PLEASE CURB YOUR DOG.”

He put his hand on her elbow as a car pulled out of a driveway in front of them, and then they continued. “Fair enough. So you’re working hard over at Dot’s?”

“Yeah, with Junie. We hired this guy to come over, and he’s picking through all her stuff, and after we decide what to keep and what might sell, his people will clean out the rest.”

“Did she have any buried treasure in the closet?”

“No, not really. She had a lot of trinkets, and some letters, and enough travel souvenirs to sink The Love Boat. You’ve never seen so many nearly identical postcards of blue water.”

“Nothing scandalous, though.”

“Well, I’m trying to resist reading her love letters. It’s not easy.”

“She seemed like she had quite a life.”

“To say the least,” Laurie agreed. “I think she was a hellraiser. I’m not sure what a hellraiser even looked like in the 1950s, but I’m pretty sure whatever it was, she qualified.” She paused. “I did find this duck.”

“A duck?”

“Not like quack quack, not a live duck. This wooden duck, like a decoy. It was in her cedar chest, way down at the bottom. Forgotten, I guess.” She kicked a pebble off the sidewalk. “It’s weird, though. Because I did read this one letter, one of her love letters.”

“Of course you did.”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, you would have, too, don’t judge me. Anyway. There was this line in there about how if she ever was desperate, there were always ducks. I don’t have a clue what it means. For all I know it could have been a policy with a duck-themed insurance company or something. But it’s weird, right? This letter about ducks, and there’s a duck in the bottom of her trunk under all these blankets?”

“Did you ask the downsizing guy?”

“I did. He took a look at it, and he said it wouldn’t sell for much. I hung on to it, but I think I’m going to let him buy it off me for fifty dollars. I can’t take everything with me that’s interesting, or I’d…you know, I’d take everything with me.”

They got to the coffee shop, and he opened the door for her again, and she slid inside where it was nice and cool. “Okay,” she said, “this is much better.” They both got big cups of coffee wrapped in Cozy Cup sleeves, and he gestured toward a couple of leather chairs. “You want to sit?”

“Sure.”

Once they were settled, he looked at her expectantly. “So. The wedding.”

She smiled. “How much do you know?”

“Just that it got called off.”

“Right. So you want the whole thing?”

“Absolutely.”

“Okay. Well, we hadn’t been dating for that long before we got engaged, only about a year. I don’t know, maybe it wasn’t long enough. It’s a long time when you’re over thirty-five, I feel like. But we got engaged, which seemed like we were making appropriate progress or whatever.”