April 26
Ron’s June 26
Ron was having his best day in weeks, and Annie wanted to throw up.
He was out of the wheelchair. Standing, even, with one hand braced on the nightstand, but standing. When Annie came through the door of Room 8, he turned and smiled and she could see the man he must have been thirty years ago, before the losses stacked up and bent him toward the ground.
“Look at you,” she said.
“Don’t make a fuss. I still feel lousy. Just wanted to see if these legs still worked.”
“And?”
“Barely.” He lowered himself into the chair. The effort cost him, but he didn’t let it show on his face. That was Ron. You could see the pain in his hands as his knuckles went white on the armrest. But there was no pain in his expression.
Annie sat. The room was bright, despite its view of nothing. Someone had brought in a small lamp and positioned it so it shined on the corner of the painted window like the sun. Another beautiful lie. The whiteboard still said JUNE. The TV was still dark. The photo, same as always. Grace and Jamie, frozen in time.
Ron was sharp. Sharper than he’d been since the hospital. He asked about the weather. About Kim’s store. About whether the town was getting ready for the Fourth.
Annie answered carefully. Yes, the weather was warming up. Yes, Kim’s store was busy. Yes, the town was preparing.
“How so?” Ron asked.
Annie hesitated. She could feel the edge of the lie like a cliff she was walking along with her eyes closed. “Decorations are going up on Main Street,” she said. “Bunting, flags, banners. Mrs. Durfee has the marching band rehearsing. Pastor Josh is organizing stuff at the church. Jan Williams and David Fleming are actually working together, which might be the real miracle.”
All true. Every word of it true. She was describing the conspiracy and calling it preparation and the line between those two things had disappeared so completely she couldn’t find it anymore.
Ron leaned back. “Everyone? Coming together like that?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s remarkable, Annie. It really is.” His voice softened. He looked at her the way he sometimes looked at the photo. Like the scene was precious and temporary. “You’re a good person. Don’t let anyone tell you differently. Not even yourself.”
Annie’s throat closed.
She stayed another twenty minutes. He worked his crossword. She pretended to read. Neither spoke. At 4:00, she told him she had to go.
“Study group?” he asked.
“Something like that.”
He reached for her hand. His grip was weaker than it used to be but still there. Still deliberate. “Thank you for being here, Sweetheart. Every time.”
Annie gently squeezed his hand and walked out of Room 8 and down the hall and through the lobby and out the front door and into the parking lot where she got in her car and sat with her hands on the wheel and her forehead on her hands and did not cry.
Then she drove to Good Yarn.
Kim was in her usual spot behind the counter. Shop was empty. Late afternoon light through the window. The flags. The reading lamp at Ron’s station, still on from his last visit.
Kim looked up. “Hey. How was he today?”
“Standing,” Annie said. “He was standing when I walked in. On his own two feet. Smiling. Sharp. Asking about the decorations, asking about the town, asking about everything.”
Kim smiled. “That’s wonderful.”
“No, it’s not.”
Kim’s smile vanished.
“He told me I was a good person, Kim. He looked me in the eye and told me I was a good person and I have been lying to him for sixteen days. Every single day. I walk in there and I smile and I bring him fake newspapers and I call April June what it isn’t and I watch him believe me because he trusts me. He trusts me.”
Annie’s voice was rising. She could hear it and couldn’t stop it.
“You know what he said? He said all of Pax River is coming together. Remarkable. He used that word. Remarkable. And he doesn’t even know why. He thinks it’s for the 250th. He thinks people are doing it because they care about the country. He doesn’t know they’re doing it because we told them to. Because we organized it. Because we’re running a con on a ninety-one-year-old man in a wheelchair.”
“Annie—”
“—You’re not doing this for him.” Annie pointed at Kim. Her hand was shaking. “You’re doing this for the town. For yourself. Your store. You wanted something to believe in and you found it and it’s built on a lie.”
Kim felt struck.
“He’s not a prop for your unity project, Kim. He’s a person. He’s my friend. And every day that I walk in there and lie to his face, I lose a piece of myself I’m never going to get back.”
The reading lamp hummed. The rest of the shop slept. Outside, a car passed on Main Street, flags fluttering from its antenna. Part of the decoration. Part of the act.
“I’m done,” Annie said. “I’m going to tell him. Tomorrow. I’m going to walk in there and tell him the truth and whatever happens after that is on all of us.”
She didn’t wait for Kim to respond. She turned and walked out the front door and the bell above it rang once, bright and stupid, like it didn’t know what had just happened.
Kim looked around this place she loved. Ron’s station was still set up. The folding table. The pencil cup. The reading lamp. The chair where he sat and did his crosswords and looked at the flags and believed the world was better than it was. Kim reached over and turned off the lamp.
The shop went dim. Main Street glowed through the window. Bunting and banners and flags everywhere, for a celebration that might never happen now, for a man who might never forgive them, for a town that had come together for exactly the wrong reasons.
Nine days, Kim thought. It’s falling apart. And though she didn’t know where Annie had gone. She hoped it was somewhere high.
***
Annie didn’t go home.
She drove. No destination, no music, no plan. At least not at first. Just the car and the dark and the mountain road that climbed out of the valley the way she needed to climb out of everything else. She knew every curve. Knew where the guardrail ended and the drop began. Knew how fast she could drive and still feel safe. She arrived at the pullout near the top where the road went to gravel and then to nothing.
She parked and got out.
The old fire observation tower was less than a hundred yards up a worn trail she could find with her eyes closed. Three flights of open metal stairs, bolted to a frame older than Kim, Carol, and Annie combined. It was rusted at the joints.
Annie climbed.
The steps rang under her feet. The wind was different up here. Cleaner, without the town in it. She gripped the railing and didn’t look down until she reached the platform.
Pax River was small. That was the first thing she always noticed. All of it visible at once. Main Street was a thread of light running north to south, the lampposts glowing at this height like a necklace laid flat on a table.
The bridge was a pale line over the dark water. Meadow View, east of the river, a rectangle of lit windows in the trees, patient and still.
From down there, it was a conspiracy. A lie. A web of people telling a dying man the wrong month. Hanging flags for a holiday that hadn’t come. Rehearsing a parade in secret and calling it patriotism.
From up here it was just a town. Small. Lit. Trying.
Annie gripped the railing. The metal was cold. The wind moved through the trees below her in a subtle wave, and the lights held.
She didn’t know how long she stayed. Long enough to get cold. Long enough to stop crying without knowing she’d started. Long enough for the town to just be the town and not a problem to solve. Pax River was not a wrong to right. It was just a peculiar place in a valley where people had decided, for once, to try.
She climbed back down. Got in the car. Drove off the mountain the way she’d come.
She didn’t call Kim. She didn’t call her mom. She went home, took a shower, and got into bed and lay there looking at the ceiling until she fell asleep.
She hadn’t decided anything.
But something had changed in the scale of it. She’d climbed high enough to see it all.
Nine days. She’d give it nine more days.
New chapters posted every Monday and Thursday until April 23.