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My first day at Springfield High was completely different from my first day at Valencia, or any of the other schools I’d attended. For one thing, Ron drove me to school and got me registered. I carried my real birth certificate and all my transcripts and presented them to the secretary with a smile. Registration didn’t take long.
When Ron left me, he hugged me goodbye. “Now, you be sure to call me if you have any problems. I’ll be right there.” I believed him.
Since I was starting at the beginning of the school year, there were plenty of other transfer students, and maps to the classrooms were included in my registration packet. I didn’t get lost once. My cousin Connor, who was also a senior, looked out for me. I wasn’t used to having a cousin, but I liked him.
I understood right away that my classes were going to be harder than the ones in Valencia. With Ron and Connor to help me catch up, I thought I would do all right. That first day was really long, though. I missed my friends at Valencia High, especially Francie and Reese, and I struggled not to cry.
I got through it, though, and things got better. It helped that I signed up for the girls’ cross-country team after school that first day. I was sort of a celebrity among that group. I hoped it was more because I had run the Boston Marathon than that the story of the kidnapping was on the cover of the local newspaper every day.
That evening, Ron introduced me to his girlfriend, Rose. We met at a local pizza place. I could tell he was nervous, because he talked nonstop all the way to the restaurant. Rose was the bookkeeper for Ron’s car dealership, so they saw each other every day. They had been dating for five years, but Ron hadn’t wanted to get married until he found me. When he introduced us, instead of shaking my hand, Rose enfolded me in a hug that reminded me of the hugs Laney gave. I’d missed knowing my real mom, but I could tell right away that Rose was going to work out fine.
Rose was my savior those first months. She hadn’t known me before, so I didn’t have to worry that I had forgotten something I should have remembered. She didn’t try to be a mom to me, but she was a better mom than anybody I could remember, other than Laney. Rose and Ron set their wedding date for after I was in college so he could dedicate all his time to me in my last year of high school.
* * *
SINCE MOVING IN WITH Ron, I rarely thought about Bud. I was glad that his dangerous presence was gone from my life, but I felt sick to my stomach every time I thought about Sue. I often dreamed I heard her voice calling, “Faye, are you all right?” I tried hard to answer, but for some reason, I couldn’t get the words out. And then I would wake up, knowing that I hadn’t really heard a thing.
I didn’t read any of the letters she sent me, and I forced my mind away when I found myself wondering what she would think of whatever I was doing. I couldn’t get past the fact that she had kidnapped me from a good life and forced me into a shit one, and the shit one had eaten my entire childhood.
Beneath the fury about the kidnapping, however, part of me was enraged that she had abandoned me to my real dad. She’d forced me to come home from Boston. If she had really loved me, wouldn’t she have fought for me again? I knew that was crazy thinking, so I tried to banish her from my mind.
One evening in October, Ron answered a phone call. I was in the living room, writing an essay on the French Revolution. Ron’s strained tone made my ears perk up. He was talking quietly, but I could tell the call had something to do with me.
Please, I thought. Please don’t let it be anything bad. I can’t take another bad thing.
Eventually, Ron came into the room. His serious expression made me put down my pen and prepare myself for the worst. “Faye,” he said. “I have some news about Sue and Bud. Do you want to hear it?”
I nodded, my heart thumping hard.
He reached over to hold my hand. “They decided to plead guilty. You won’t have to testify in court.” He smiled. “Honey, it’s over. We can get on with our lives now.”
Guilty. Of course they were guilty. Everyone knew it. Sue had given a full confession when she was first arrested, though later she’d claimed that her confession had been coerced. Our lawyer had warned us to be prepared for a not guilty plea. In that case, I would be the star witness against them.
Ron cleared his throat. “Sue sent you a message. She said to tell you that they were pleading guilty because they didn’t want to put you through any more pain. And that she was sorry.”
Writing my essay was impossible after that. Ron probably wanted me to say that I forgave them, but I didn’t say a word. I couldn’t speak either of their names out loud without wanting to spit. And I couldn’t think about forgiveness.
