1949/1952
The large package—about two feet wide, two feet deep, and a foot tall—sat on the sofa, wrapped in decorative red and white paper and adorned with a big white bow tied atop it. Lynn saw it as soon as she walked through the front door of Leonard’s house, and she felt an immediate swell of delight. She hadn’t thought he’d forgotten her birthday—he hadn’t in all the time she’d known him—but when he’d invited her over for supper tonight, he hadn’t mentioned the occasion.
“Is that for me?” she asked, knowing full well that it must be.
“Well, now, who else has a birthday today?” Leonard asked.
“Oh, probably lots of people,” Lynn said, taking off her coat as she moved into the room. A fire burned in the hearth, warming the room nicely, a welcome change from the chilly weather outside. Lynn dropped her coat onto the sofa and looked down at the gift. The wide ribbon climbing up all four sides of the box had been knotted together into many loops, making it look less like a bow and more like a flower.
“I guess this must be for one of those other people then,” Leonard teased as he followed her over to the sofa.
“Oh,” Lynn said, swatting him lightly on the chest, then turning to look directly at him. “Can I open it now?” she asked.
“Maybe you should wait until after supper,” Leonard suggested. “Or maybe I should just hold onto it until next year.” Lynn stuck out her lower lip in a version of a hangdog pout, and Leonard rolled his eyes. “If I’m gonna have to look at that face all night,” he said, “then you might as well go ahead and open it.”
Lynn clapped her hands together happily and turned toward the sofa. As she reached for the package, she saw an envelope tucked beneath the bow. Picking it up, she read her name, written across the front in Leonard’s barely legible scribble. She lifted the flap of the envelope and pulled out the card. On the front, she saw a drawing of a horse trotting around with a sign around its neck that read, “Happy Birthday.” Below was printed, “Here’s Hoping That This Birthday’s a Dilly.” She opened the card to find a younger version of the horse on the front, with long, feminine eyelashes, along with the words, “For a Pretty Mare Who Still Looks Like a Filly.” At the bottom, Leonard had scrawled, “Dear Lynn, Your joy and radiance are an inspiration.” The sentiments touched her. She leaned in, pushed herself onto her toes, and kissed Leonard on the cheek.
“I’m not sure how much of an inspiration or a filly I am,” she said, “but this old gray mare appreciates you saying so.” At forty-five, lines had begun to show around her mouth and eyes, and streaks of silver had started to appear in her hair. Until recently, she’d been plucking out the telltale strands, but as they’d become more numerous, she’d decided to simply wear her years with pride. After all, she’d earned them.
“You’re hardly old and barely gray, and still pretty,” Leonard said, “and you really do inspire people.”
Lynn shrugged. “I don’t know about that,” she said, “but I’m glad you think so.” She reached out and hugged him. Leonard didn’t have to say so, but Lynn knew that with his words he referred to her life after she’d lost Phil. It had been difficult at first and sometimes still was. She’d loved Phil and they’d been together a long time. But three years after his death, the hardest thing to accept had become the manner in which he had died: gunned down on a battlefield thousands of miles from home. She tried to take comfort in knowing that his loss at the Battle of Portmagee had helped liberate Ireland from the Nazis, which in turn had allowed the Allies to retake all of Great Britain. But war still raged around the globe, and sometimes the futility and senselessness of Phil’s death troubled her.
As she so often had, though, Lynn let go of all of that right now. “Do you know what would really inspire me right now?” she asked Leonard.
“Opening your present?” he said.
“Good idea,” Lynn said. She set the card down on the arm of the sofa and reached for the box. As she attempted to slide the ribbon from around it, the box moved beneath her efforts. “It’s heavy,” she said, feeling its weight. “What could this possibly be?” She pulled the ribbon free, then found a flap and tore off the wrapping paper. Printing on the side of the cardboard box announced that it held Green Giant Tender Peas. “You got me cans of peas?” she said.
Leonard shrugged. “If you don’t like them…”
Confused, Lynn opened the box. Inside, she saw no canned vegetables, but instead, a thicket of balled-up newspaper pages. “What…?” she said, and started unpacking the paper, dropping it onto the floor. When she’d removed most of it, she spied a pair of red bricks in the bottom of the box. Between them lay another gift-wrapped package, this one smaller than her hand. “What’s this?” she said, picking it up and testing its weight. It felt very light.
“Must be individually packed peas,” Leonard said with a smile.
“Uh huh,” Lynn said. She ripped off the paper to uncover a flat, dark blue box, with the word Wintanna’s scripted across the top in silver letters. She’d never heard the name before. “What is this?” she asked again.
“For goodness sake,” Leonard said, “open it and find out.”
