Dear John(76)

I held out my hand, and his friendly tongue lapped against it before he turned and trotted down the steps again. His tail continued to swish back and forth as he headed around the house, and hearing the same call that had brought me to Lenoir, I left the porch and followed him. He dipped low, skimming his belly as he crawled beneath the lowest rung of the fence, and trotted into the barn.

As soon as the dog had disappeared, I saw Savannah emerge from the barn with rectangles of hay clamped beneath her arms. Horses from the pasture began to canter toward her as she tossed the hay into various troughs. I continued moving forward. She was brushing herself off and getting ready to head back into the barn when she inadvertently glanced my way. She took a step, looked again, and then froze in place.

For a long moment, neither of us moved. With her gaze locked on mine, I realized that it was wrong to have come, to have shown up without warning like this. I knew I should say something, anything, but nothing came to mind. All I could do was stare at her.

The memories came rushing back then, all of them, and I noticed how little she’d changed since I’d last seen her. Like me, she was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, smudged with dirt, and her cowboy boots were scuffed and worn. Somehow the hardscrabble look gave her an earthy appeal. Her hair was longer than I remembered, but she still had the slight gap between her front teeth that I had always loved.

“Savannah,” I finally said.

It wasn’t until I spoke that I realized she’d been as spellbound as I. All at once, she broke into a wide smile of innocent pleasure.

“John?” she cried.

“It’s good to see you again.”

She shook her head, as if trying to clear her mind, then squinted at me again. When at last she was convinced I wasn’t a mirage, she jogged to the gate and bounded through it. A moment later I could feel her arms around me, her body warm and welcoming. For a second it was as if nothing between us had changed at all. I wanted to hold her forever, but when she pulled back, the illusion was shattered, and we were strangers once more. Her expression held the question I’d been unable to answer on the long trip here.

“What are you doing here?”

I looked away. “I don’t know,” I said. “I just needed to come.”

Though she asked nothing, there was a mixture of curiosity and hesitation in her expression, as if she weren’t sure she wanted a further explanation. I took a small step backward, giving her space. I could see the shadowy outlines of the horses in the darkness and felt the events of the last few days coming back to me.

“My dad died,” I whispered, the words seeming to come from nowhere. “I just came from his funeral.”

She was quiet, her expression softening into the spontaneous compassion I’d once been so drawn to.

“Oh, John . . . I’m so sorry,” she murmured.

She drew near again, and there was an urgency to her embrace this time. When she pulled back, her face was half in shadow.

“How did it happen?” she asked, her hand lingering on mine.

I could hear the authentic sorrow in her voice, and I paused, unable to sum up the last couple of years into a single statement. “It’s a long story,” I said. In the glare of the barn lights, I thought I could see in her gaze traces of memories that she wanted to keep buried, a life from long ago. When she released my hand, I saw her wedding band glinting on her left finger. The sight of it doused me with a cold splash of reality.

She recognized my expression. “Yes,” she said, “I’m married.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, shaking my head. “I shouldn’t have come.”

Surprising me, she gave a small wave of her hand. “It’s okay,” she said, tilting her head. “How’d you find me?”

“It’s a small town.” I shrugged. “I asked someone.”

“And they just . . . told you?”

“I was persuasive.”

It was awkward, and neither of us seemed to know what to say. Part of me fully expected to continue standing there while we caught up like old friends on everything that had happened in our lives since we’d last seen each other. Another part of me expected her husband to pop out of the house any minute and either shake my hand or challenge me to fight. In the silence a horse neighed, and over her shoulder I could see four horses with their heads lowered into the trough, half in shadow, half in the circle of the barn’s light. Three other horses, including Midas, were staring at Savannah, as if wondering whether she’d forgotten them. Savannah finally motioned over her shoulder.

“I should get them going, too,” she said. “It’s their feeding time, and they’re getting antsy.”