Ron must have had some inkling of what was going on with me, because he insisted that I visit Sue at least once to hear her story. He didn’t say a word about visiting Bud, though, and I didn’t, either. To get it over with, just after Thanksgiving, we drove over to the women’s prison in Framingham. It was strange to return to one of the towns I’d run through the previous spring. I tried to think about the race and not about what was going to happen in the next few hours.
* * *
SUE WAITED FOR ME IN the prison’s visiting room, dressed in a red prison jumpsuit. I hardly recognized her. She’d lost a lot of weight and was rail thin. Her once-brown hair had turned gray. My mother for a dozen years, and I might not have known her walking down the street. I tried to think of her as a stranger and myself as a volunteer do-gooder.
But she recognized me and beamed when I walked in. A light hug was as much as I could tolerate. I introduced her to my dad, and we all chatted for a while. I’d come prepared with a list of questions.
“Why did you take me?” The question had never left my mind since the day they’d been arrested.
Sue glanced down at the table and rubbed tears from her eyes. When she looked up, she said, “I need to tell you this story for both our sakes. Will you allow me to tell it in my own way?”
I nodded, feeling as if my heart had been replaced by granite.
“Bud and I moved around a lot in those days. You know about our Faye?” She didn’t wait for me to reply but talked over her own words. “Of course you do. She’d died two years before, when she was eighteen months old. I was at work, and Bud accidentally left her alone in the bathtub for just a few seconds. She drowned.”
Her voice was flat, a monotone. “I was a weak woman. I wanted to turn him in to the police, but I knew it was my fault for leaving her in his care when he’d been drinking. After she died, he promised to never take another drink if I would stay with him. And I did, against my better judgment. Of course, eventually he started drinking again, and you know how that turned out. Anyway, we buried Faye in the woods behind the house where we were living in Arkansas, and we headed out. I was so depressed, so sad, that I could barely talk or think. Bud took care of me, worked steadily, and didn’t drink. But I felt like my life was over.”
She stopped and asked me to bring her a drink from the fountain on the other side of the room. I carried a cup of water to her, and she took a sip.
“We’d stop at a place long enough to get a little money together and then move on. That April, we were in western Massachusetts, heading to upstate New York. We’d camped alongside the road the night before, but we didn’t sleep well because it was so cold. It had snowed, so we started out before dawn. Within a couple of miles, we came upon a wreck.”
She cleared her throat. “The fancy new Cadillac was smashed into a tree. We didn’t see any other cars, so we figured it had slid on the ice during the storm. We jumped out to look in the windows. The driver’s face was covered in blood, and he was slumped over the steering wheel.” She glanced at Ron and shuddered. “And there was a pretty woman sprawled in an odd position across the front seat. Neither of them appeared to be breathing.”
She took a sip of water and gave me a sad look. “In the back seat, a child was crying. Her face was bruised, and she had a small cut on her forehead, but mostly she looked scared and lonely. When she called out, ‘Mama,’ and held out her arms to me, I opened the door and grabbed her up, and I fell in love. That little girl was you, of course.” Her eyes squinched up as she tried to keep herself from crying. I knew that look so well.
I didn’t remember any of this, except in the way it had haunted my nightmares for so many years. “Is that when you decided to keep me?”
She shook her head. “I knew right then I wanted you, because I could feel the hurt in my chest start to ease up when I held you on my lap. I was convinced that God had led you to me. But Bud argued with me. He said your parents might not be dead, and even if they were, you probably had relatives who would want you. He took that letter about the Boston Marathon so we could get in touch with your family if we needed to.”
I grunted. “Or if you wanted to collect a ransom.” I wasn’t going to be taken in by this fake emotion. No way.
She glanced at Ron and shook her head. “That was never the plan, although we might have asked for a reward for rescuing you. We decided to drive into town and call the law so somebody would come and check on your parents. And we would leave you somewhere that you’d be safe.” She paused, probably hoping for a kind word from me. When one didn’t come, she continued. “So anyway, we took you to a restaurant to get you some breakfast, and we were going to leave you there. But after you ate a few bites, you fell sound asleep, curled up in my lap. I was in heaven.”