Lynn pulled off the cover to expose a layer of cottony material underneath. Lifting that up, she found a gold bracelet, into which half a dozen oval red stones had been set all around it. “Oh my,” she said, overwhelmed. “This is beautiful.” She slid her fingers beneath the bracelet and picked it up. She looked at it more closely, setting the box down atop her birthday card.
“Those are garnets,” Leonard said.
“My birthstone,” she replied, peering up at him with a smile. “And yours.” Leonard’s birthday also fell within January, she knew, just ten days after her own. He smiled back at her, obviously pleased by her reaction. Lynn owned almost no jewelry. Other than her wedding band, and Phil’s—both of which her mother had given to them—she had a locket with a broken chain that Mama had left to her, and a pair of colored-glass earrings she’d received for her eighteenth birthday from Auntie Louise. Certainly she had never possessed anything as lovely as what Leonard had just given her. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Well, you could say, ‘Thank you,’ ” Leonard said.
“Thank you,” Lynn said, and she stepped forward and embraced him. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” She squeezed him tightly, grateful for his many years of friendship and support, most especially in the time since Phil had died.
Pulling her face from his shoulder, she peered up at him. Leonard had lived in Hayden for nearly seventeen years now, and he looked as though he’d hardly aged at all. The lines on his face had become a bit more defined, maybe, but his dark hair hadn’t grayed at all. And even at almost fifty-nine years old, he appeared as fit as when he’d arrived in town at forty-two. Better, in fact, since he’d shown up on Tindal’s Lane with a limp, one arm in a sling, and a gash on his face.
Before she made the conscious decision to do it, Lynn raised up onto her tiptoes and pressed her lips to Leonard’s. She closed her eyes and felt the soft heat of his mouth. For one breathtaking moment, he kissed her back, but then she felt his hands at her waist, gently but firmly pushing her away.
“Lynn,” he said.
“Leonard,” she replied, and she pushed forward to kiss him again. He stopped her and then stepped back. “Leonard, I thought…” she began, and then realized that she didn’t know what she thought. She only knew what she felt, and what she believed—or had believed—that Leonard felt as well.
“It was just a gift,” he said.
“What?” she said, shocked. She opened her hand to look at the bracelet. “This isn’t about my birthday present. It’s about us.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Leonard said. “I figured you might’ve thought that I…that me giving you jewelry meant…I don’t know.”
“I think it means you care about me,” Lynn said. “I think it means you like trying to make me happy.”
“I do, of course,” he said. “But I didn’t mean for you to kiss me.”
“Leonard,” she said, setting the bracelet back down into its box. “I didn’t kiss you like that because you gave me jewelry. I kissed you because I wanted to.” She considered saying more, and then she did. “I’ve wanted to for a long while now. This just seemed like the right time.”
“Lynn,” Leonard said slowly, “I don’t think we should.”
“For Heaven’s sake, why not?” she asked, but she thought she knew why: Phil. Lynn sighed, then reached down and moved the large box onto the floor. As she sat down on one end of the sofa, she pointed to the other end. “Sit with me,” she said.
Leonard moved her coat onto a chair and then took a seat on the sofa, as far from her as possible, she couldn’t help but notice. “My daddy passed on when I was thirteen,” she said. “It was just me and my mama after that. Well, there were also a couple of other relatives who we hardly ever saw. But mostly it was just me and Mama. And then when I got married, she was left all alone.” Lynn paused, trying to find the right words to tell Leonard what she needed to tell him. “Even before I left, though, Mama was alone. She missed Pa something terrible.” Lynn remembered Leonard’s own family situation, which he’d once talked about, and she asked, “Wasn’t that the way with your pa, after your mama passed?”
Leonard had no family anymore, Lynn recalled, and he spoke about his parents only rarely. Once, a long time ago, he’d told her and Phil that his ma had passed on while bringing him into the world, and that his pa had lived on for twenty-five years until a bad sickness had taken him. “My father,” Leonard said, looking down at this hands, “he eventually remarried, but yeah, he missed my mother for the rest of his life.”
“At least your pa lived his life, though,” Lynn said. “My mama, she done good raising me by herself, but she wasn’t happy, and she was pretty much ready to let go of life for fifteen years, until she finally did.” She shifted herself closer to Leonard on the sofa and put her hand atop his. “I don’t want to be like that,” she said. “I don’t know how much time God’s gonna give me on this Earth, but however long it is, I want to be happy.”
“I think that’s a good attitude,” Leonard said. “I really do.” He took his hand from beneath hers, stood up, and paced over to the fireplace. There, he took hold of an iron poker and stabbed at the logs crackling in the hearth, accomplishing very little other than moving away from her.
“What about you, Leonard?” she asked.
“I want you to be happy too,” he said.
Lynn got up and walked over to him. She squatted down beside him and took the poker from his hand. “I mean, do you want to be happy?” She placed the poker with the other fireplace tools.
“Of course I do,” he said, but again he looked away from her as he spoke. “And I am happy.”
