32
HE PROBABLY SHOULD HAVE let Mom make a bigger deal out of his graduation. Henry took his spot with the band mere hours after receiving his diploma. Mom, Grandma, Margaret, and Mayfair had all driven up to watch him that morning. They must have gotten up really early to make it in time. When he told them he wasn’t coming home right away, it was clear they were disappointed. Or maybe mad, if the look on his mother’s face was any indication. Grandma patted him and told him not to stay away too long. Mayfair sighed. And Margaret looked at him as if he’d kicked that spotted dog of hers.
But seriously. How could he bail on the guys in the band? They’d come to count on him, and he was making decent money. He told them all he’d call every day—well, at least every other—and he’d be home in a week or so. He didn’t add that he wasn’t sure he’d stay even then. If Mort offered him a permanent position, he’d be a fool to pass up a chance like that. The women in his life hadn’t liked him running moonshine, but playing music—that was so respectable his own father had done it. Well, not for money, but still.
Of course, it would be hard to date Margaret. And he did want to date her. He was surprised by how much he’d missed having her around the last few months. Henry groaned and started tuning his fiddle. Why wasn’t anything ever easy?
Henry poured his frustration and confusion into the music, and by the first break he felt wrung out. And not nearly as much better as he wanted to. He settled his fiddle into its case and stretched his arms. That’s when he saw her. Margaret. Sitting at a table off to the side with a soda in front of her. She was watching him intently, and it gave him a start. Like he’d somehow conjured her up with his wishing. He ambled over to the table and slid into a chair, trying to act like he wasn’t shocked.
“Well, hey, pretty lady.”
Margaret gave him a sharp look. “You’re not making fun of me, are you?”
Henry shifted. “No. Why would you think that?”
“It’s not often I’m accused of being pretty.”
Henry laughed, then saw she was serious. “Are you kidding? Of course you’re pretty.” He reached out to touch her cheek. “I can’t get enough of your freckles, and you’ve got the cutest nose.” His eyes drifted downward. “Plus, you—uh—well, trust me, you’re pretty.”
Margaret sighed. “Then why don’t you want to come home?”
Henry wrinkled his brow. “What’s one got to do with the other?”
“If I’m pretty enough, and you want to keep seeing me—which I kind of thought you did—then I’d expect you’d want to be where I am.” Her cheeks burned scarlet, and she stared at her hands gripping the sweating soda glass.
“Hey.” Henry reached out and tilted her face toward him. “I do want to be where you are, but this is where I can make money with my fiddle. And if I’m going to, you know, plan for the future, I need to make some money. We can still see each other.” He tried a crooked grin. “Just maybe not as often as we’d like.”
Unshed tears gleamed in Margaret’s eyes. “I thought you wanted to come back and run the farm. I thought you got a degree in agriculture so you could do that.”
“That’s what I thought, too, but now that I have a spot in the band, well, it’s really cool to be able to earn a living doing something I love this much.”
“Is it a living? Really and truly?”
Henry slid back in his chair. “Well, maybe not yet, but if things keep going my way, it could be.” He sat up straighter. “And you could move here. You could get a job, easy. Maybe even waitressing here.”
Margaret looked at him sideways. “And where would I live? And what about Mayfair?”
It was on the tip of Henry’s tongue to suggest she live with him. He’d known lots of guys who shacked up with their girls through college. But he caught himself. Margaret wasn’t like that.
“Yeah, I guess I hadn’t thought that one through.” He heard the guys messing around on the stage again. “Hey, I’ve got to get back to it. Will you still be here when we finish?”
“No. I’m catching the late bus home. Your mom didn’t want to leave me behind, but Emily said she thought it would be all right.”
Henry felt desperation rise in him, but he wasn’t sure why. He wanted to grab Margaret and insist she stay. He wanted to offer to drive her all those hours home after his set was done. He wanted . . . well, what he wanted was clearly more than he would get. He leaned over and gave her a lingering kiss. She started to pull away in the crowded room and then seemed to decide it didn’t matter who was watching. When Henry released her, Margaret kept her eyes closed for another beat. Then she opened them and looked straight at him.
“I hope I’ll see you soon, Henry Phillips.”
And with that she was gone, just a half empty glass of soda to mark where she’d been. He wished he’d said something else, but he couldn’t think what it might have been.
“What’s the matter, Margaret?” Mayfair slipped up beside her sister and took the basket of eggs from her hand. The chickens were still laying well, even as the summer days grew warm. Mayfair wiped the eggs down one by one with a damp cloth and slipped them into an empty carton.
“Why do you think anything is wrong?”
“You have that faraway look in your eyes, like you can see something that doesn’t fit.”
Margaret sometimes found Mayfair’s insights unsettling, but at the moment, she was glad her sister was so sensitive. “I thought maybe Henry liked me—I mean, really liked me. He’s been writing and calling, but he doesn’t seem to care whether or not he ever comes back to the farm. I’m beginning to think he likes that fiddle more than this place . . . or me.”
Mayfair closed a full carton and reached for an empty one. “I don’t think he does.”
“Well, he sure acts like it.”
“Don’t you sometimes act one way when you feel another?”
Margaret, busy wiping down the counter where she’d finished with the day’s milking, stilled her hands. Honestly, that’s how her life felt most of the time, that one thing was happening inside while she tried to show something else to the world. “I suppose,” she said slowly, turning to consider her sister. “So how do I know how Henry really feels?”
“Ask him.” Mayfair took the empty basket and tucked it away in the closet near the front door. “I’m going to write some letters.”
That girl and her letters to orphans. Margaret found herself staring vacantly into space again. Ask him. Well now, maybe she should.
As soon as Margaret dropped the letter to Henry through the slot at the post office, she wished she could reach in and take it back. She was an idiot. What woman wrote to a man and asked him to declare his intentions? That’s not quite how she’d phrased it, but it was basically what she was asking him to do. She leaned her forehead against the cool metal of the box set into the wall and wondered if Jeanine would give her the letter back. The postmistress took her job very seriously, though, and anyway, Margaret was too embarrassed to ask.
“You need some stamps or anything?”
Margaret jumped and saw Jeanine watching her from behind a pair of half glasses. “No, ma’am. Thank you.”
Jeanine blinked once and resumed sorting the letters in her hand. “All right, then.” She shot Margaret another look over the top of her glasses, and Margaret took it to mean she’d lingered long enough. She gave a halfhearted wave and walked out to her car. She had a few things to pick up for Emily before she headed home.
“Let the waiting begin,” she said to no one. Or maybe to God. Somehow she felt more and more like He might actually be listening.