I bit my lip, holding back the angry words I wanted to spew at her. I needed to hear her story through to the end before I said any more.
“Honey, I just couldn’t leave you. I thought I heard God’s voice telling me to take you, so I grabbed you up and carried you to our truck.” Her tone held satisfaction as well as pain.
She paused and then continued in a soft voice. “I know now it wasn’t really God’s voice, but mine. I wanted you, so I pretended it was God speaking to me.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. She sounded proud of what she’d done, not ashamed. But I didn’t want to get into it with her. We only had an hour, and I had more questions.
“Why did you tell me I had epilepsy?”
I watched her face crumple. She turned toward the wall, and harsh sobs came from deep inside. I reached out to pat her leg to try and soothe her, but then I remembered who she was and where I was, and I dropped my arm. Whatever was going on for her, she deserved it. Ron and I glanced at each other, but we let her cry.
When she had calmed down a little, I repeated, in a hard voice, “Why did you do it?”
“We had just gotten you, and—”
“Just kidnapped me, you mean.”
She sighed. “Yes, that’s right. We’d only had you for a week or so, and I needed you to call me Mommy so people wouldn’t be suspicious. You wouldn’t do it. You kept screaming for your real mom, saying, ‘You’re not my mommy,’ over and over, and I was afraid the neighbors would call the police. So I had to make up some reason for you being so out of control.”
She rubbed her nose with a handkerchief. “I had a cousin with epilepsy, and she got away with anything even when she wasn’t falling down with fits. So I took you to a doctor and told him you were having seizures. He was just a country doctor and couldn’t imagine that anybody would make up something like that. He gave me a prescription for phenobarbital.” She smiled at me. “I knew you didn’t really have epilepsy, so I didn’t give you that medicine except for a short while. It made you really sleepy, and that was helpful, because you weren’t screaming all the time. But after a while, when you were willing to call me Mommy, I switched it to aspirin. I didn’t think it would do you any harm.”
“But why did you keep telling me I had epilepsy, even after I started calling you Mommy?”
She shrugged. “You kept remembering things for a long time, and I needed to have some reason for your memories. So I told people you had epilepsy and had an overactive imagination.”
I stood up on legs that wouldn’t bend and staggered to the other side of the room. I wasn’t sure I could breathe the same air as that woman. I wanted to kick the wall until I broke my foot, or slam my fist through the window over and over until I was cut and bleeding and my outside matched my insides. Pacing up and down, I realized that, beneath my anger, there was a sliver of relief at finally knowing the truth. And then a bigger wave of realization crashed over me—I knew why lying came so naturally. If I didn’t lie, someone might give me medicine that would make me so sleepy I would forget who I was. Because of that, I had become a liar, and a good one.
I resolved, right then, never to lie again, at least not consciously. Either I would tell the truth, or I would keep what I was feeling inside where it wouldn’t hurt anybody. That might not be a great thing, but it would be better than lying. At least something good would come from this horrible visit.
After a few minutes, I returned to the table where Sue and Ron sat in stone silence, not looking at each other. I burst out, “You were a bigger liar than I ever was.”
She met my eyes and nodded, anguish filling her face. “Sometimes your teachers would call me to ask if the outlandish stories you made up were true. I remember once you told your teacher that we’d just moved there from the West Indies, where your father was a diplomat and women carried water in pots on their heads. You were such a creative little thing.” She chuckled, but when I didn’t join her, she stopped. “I never mentioned those calls to you. Lying wasn’t such a big deal, considering what could have happened.”
She continued, looking miserable. “I’m sorry about the aspirin. Along with everything else. Sorry, sorry, sorry. I’ll never forget the way you glared at me when I insisted you call me Mommy. Your eyes were knives, stabbing me over and over. It took weeks before you finally gave up and said, ‘Okay... Mommy,’ in your baby voice. I knew then that my first days as a mother were a failure. But I thought you’d forgotten your old life, because you seemed so happy after that.”
