“How much for two packs of chocolate chip?”
He wanted to run, but it was too late. His new friends were already examining the cookies she’d baked that morning while he slept. One of them leaned forward and tickled his son’s belly. Another turned back to him.
“Hey, Jimbo, come on over here. You haven’t tasted anything until you’ve tried this little girl’s cookies.”
Amber had looked up at him, laughter dancing in eyes as blue as a mountain sky. He could see her waiting for the moment he would tell them she was his wife, and he knew she was savoring the humor of the situation as she savored everything about their life together.
“Yeah, uh . . . okay.”
Her smile remained bright as he walked toward her. He remembered that her light brown hair had been pulled into a ponytail with a blue rubber band, and that she’d had a wet spot on the shoulder of his old plaid shirt where Cal must have drooled.
“I’ll take the chocolate chip.”
Her head tilted quizzically to the side—You goof, when are you gonna tell ’em?—but she continued to smile, continued to enjoy the joke.
“Chocolate chip,” he repeated.
Her faith in his honor was infinite. She waited patiently. Smiled. He slipped his hand in his pocket and drew out a quarter.
Only then, when he held out the money, did she understand. He wasn’t going to acknowledge her. It was as if someone had turned out a light inside her, extinguishing her laughter and joy, her faith in him. Hurt and bewilderment clouded her features. For a moment she only stared at him, but, finally, she reached into the buggy for the cookies and held them out with a trembling hand.
He tossed her the quarter, one of four she’d given him that morning before he’d left for class. He tossed her the quarter as if she were nothing more than a street corner beggar, then he laughed at something one of the other guys said and turned away. He didn’t look at her, just walked away while the cookies burned in his hand like pieces of silver.
It had happened more than three decades ago, but now his eyes were stinging. He set the coffee on the counter. “What I did was wrong. I’ve never forgotten it, never forgiven myself, and I’m sorry.”
“Apology accepted.” She flicked on the faucet, putting a deliberate end to the subject. When she turned off the water, she said, “Why did Cal have to marry her? Why couldn’t they just have lived together long enough for him to see what kind of woman she is?”
But he didn’t want to talk about Cal and his cold wife. “You should have spit in my face.”
“I just wish we’d met Jane ahead of time.”
He hated her easy dismissal of his wrong, especially when he suspected she hadn’t dismissed it at all. “I want you back, Lynn.”
“Maybe we could have changed his mind.”
“Stop it! I don’t want to talk about them! I want to talk about us, and I want you back.”
She finally turned, and she gazed at him out of blue, mountain sky eyes that revealed nothing. “I never left.”
“The way you were. That’s what I want.”
“You are in a mood tonight.”
To his dismay, he could feel his throat closing up, but even so, he couldn’t be silent. “I want it the way it was at the beginning. I want you silly and funny, imitating the landlady and teasing me for being too serious. I want dandelions back on the dinner table, and fatback and beans. I want you to start giggling so hard you wet your pants, and when I walk in the door, I want you to throw yourself at me like you used to.”
Her forehead crinkled with concern. She walked over to him and rested her hand on his arm in the same comfort-place she’d been touching for nearly four decades. “I can’t make you young again, Jim. And I can’t give you back Jamie and Cherry and everything the way it used to be.”
“I know that, dammit!” He shook her off, rejecting her pity and her suffocating, never-ending kindness. “This isn’t about them. What happened has made me realize I don’t like the way things are. I don’t like the way you’ve changed.”
“You’ve had a hard day. I’ll give you a back rub.”
As always, her sweetness made him feel guilty, unworthy, and mean. It was the meanness that had been driving him lately and telling him to push her so far, to hurt her so badly, that he’d destroy the icy reserve and find the girl he’d thrown away.
Maybe if he gave her some evidence that he wasn’t as bad as he knew himself to be, she’d soften. “I’ve never screwed around on you.”
“I’m glad to know that.”
He couldn’t let it go at that, giving her only the part of the truth he wanted her to see. “I had chances, but I never went all the way. Once I got myself right to the motel door—”