Corinne spent the rest of the day looking in the mirror.
At her round face and her dishwater more-brown-than-blond-now hair.
What did she want Enoch Miller to think of her? That she was pretty? That hadn’t mattered, before.
She could try to show him what he’d lost, but that seemed foolish. He’d never really had her. Or wanted her. This was probably going to be an apology. Enoch Miller was going to apologize to her at a Village Inn for taking her virginity—and for pushing her out of God’s warm embrace.
Maybe he needed her to forgive him. His wife had left him, and he’d been dishonored again in the eyes of the congregation. Maybe he wanted to clear his conscience.
Or maybe he blamed Corinne—did he blame her? That would make this easier. If he revealed himself to be cruel and stupid.
Corinne looked at herself in her bathroom mirror.
Maybe Enoch was just doing what he’d done before—blindly reaching out to her just because she was there and would probably say yes. He was down on his luck. And he saw her as a bad-luck girl.
She wasn’t.
It had taken her a while to figure that out, but she mostly believed it.
Corinne didn’t need to look pretty for any of these scenarios. She put on wide-legged jeans and a baggy, green and pink argyle cardigan. She pulled her hair up in a messy bun. She still wasn’t good at makeup, but she put on mascara.
What she really wanted was to look okay. She wanted Enoch Miller to look at her and see that she was okay. The Bible says that someone who turns away from the Lord is like a dog returning to its own vomit. Corinne wanted to look like a dog who wouldn’t eat its vomit.
If Enoch looked at her at all.
When had he ever?
She got to the Village Inn early, and he was already there, sitting at a table. This was such a stupid place to meet—people from church fucking loved Village Inn—and he was sitting right by a window. Enoch Miller had never had an affair, that was for sure.
He stood up when she walked over. All six-feet-something of him. His hair was damp, like he’d just showered. And he smelled like Polo aftershave. That almost did Corinne in—she rocked back on her feet, and her head tipped back—but she got through it. The waitress came by with laminated menus. And Corinne sat down. And Enoch sat down.
He looked so much like himself, it shouldn’t be allowed.
His hair was a bit shorter, like he’d given up on hiding his face. All the men at church wore their hair short, and they couldn’t have beards or mustaches. It made them look boyish. It made Enoch look clean and earnest. She wasn’t used to seeing him with glasses—gold wire-frames that made his brown eyes look even smaller.
He looked the same.
He looked older. Thicker. Bigger. His hands were meatier on the menu.
“It’s good to see you,” he said, and she almost lost it again. This wasn’t going well, on Corinne’s side of the table.
“It’s good to see you, too,” she said, because she still tried not to lie.
“You look well,” Enoch said. Which wasn’t the same as “good,” and she was grateful for it.
“Thank you,” she said. “I am.”
She could have gotten up then, and left, because that’s all she’d wanted him to see.
Enoch was nodding, like he wasn’t sure what to say next. Corinne didn’t help him out; he was the one who wanted this.
“I heard you moved back to town,” he said.
“I did, last year. To be closer to my mom.”
“Alicia said you have a good job.”
“I love Alicia,” Corinne said. “She’s a wonderful person.”
Enoch smiled with one side of his mouth. He was still looking at Corinne. “She is. She and Shawn have been really good to me—your whole family is pretty great.”
Corinne tilted her head and made a face like That’s debatable, but really, she was just trying not to cry. This was a mistake. Enoch wasn’t going to think she was well and good and okay if she broke into tears.
The waitress was back for their orders, Village Inn didn’t mess around. Enoch ordered breakfast, and Corinne ordered a club sandwich.
“So, um, what do you do?” Enoch asked when they were alone again.
“I’m a freelance planner.”
“A planner.”
“Yeah, it’s like … research and strategy. For advertising agencies. Or companies. I look into a problem they’re having, and then I make a communications plan. For how they can address it.”
“Did you study that in school?”
“No, I studied something else, but I ended up here. And I’m glad.” I’m fine, Corinne was saying. I’m actually doing quite well.
“That sounds really interesting.”
“It is,” she agreed.
“And really difficult.”
“It’s for sure a specialized skill.”
“You’re freelance?”
“I went freelance when I moved back here. After my mom’s heart attack.”
“I was sorry to hear about that,” he said. “Is she doing all right?”
“You probably know better than I do.”
“I doubt that.”
“She’s doing pretty well, I think,” Corinne said. “It was a small one.” And then she made herself say, “How’s your mom?”
Enoch could see that she was making herself say it.
How did that work: that Enoch Miller could take her virginity (he didn’t take it) on his couch when he was practically engaged to someone else, and now he was welcome in her mother’s kitchen—but Corinne was scared to mention his mother at all?
“She’s good,” he said. “She stays busy. She moved to Arkansas to be closer to my brother’s kids.”
“Oh,” Corinne said. “You have a lot of nieces and nephews?”
“Seven,” he said, smiling.
“You don’t—I mean, do you—”
“We didn’t have any kids,” Enoch said.
“Right, I didn’t think … I, um, me neither, obviously.”