Happy? She’d thought I was happy? Had I been? Suddenly, I wasn’t sure which of our memories was correct.
We sat in silence for a few minutes and listened to the clock ticking on the wall above us. Sue said, “You brought me back to life. Not that it’s any excuse for what we did, but I loved being your mother. I thought your real parents were dead and that you were an orphan. It didn’t seem right to leave an orphaned girl by the side of the road when we had so much love to give.”
I had one more question. “Why didn’t you want me to run?”
“Why do you think? There was that paper in the back of the wrecked car that talked about the Boston Marathon. I was terrified that something bad would happen if you started running. Either you’d remember your previous life, or you’d want to go to the Boston Marathon and then we’d lose you.” She sounded miserable. “It was my worst fear. And it came true.”
“And yet you didn’t absolutely forbid me from running.”
“No. You’re right. I guess there was a part of me that needed the lying to be over. Bud was furious at me for taking you, so he took your side against me, at least until the end. But I never meant to hurt you. I did the best I could for you.” She blew her nose. “If you blame anybody, blame me. Everything’s my fault.”
I took a deep breath as something dawned on me. I burst out, “You took my money. Not Bud.”
She jumped, startled, then sank down in her chair. “I knew you were saving for the marathon, and I couldn’t stand the thought of you leaving us. I meant to give it back to you after the race, but I never got the chance.”
“And you blamed Bud.”
She nodded and took a deep breath. “He knew he hadn’t stolen your money, and he couldn’t stand it that I didn’t believe him.” Tears streamed down her face. “Honey, that’s what I’m most ashamed of. It’s the one thing I did on purpose. I’m so sorry.”
Part of me wanted to forgive her. I wasn’t used to being so hard on people. But I wasn’t ready to do that right then and probably wouldn’t be for years. I asked, “Did you steal the money in Kentucky, too?”
“No, I didn’t. Maybe Bud did, but I never knew.”
We were quiet while I tried to think if I had other questions. Nothing came to me. Finally, she said, as cheerfully as if nothing had happened between us, “You seem to be doing real good. Do you like living in Massachusetts?”
She was talking to me as if nothing had happened—as if she were still my mother and just making sure I was doing well. I wasn’t going to give her the pleasure of thinking I was okay with everything she’d told me, so I just said, “Yeah.”
“And I guess you’ll get to go to college after all. I’m glad.”
I could have said something spiteful or just plain nasty. But the truth was, I was glad, too. I still had the possibility of a scholarship to the University of Florida, but Ron had enough money to send me wherever I wanted to go, and he had asked me to stay in New England, near him. I had applied to several colleges, and I would see who accepted me before making my decision.
The murmur of other conversations reminded me we weren’t alone in the room. Sue said, “I have no reason to believe that you’ll do it, but I have to ask. I’ve asked God to forgive me, and I think He has. But could you find it in your heart to ever forgive me? You don’t have to do it now, but if you think there might be a time when you could look kindly on me again, it would make the years I have to spend in here go faster.”
I didn’t answer right away, just watched a woman at another table dangle a toddler on her knee and kiss the top of his head as if she’d discovered the world’s greatest treasure. Finally, I said, “You took me away from my life and moved me all over the country for a dozen years. The truth is, you weren’t such a great mother. But you tried—I’ll give you that. It may be a while, but I’ll try to forgive you. I can’t ever forget, though.”
“That’s good enough for me.” She closed her eyes.
The bell rang to signal the end of the visiting hour. This time, I gave Sue a lingering hug. Part of me hated to leave her in that prison. Another part of me wanted to get out of there and away from that crazy woman as quickly as I could. But the biggest part was just plain tired. I wanted to be in my own bed, in the house I shared with Ron, and think about everything I had learned in my own time. And I wanted to be a normal teenager thinking about cross-country and boys.