“That’s good,” Lynn said, although she didn’t know if she truly believed it. “I’m glad if you’re happy, but wouldn’t you be happier with me?”
“I just…” Leonard said, and then he fled from her again, walking back over to stand by the sofa. “It’s not right,” he finished.
“Beause of Phil?” she said. Lynn understood Leonard’s loyalty, but if she could move on in her life, why couldn’t he? “Phil loved me and you were his best friend. Don’t you think he’s looking down from Heaven and hoping that we take care of each other?”
“Take care of each other, sure,” Leonard said. “I do try to look out for you, you know.”
“I know,” Lynn said. She stood up, and the fire felt warm on her legs. “But I can’t believe you want me to keep being alone.”
“I didn’t say that,” Leonard told her. “I can understand you wanting to find love again, and I hope you do.”
“Thank you,” Lynn said. “That’s good to…” She didn’t finish her sentence as something occurred to her. Leonard didn’t want to become involved with her because she’d been married to Phil, but he didn’t mind if another man did? That didn’t make sense to her, unless—
She walked back across the room to stand in front of Leonard again. “This isn’t about Phil, is it?” she asked.
“It’s about you being Phil’s widow,” Leonard said, but she could see now that he wasn’t telling her the truth. Was he trying to spare her feelings, she wondered? Did he not care for her the way she cared for him…the way she thought he cared for her?
“Leonard,” she said, “what’s going on? Why don’t you want to be with me?”
“I told you, Phil—” he said, but she interrupted him.
“I know what you told me,” Lynn said. “But I want you to tell me the real reason.” She didn’t understand. She knew that Leonard loved her. Everybody in town knew it and knew that she loved him. How could it be otherwise, considering how much of their time they spent with each other? Some folks even believed that they’d already become a couple, she knew, even though they were too polite to say anything. But just last week, Daisy Palmer had asked her if Lynn thought that she and Leonard would ever get married.
Lynn took Leonard’s hands in her own and gazed up at him, at his beautiful blue eyes. “Tell me,” she said.
“It’s…” Leonard started, and for an instant, Lynn thought he would confess to whatever truly stopped him from taking her in his arms right now. But then he said, “It’s Phil.”
Lynn stared at him for a few seconds, disappointed, unsure of how to react or of what she should do. She couldn’t force Leonard to reveal to her what he was hiding—and she was convinced that he was hiding something. Did he simply not care for her? Did he not love her as she loved him? But she knew that he did. She could see it, she could feel it.
“All right,” she said at last, letting go of his hands. “All right.” She walked past Leonard and over to the chair where he had placed her coat. She picked it up and began putting it on.
“What’re you doing?” Leonard asked.
“I think I’m just gonna go home,” Lynn said.
“But we were gonna have supper,” he said. “Your birthday…”
“I know,” Lynn said. “I just don’t feel well right now.” She walked past him again, this time heading for the front door.
“Lynn,” he called after her, and she turned back to face him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to ruin your birthday.”
“You didn’t ruin it,” she said, forcing half a smile onto her face. “I just don’t feel well.”
“What about your bracelet?” he asked, pointing to where it sat in its box atop the arm of the sofa.
“You know, I don’t think I can accept that,” she said. “I appreciate it, it’s really lovely, but I just can’t accept it.” Leonard said nothing, and the silence between them began to feel awkward. Lynn looked away from him and over at the bracelet. Below it, she saw the card he’d given her. “I will take this, though,” she said, walking around the back of the sofa to get the card, then holding it up for him to see. “Thank you for this,” she said.
When she returned to the front door, she didn’t stop, but opened it and walked out into the cool night. From behind her, she heard Leonard say, “Let me at least give you a ride home.”
“I have my truck,” Lynn said over her shoulder. “I don’t need a ride.”
She climbed into her Chevrolet pickup and started the engine. She didn’t want to, but she couldn’t stop from looking back toward Leonard’s house. He stood in the doorway, and when he saw her look in his direction, he said, “Happy Birthday,” though she could only read the words on his lips and not hear them through the closed driver’s-side window.
As she pulled away and drove toward home, she couldn’t believe what had happened tonight. She had harbored feelings for Leonard for a long time, but she’d resisted doing anything about it because…well, partially because of Phil. But she’d also wanted to wait for just the right time. Tonight, when he’d given her the bracelet, the setting had seemed perfect.
Obviously she’d been wrong.
Rolling along on Church Street, Lynn realized that she didn’t know what would happen next. Right now, though, it appeared as though she and Leonard would never be more than friends, and she might never know why. That understanding saddened her, almost as though she’d suffered another loss of a loved one.
At least he still wants to be friends, Lynn thought. That much seemed clear. And although she would rather have much more than that with Leonard, she knew that she would accept it. No matter what, she would take whatever small part of himself that Leonard was willing to give her.