Page 5

Maybe Josiah should thank her, because it made Claire move a little quicker, and she was hurrying toward the front door with two pieces of cake almost before he was able to catch up to her and open the door before she got there.

“Thanks,” she said without looking at him as she used her elbow to push the screen door open.

“No problem,” he said as he shut the door behind him and then caught the screen so it didn’t slam. Miss Mattie had yelled at him years ago when he was a kid for slamming the screen door, and those lessons stuck.

“Here’s your cake,” Claire said, still not looking at him.

“Is there something I did that made you mad?” he asked, knowing that he hadn’t seen her for more than ten years. It was probably closer to twelve or more. She might’ve been around a bit during college breaks, but he couldn’t specifically remember seeing her.

“Not really,” Claire said, taking her cake and going over and sitting in the rocking chair that was the farthest away from the door. The one by itself.

He figured he could either slide a rocking chair over to her or sit down away from her. He decided he’d sit down on the porch swing, since that was the most comfortable, and it was his favorite spot anyway. If she didn’t want to talk to him, he wasn’t going to make her.

He’d tried to ask her if there was anything he needed to apologize for, and she’d acted like there wasn’t. Except…she’d said “not really.”

“‘Not really.’ Does that mean there is something?”

“No. It’s just that seeing you brings back bad memories.”

“In what way?” he asked, truly baffled. There was that game of truth or dare, and she had been his first kiss, but…

they’d been…eleven? Twelve? Maybe fourteen, but definitely no older.

All he knew was it had been nice, and he wouldn’t have minded more, but she had acted like it was the grossest thing that had ever happened to her, and he’d ended up embarrassed.

If anyone should have bad memories about that, it should be him, right?

Except… It had been his first kiss, and he mostly remembered it with fondness.

Although he’d had better kisses over the years, there were none that he remembered with quite so much nostalgia.

In fact, if he remembered correctly, it had happened just past the chicken coop in her gram’s big barn.

“I don’t really want to talk about it,” she said, rocking in the chair and not looking at the cake that sat in her lap.

Well, he wasn’t going to pass up a piece of homemade cake.

His mom’s good days were fewer and far between, and she didn’t do much baking anymore.

Not that chocolate cake was good for him or anything.

Still, he took a nice bite and enjoyed the flavor on his tongue as he looked out across the greening pastures.

It had started to get dark, and it was a little chilly. Not so terrible that he felt like he needed to go in, but chilly enough that he was concerned that Claire might be cold, especially if she was just sitting out there because her grandma wanted her to.

“Is there anything you do want to talk about?” he asked, figuring he ought to give the conversation one more try.

She was quiet for a bit, and then she said, “I’m sorry. I know I’m not very good company. I just… There were reasons why I stayed away from here, and seeing you brings a lot of those back.”

“I’m sorry about that.” He really couldn’t help it, though, other than make himself disappear, which he hadn’t quite mastered the knack of yet.

“You don’t need to apologize. I’m the one that has problems.” She didn’t look at him as she spoke but glanced down at her cake and then out over the pasture, like there was more to see than the gathering dusk.

“I guess sometimes I feel like it’s better to face the things that you don’t like than to try to run from them.

After all, they always catch up to you one way or another.

” That’s kind of how he’d felt when he’d ended up staying after high school.

There were people who thought he was a loser because he wasn’t more ambitious, because he didn’t go to college, because he still lived with his parents through his twenties and was now in his thirties.

There were all kinds of things he could run from, hide from, and try to ignore in his life.

But like he had just told Claire, he’d found that sooner or later, they caught up with you.

“I suppose you know all about that,” she said, and there was a good bit of sarcasm in her voice.

He didn’t say anything. What was he supposed to do? Tell her that he did know about it and start listing all the things he had run from over the years?

He didn’t want to do that.

“I suppose I figure that everyone’s trial feels big to them. It might not be what someone else is going through. Someone else might have it a lot worse, but in your life, it feels like the biggest thing ever. You know?”

She pressed her lips together. Even from that distance, he could see that they were so tight there was a white line between them.

Whatever he had said had made her mad. It was funny—he was trying to not make her mad but obviously failing miserably.

“Aren’t you just a fountain of wisdom,” she said, and there was no doubt about the sarcasm in her voice this time.

He put the last piece of cake in his mouth and then chewed slowly.

“You going to eat that?” he asked, nodding at the piece in her lap and figuring that they might not be talking, but he still hated to see a good piece of cake go to waste.

“No,” she said softly.

“Mind if I do?” he asked. The cake, at least, was a neutral topic. Unless she got mad at him for wanting the piece she’d just said she wasn’t going to eat.

“You ate that whole piece she gave you?” she asked, seeming interested in something about him for the first time since he’d walked in.

“I sure did. I don’t get cake very often, so I’m gonna savor every bite and eat as much as I can.

” That wasn’t entirely true. If Miss Mattie tried to shove the entire cake at him, he wouldn’t eat it all in one sitting.

But since her cake was already cut and she wasn’t eating it, he wasn’t going to sit there and pretend he didn’t want it.

“I guess I don’t,” she said, and to his surprise, she got up and walked her plate over, handing it to him.