Before the guards took her out, Sue reached over to pat my cheek. “You know,” she murmured, “you’ll always be my Faye.”
No, I won’t, I thought with a shudder. I’d never been her Faye, no matter how much she tried to convince me I was. But I didn’t bother answering. She was the one in prison, after all, and I was free.
Epilogue
“The End”
October 3, 2015
I sit on what used to be my favorite bench and watch the sun set over Valencia Lake. The bright-orange disc slowly sinks from view and spreads pinks, golds, and deep reds across the clouds and over the lake. A more beautiful sight, I cannot remember seeing. It’s funny that I remember so much about my time in this town but don’t recall the amazing sunsets. Go figure.
My phone rings. I look at the readout and groan. Tom. My husband. Actually, my estranged husband. He wants a divorce, but so far, I have refused to grant it. He usually only calls when he wants to get into the house to pack up more of his clothes so that he can take them to his new girlfriend’s apartment. I press Decline.
I stand and stretch. I can feel the ache from arthritis that has settled in my spine. Maybe I need to cut back my running. That’s a surprising thought. Whenever my doctor has told me that, I’ve replied, “I’m nothing if I can’t run.” What an extreme thought, that running would define me as a person. I do love to run, but I’m much more than that. And I’m never, ever nothing.
I’ve been sitting on the bench for hours, but now it’s time to go to Francie’s retirement party. As I walk to my car, I remember all the years of our friendship. Even though I never returned to Valencia, Francie visited me many times. She and I even ran the Boston Marathon again in 1972, the first year that females were officially allowed to register. My bib is framed on my living room wall, along with the ribbon from that first race at Valencia High. Jess didn’t run Boston with us, but he came and watched us finish, and that was wonderful. He died not too long after that, and we attended his funeral. He was a great man. I owe my career to him, and maybe even my life.
At the B and B, I change into my formal gown. It’s yellow, which has always been a good color for me, and it reminds me of the one I bought for my junior prom and never wore. I’ll have to ask Francie if she ever picked up that dress from the cottage where I left it.
I arrive at the country club a few minutes late. Francie is standing at the door, greeting people. Her face lights up when she sees me. We hug for a long time. There’s nothing like seeing someone in person and touching them. Francie and I are Facebook friends, and we Skype every Sunday afternoon. We’ve remained close even though it’s been several years since we met in person.
I let go of her reluctantly.
She can probably see the tiredness in my face. “How are you, sweetie?”
Remembering everything that happened in Valencia has exhausted me, but I’ve emptied all the garbage from my soul, and surprisingly, I feel better. Refreshed. Ready to start again. “I’m okay. Really. It’s nice to be back. I’ll tell you about my afternoon later. But this is not about me. How are you?”
She smiles and gestures to the room filled with people. Her smile is still the same as it has always been. I can remember when her enthusiasm exasperated me. That was a long time ago. Now I appreciate her smile as I do a sunrise—it’s fresh and welcoming every day.
She says, “I’m so happy I might burst.”
As a teenager, she was kind of mousy, but she matured into herself and has become more beautiful every year. Now she resembles one of those women in the movie Steel Magnolias, maybe an aging Julia Roberts, except with heavy eye makeup and short highlighted hair. I feel like the mousy one now. My hair has turned white, and I wear it short and curly. I never did get the hang of applying makeup.
Reese comes over for a hug. He became a banker and is rotund and bald. But Francie loves him. I always knew I did the right thing by giving him up, but when I see them so happy together, I feel a pang of jealousy. Tom and I were never close like that. I wonder if the breakup really was my fault, as he insists, or if I could blame part of our demise on him. Maybe he didn’t try hard enough to be close to me.
And then it hits me that the atmosphere in my marriage was full of tension, much like that of Bud and Sue’s. Ron and Rose, on the other hand, are lighthearted and enjoy each other’s company even after all these years. Maybe because I lived with tension for so long in my early life, I didn’t even notice it in my own marriage. I contributed to it, of course, and may even have played the biggest part. But Tom must have contributed, too.