Enoch nodded. So Corinne nodded. They didn’t have any kids. (She’d worried that first month. Enoch must have worried, too. And Bonnie. There was no such thing as abortion. They might have forced him to marry her. What a joke. What a disaster.) (But it was fine, she was fine. Look at her.)
Enoch was trying to change the subject. Corinne could tell by the lines in his forehead, the way he was twisting his full lips—still too full to be handsome in any conventional way. Enoch wasn’t handsome in any conventional way. It hadn’t mattered thirteen years ago. It mattered less now.
“I always knew you’d do something interesting,” he said.
Corinne laughed. “That’s a lie.”
“It isn’t.”
She couldn’t let it stand. “How could you know that? I didn’t know that.”
“Maybe you weren’t paying as much attention.”
“Maybe I…?” She shook her head. When Enoch Miller had known Corinne, she wasn’t heading anywhere interesting. She wasn’t headed anywhere at all. She was like something slowly circling a drain. And nobody was paying any attention—certainly not Enoch Miller.
His mouth was still twisted. One of his eyebrows was cocked down, like he was showing how well he could pay attention when he tried.
“I always knew you would be an electrician,” she said, deflecting.
“Ha,” he said. “You should be a fortune-teller.”
“Divination is a sin. It’s all over Leviticus.”
“Mind like a trap on this one.”
“Do you like being an electrician?”
“It’s all right.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s fine. It’s what I wanted. Something steady. That would support a family.” He colored. He’d always blushed easily. “I suppose you heard, about me and Shannon.”
“Just that you weren’t together,” Corinne said gently.
“That’s right.” Enoch was nodding and rubbing his temple. “Not for three years.”
“I’m sorry.”
He laughed out loud, and it sounded like Corinne felt, like he might fall over. “Okay, well. Thanks.”
“I am,” Corinne said. “I never wanted—” She didn’t know how she was going to finish that sentence. It was headed for a lie.
Enoch cut her off. “No, I know. Thanks. I mean—It’s—Thanks.”
The waitress was back with their dinners. With Corinne’s dinner and Enoch’s breakfast, some kind of skillet.
“Do you work by yourself?” she asked.
“With Japheth.”
“Wow, Japheth. In my head, he’s still twelve years old and doesn’t want to share his Nintendo.”
“He’s mellowed out.”
“He’d have to’ve.”
Enoch laughed. With his lips pressed together this time. With his lungs and shoulders. “Don’t get me wrong, he’s still a pain in my neck.”
“Do you work with Shawn a lot?” Shawn was a carpenter. He’d gotten a job with a brother from church after high school.
“Yeah. You know how it is…”
Corinne did.
Enoch looked up at her, his face earnest and pained again. Like he was about to make himself say something: “Your family has more cause to judge me than anyone. But when Shannon left, and people gossiped … Well, I had to step down, you know, because my own household wasn’t in order. And a lot of people in the congregation treated me different. But your family was kinder than ever. They showed me true mercy.”
“That’s good to hear,” Corinne said. (It wasn’t really. She’d work out later why not.) “I guess they were returning the favor,” she said. “Your mom was very kind to us. She took us in.”
Enoch’s face fell.
Because, of course, then his mother had kicked them out. But the first kindness still counted. It counted for Corinne. She was grateful.
“Is that what you wanted to tell me?” she asked. “That my family has been kind to you? It’s fine with me that you’re all friends. It’s not even my business, really.”
“What? No. That’s not—”
“Then what?” That last word came out desperate. It came out honest.
“It wasn’t anything specific,” Enoch said.
“It wasn’t?”
“No, I just—I guess I wanted to catch up.”
“To catch up.” Corinne was just going to keep repeating what he said until he said something that made sense to her.
Enoch swallowed. “I’ve missed you, Corinne.”
“You…” Her mouth was hanging open. She could hardly pronounce consonants. “… missed me?”
He rolled his eyes. He huffed softly. “I mean, yeah. We were thick as thieves for so long.”
“I—Enoch, you never even talked to me.”
“You were one of the only people I talked to.”
“I wasn’t in your circle. It was a literal circle.” She spun her finger around. “Every Sunday, after services. And I wasn’t part of it.”
“You didn’t want to be part of it—you made that abundantly clear—and anyway, that wasn’t real talking. Some of my best memories are you and me, in the back of my mom’s station wagon. Do you remember the time we drove to Mount Rushmore?”
She did. They’d played Twenty Questions and Name That Tune, and everyone else got sick of playing, but Enoch and Corinne never did. Not for ten hours. They were thirteen. They were the same height.
“Yeah,” Corinne said. “I got on your nerves.”
“Yeah,” Enoch agreed. “You did.”
“So you didn’t ask me here to apologize?”
He looked down at his breakfast skillet. The front of his hair slid forward. She remembered how it felt. Smoother than hers. Like it didn’t know how to tangle.
“It doesn’t matter,” Corinne said in a very quiet voice. She was throwing him a bone. A rope. He didn’t deserve it. “I’m glad I got to see you again.” He didn’t deserve it, but it was true.
Enoch lifted his head. He didn’t say anything right away.
Neither did Corinne.