Misty wore a blue dress and pearls, her hair pulled up, cheekbones high beneath feline eyes that seemed amused as she glanced his way.
“The bank robber himself,” she said.
“You tell your mother who you were dining with tonight?”
“She told me to watch my purse.”
He trailed her into Lacey’s Diner where they took a booth at the back. He looked around at the green leather stools, the chrome counter and checkerboard floor.
“I can’t decide if this place is different or I am,” he said.
“New light fittings,” she said.
“The place then.”
Lacey herself came over, told him it was nice to see him, though did not back her words with a smile.
He ordered a banana split, which Misty rolled her eyes at as she picked at low country shrimps and grits.
He stole looks at her face, thinner now. Her skin paler.
She told him how she had dropped out of college, how life takes turns you do not see coming.
Patch told her he was sorry.
She told him her father died a year before while playing golf beside the Ozarks. That his heart had not been as strong as his principles, his belief in a greater good sometimes only he could see.
Patch told her he was sorry.
“I only moved back to Monta Clare recently. Spend some time with my mother. Sometimes it feels like you can slow life a little in this town,” she said.
“And that’s what you want?”
“It rushes by so quick.”
She settled the check before he could, and outside the sun had fallen and the sky glowed ink.
“Good night,” she said, and he didn’t catch up with her till she reached the top of Main Street. Before the silhouette of the St. Francois range, the outline shorn from a horizon he once longed to cross. A new clock fixed to the old building that housed the law offices of Jasper and Coates told him they had sat only an hour.
“I’m sorry,” he called.
Misty stopped, her back to him. Beside him the window lights of Monta Clare Books pushed jackets he did not know.
She turned. “This is how you always wanted it, right. Me on my side of the street.”
Patch walked out into the middle of the road.
“Why are you sorry?” she said.
“Because I left you.”
“You think I regret that night?”
He wondered how she could not. He wondered how she could not regret each skeletal moment she wasted on him, each time she held his empty hand, fixed him inedible food, and joined his search for a dead girl.
“My mother…when she saw you were back in town. When she heard I was meeting you tonight. She told me what my father did.”
Behind her was a new store that sold ironstone bowls, earthenware plates, and metal skillets. He saw organic dishcloths and oatmeal linen and imagined the couples that came there seeking to upgrade after their starter sets. Slowly making the exchange from temporary, from light to substance. He knew then that what he had taken from the Meyers was more than money, more than a chance to give his mother what she chased.
She stepped down onto the road.
“Tell me you’re married now,” he said, because she wore a plain band on her ring finger. “Tell me you live up in the hills, and you take morning walks with your Lab. Your husband is kind and decent. You’ve got two children, but one day you’ll go back to school and—”
“My life is just fine, Patch. But my mother thought telling me would make me see you.”
“Did it?”
“I always knew I couldn’t compete.”
“It wasn’t a—”
“You’re right. It was a shutout. I see that now.”
“I mean, technically we both scored that night.”
She finally broke a smile. “Ugh. How can I stay mad at the boy that saved my life?”