For the first time, I accept that my marriage is really over. Surprisingly, I feel lighter than I have in years. In his willingness to end it, Tom set us both free. If I have another opportunity, I will use Ron and Rose as my models instead of Bud and Sue.
But that’s for later. Right now, I’m at a party with my oldest friends, and I intend to have a good time. Francie introduces me to the other people in the room—her children, grandchildren, and friends. I’m happy to meet them, even if I can’t remember all their names.
Then a man approaches me, and I know him immediately. Kyle. I haven’t seen him since I left Valencia. He’s wearing a perfectly tailored suit with a red tie and one of those little flag pins. We hug, and I ask him to catch me up on his life.
“Let’s see,” he says. “After Vietnam, I went back to college. You were right about Vietnam, by the way. We shouldn’t have been over there, and I realized that after a while. So I majored in political science and even participated in some protests. After I graduated, I came home. I didn’t want to be a realtor like my dad, so I ran for office.” He flashes me that movie-star smile, and I understand how he got elected.
“City council to begin with. And then I ran for congress and served there for a while. But I got tired of being harassed by people who weren’t happy with how I voted, so I became a lobbyist. I live in Washington now.” He pauses and shrugs. “That’s about it.”
I must look amazed, because he laughs. “I know. I’m a surprise to me, too. I think it helped having all those talks with you when we were young. Arguing with you was so much fun that I decided to argue for a living.”
“Uh, what about your personal life, or do I dare ask?” Francie has kept me informed about his romances, but I’m enjoying this conversation. I realize I’m flirting a little, and it feels good. It’s hard to believe that I still know how to do it.
“Ah, of course you can ask. I know what you’re asking. If I’m still with Linda, right?”
I grin and waggle my eyebrows.
“We were married for five years, long ago. But she still didn’t want to commit, so we ended up splitting up.” He makes a face. “I married twice more, but neither of them took. I’ve been single for years now.” He pauses. “And you?”
I sigh. “My husband of forty years left me a few months ago.” I try to keep my tone light and unaffected, but I don’t think I’m successful.
He nods, and I see compassion in his eyes. Francie must have kept him informed about me, too. “You’ll get past it. I remember how strong you always were. I hate to say it because it’s such a cliché, but it’s his loss.” He hugs me again.
We sit together at the dinner and toast Francie’s retirement. It feels oddly familiar and very pleasant to be around him again. It’s the biggest surprise of my evening.
Across from me sits LaVonda, whom I haven’t seen since high school. If it hadn’t been for her elbowing me in the nose, I might not have ever gotten to be friends with Francie. After I left town, we exchanged letters for a while, and then we lost touch.
“Did you become a PE teacher like you wanted?” she asks before taking a bite of fresh-caught grouper.
“Yes, I did.” I feel warmth rising in my chest. Despite all my failures, I managed to achieve my goal. “I went to Syracuse University and majored in physical education. Then I got a job teaching and coaching at the same high school in Massachusetts where I graduated. I’m still there. Two of my students set state records.”
“Wow. That’s wonderful, Faye, after all the trouble you had.”
Nobody has mentioned that to me in years. It feels strange to be around people who know my story. “Yeah, but that’s long behind me.”
We’re silent for a few minutes as we eat. Eventually, La Vonda asks, “Whatever happened to the Smiths? I heard they went to prison, but I don’t know after that.”
“Oh. Well, Bud was killed in a fight shortly after he went to prison. And Sue died from cancer a couple of years into her sentence.” Sadness prickles around the edges of my memory, but it’s old news now. I visited Sue’s grave in Kansas once. I forgave her long ago.
“Huh,” she says, looking down at her plate.
This type of conversation is always awkward. Nobody knows whether to express relief or regret that the Smiths are dead. I don’t know, either. I clear my throat and make my voice light. “What about you? Did you make it to college?”
She smiles. “I got a scholarship to the University of Florida, maybe the one that you turned down. And I went on to set some records of my own. I ended up as an accountant, though. More job stability. And I got married and have four kids and six grandchildren. You marry?”