He took it, holding onto it for just a moment while he looked up, the light still bright enough that he could look into her eyes. “Thank you, ma’am.”

“Ma’am. I’m not old enough to be a ma’am.” She rolled her eyes and removed her hand from the plate, walking back over to the rocking chair. He half expected her to go back inside.

“Now me being polite has offended you.”

“‘Ma’am’ is for old ladies.”

“You’re not a young teenager anymore. You’re not in your twenties either.”

“Don’t you know it’s impolite to talk about a lady’s age?”

“You graduated with me. I know exactly how old you are. Am I supposed to pretend I don’t?” he asked before he slid his fork into her cake and put half the piece in his mouth. “Now, if I asked you how much you weigh, you’d have a right to attack me for that.”

“I wouldn’t attack you.” Her head jerked over toward him, and she looked truly offended.

“I don’t know. I guess if you say you didn’t, then you must not have, but it felt like an attack.” Like everything else she’d hurled at him since he’d walked through the door.

“I told you I’m sorry. I guess the move has just been that hard.”

“Coming back? To your gram’s?” He would have thought that would have been an easy move. Lots of good memories here. For him, anyway. There had to be a few for her at least.

“Yeah.”

She didn’t elaborate, and he chewed thoughtfully on the cake in his mouth.

He swallowed before he said, “I guess I don’t understand.

To me, there are a few bad memories in our past. A big tragedy, some embarrassing things, like that kiss we shared in the barn.

” He figured if that was what was bothering her, he might as well get it out in the open.

“Oh my goodness. Are you really going to rub that in?”

“It was my first kiss. I have fond memories of it.”

“It was my first kiss too, and I don’t have fond memories.”

“I think I’ve gotten better at kissing over the years, but I suppose I shouldn’t take offense if I wasn’t any good at that point, considering it was my first. I guess you must’ve just had natural talent.”

He’d wondered if it had been her first too.

He hadn’t thought they were going to talk about that tonight.

But there was something that smiled deep inside of him at the thought that they had shared their first kiss.

He supposed it should have been something special that he shared with someone who really meant something to him, but at that age, he hadn’t exactly been wise or smart or a combination of either one of those things.

In fact, he felt like the best word that could describe him would have been stupidly dumb.

Hopefully he’d gotten a little better as he’d aged.

She hadn’t said anything, and he didn’t press her any more on that. “I have so many good memories of this farm. We played hide-and-seek in the barn, we butchered chickens out back, and then your grandma cooked chicken for supper.”

“Oh my goodness. That was not a good memory!” Claire said with the first hint of humor in her voice he’d heard the entire time he’d been there. “Talk about wanting to throw up. I don’t think anybody ate a bite that night.”

“Me either. If you’re going to spend your Sunday butchering chickens, eat beef for supper.”

She laughed outright at that. It was a little bit of wisdom he’d gleaned from the farm. After spending the day around the stench of chicken, one absolutely could not abide the smell of anything that had to do with cooking chicken.

“All right. You might be right. So that’s not a good memory. But everything else is good.”

“Maybe for you,” she said, and then she didn’t elaborate.

“You can’t tell me that the bad outweighs the good.”

“It just seems bigger somehow. There’s more weight to it. More emotional baggage.”

“Isn’t that in your head?” He was a big believer that a person could control their thoughts.

Sure, he could focus on how his mom seemed to get worse and worse every day, how she wasn’t cooking hardly at all anymore and hadn’t baked in years, how his dad’s eyes looked worried when he looked at her, and he didn’t know how much longer she’d be with them.

Or he could cherish every day that she was there, share laughter whenever they could, and talk about and cherish all the memories of the good times.

He supposed it was just a matter of focusing on one or the other, at least for him anyway.

“My thoughts and feelings are part of me. Am I supposed to ignore them?”

“You don’t have to ignore them, but you can control them.”

“Spoken like a man,” she said dismissively.

Glancing over, she saw that he was done with his cake.

“I guess we can go inside. Surely the bread is in the oven by now.”

“I can leave. You can tell Miss Mattie that I needed to go. I don’t even have to go back inside. My bag’s sitting by the door, and I’ll just pick it up and I’ll be out of here.” He really didn’t want to make her more uncomfortable than what she obviously already was.

“No. I don’t want you to leave because of me. And I’m sure you’re looking forward to Grandma’s homemade bread just as much as I am. I’m sorry. I need to shake this and not let these things upset me. I guess it’s just been a rough year.”

He wanted to ask what had made her year rough, but she walked toward the door and moved so he could open it for her to walk in.

Holding both plates in one hand, with his thumb over the forks so they didn’t fall off the plates, he carried them in, closing the door behind him and making sure the screen door didn’t slam.

Claire didn’t look back for him or walk with him into the kitchen.

It was like she wanted to make sure there was distance between the two of them.

He couldn’t blame her for that. Whatever had happened in the last year, whatever she was fighting, whatever had made her feel like the memories from this town were almost unbearable, he felt bad for her.

A person needed to get a hold of their thoughts so they didn’t allow them to get them down.

He supposed she could argue with him if she wanted to, but that was how he had lived, and it had served him well.

He wished he could help her do the same.