Page 9 of Good Dirt

Skidding

E bby rounds the corner of the cottage and sees a Range Rover. A woman, looking to be in her twenties but maybe younger than Ebby, is standing at the far edge of the parking area, a gleaming sheath of hair already tilting this way and that for a selfie. Pale-gold hair extensions. Behind her, the slate turrets of the chateau at the edge of town stand out like pointed hats, black against the July sun. A man walks over to take the woman’s suitcase and the sight of him gives Ebby a start. He looks so much like Henry from that side. Her Henry. Hers at one time, anyway.

Ebby registers the flutter in her chest, the tight feeling around her mouth, as the man turns and looks her way. By the time Ebby’s brain has absorbed the truth of it, that this stranger who reminds her of the man she nearly married is, indeed, the man who abandoned her last year on their wedding day, it is too late. Too late to run back around the side of the cottage and pretend that she isn’t there. Too late to bore a hole straight into the earth beneath her and disappear.

Ebby steps backward, one rubber boot skidding in the mud. Henry has nearly reached her. He is gripping the handles of two suitcases, trailed by the selfie woman, and squinting into the sun. He still is unaware that Ebby, her eyes shadowed by the brim of a straw hat, her hair now dyed the color of ripe cherries, her mahogany arms covered by a long-sleeved gardening smock, is Ebby, his ex. Henry always was nearsighted without his glasses and too vain to wear them unless he was sitting behind the wheel of a car. And even then, sometimes.

As Ebby loses her balance and tumbles into the river, it occurs to her that she has made enormous progress. There she was, thinking that this encounter was the worst thing that could possibly happen to her, when the very worst, in fact, had already come to pass.