“Yeah. I met my husband, Tom, at Syracuse. We ran together on the track team for a while. But he eventually switched to tennis.” Hmm. Maybe that was when we started drifting apart. “We have two girls, Sophia and Marie. Only one grandchild so far.” I don’t need to tell her that Tom has filed for divorce. This is a night for celebrating our successes, not our failures.
We finish our wonderful meal. Francie and Reese went all out for this celebration. They’ve got it to spend, though. Francie’s dad made big bucks by brokering some of the land sales for the big theme parks, back in the day, and she’s continued his real estate dynasty. I’m proud of what she’s made of her life, even if she did stay in this small town for the whole of it. She and Reese plan on traveling to every continent now that they’re both retired.
Laney is wheeled in after dinner and receives a round of applause. She was always the most popular mother in our group. She’s in a wheelchair now, weak from the cancer that is no longer treatable. Not able to eat much, she has saved her limited energy for after the dinner. She smiles and shakes hands with all thirty or so guests. I’m the last in line.
She’s too fragile to hug, but she holds my hands and gives me a huge smile. “So good to see you, honey,” she says, patting my cheek. “My other daughter.”
“I’m so sorry, Laney. Please forgive me.” I start to sob. Her nurse sees what’s happening and wheels her into a small room. I follow, and the nurse leaves us alone.
“Oh, sweetie. There’s nothing to forgive.”
“But I didn’t come and visit you.”
She’s quiet for a few minutes. I start to get concerned, wondering if she’s all right. Then she sighs. “We both made some mistakes. I never should have sent you back to those people. And even worse, I never should have flirted with Bud when you all first moved here. If he hadn’t gotten into a fight with Richard, you might not have had to move away. And some of the terrible things might not have happened. I was an awful flirt when I was younger. I didn’t mean anything by it, but it had some bad consequences. So please forgive me, too.”
We had worked this out years ago. I can’t believe it still bothers her. “Laney...”
She shakes her head to stop me then pats my hand again. Her body is failing, but it’s obvious her mind is crystal clear. She speaks slowly and carefully. “I understood how painful it would have been for you to come back here. You had more courage than anybody I ever met. It took all of it for you to get to know Ron and the rest of your family and to get over losing Sue and Bud like that. I never held your lack of visiting against you. But I’m happy to see you now.”
Everybody keeps telling me how much courage I had or how strong I was. I never thought about it that way. I just did what was in front of me and hoped it would work out. I should not have neglected this woman. But I don’t argue with her. We’re past that.
We spend a half hour together, talking and catching up. Then she says, “I’m sorry, Faye, but I’m all tuckered out. It’s been wonderful to see you. Come and see me tomorrow if you can. Would you get my nurse now?”
After she leaves, I cry for a few minutes in the small room by myself. And then I rejoin Francie’s party. I’ve done everything I needed to do. Tomorrow I can go back and face the rest of my life.
It’s time I think about retiring, too. I’ll soon be sixty-five, after all. Maybe I’ll take a class in drawing. Or wood carving. I haven’t done that in years. Just thinking about it brings a smile to my face.
We drink and dance until the wee hours. In a way, it’s like a second prom—I went to my first prom at Springfield High—but with a live band instead of someone in the corner, spinning records. The band even plays the ‘60s music I love so much. I dance with all the men, and then the women, and then by myself until my feet won’t hold me up any longer.
At the end, Kyle walks me to my car. He gives me another hug and touches my cheek. “I can’t believe how great it is to see you again. Uh, can I ask you something?”
I nod. I want to raise my hand and touch my cheek where it’s still warm from his touch, but I don’t. Later maybe.
He blushes, and I can see the young man still in him. “Uh, would it be all right if I called you sometime? I like talking to you.”
Hearing that, I laugh so hard I nearly wet my pants. How many times did he say that to me when we were teenagers? Over and over and over. He looks startled at first, but then he remembers, and we laugh together.
Maybe I will let him call. I like talking to him, too.
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