April 23
Ron’s June 23
The woman walked into Good Yarn on Monday morning and Kim knew immediately she wasn’t from Pax River.
It was the shoes. Ankle boots, clean, perhaps purchased in a city and worn to look casual in places that weren’t. She carried a leather bag over one shoulder and a phone in her hand, already taking photos of the storefront before the door had closed behind her.
Kim was behind the register, pricing a box of the latest Annabelle White hardcover novel that had arrived that morning. She’d had to reorder twice this week, and it was the first time in months she’d cleared a shelf fast enough to matter. She looked up and smiled.
“Welcome to Good Yarn. What can I help you find?”
The woman didn’t browse. She looked around the shop, the shelves, the reading nook, the flags on the wall. Then looked out the front window at Main Street. Kim followed her gaze. The bunting. The banners. The flags on every lamppost. David Fleming’s crew had been at it for three days now, and Main Street looked like a postcard from a town that had its act together.
“What’s with all the Fourth of July stuff?” the woman asked. “It’s April.”
Kim’s hands stopped on the book she was holding. A small freeze, half a second, that she hoped didn’t show.
“Early start on the 250th,” Kim said. “We’re a very patriotic town.”
The woman raised an eyebrow. “Three months early?”
“You should see us at Christmas,” Kim said.
The woman smiled. She pulled a card from her bag and set it on the counter. Kim looked down. Emma Richmond, Regional Features, The Valley Register.
“I’m doing a piece on small towns gearing up for the 250th,” Emma said. “How different communities are celebrating, what it means to them. I was just passing through and this section of Main Street caught my eye. It’s—” She glanced out the window again. “Really special.”
“We’re proud of it,” Kim said. Her voice was steady. Her pulse was not.
“Would you mind if I took some photos? Maybe asked a few questions? Who’s organizing all this?”
“It’s a community effort,” Kim said. “Lots of volunteers. You know how small towns are.”
“I do.” Emma was already lifting her phone to photograph the storefront again. “This could make a great human-interest piece. Small patriotic town, first to decorate in the whole region. I’d love to come back with a photographer.”
Kim felt the floor tilt under her. A newspaper story. With photographs. Published in a regional paper that anyone with a phone could find. Anyone who might visit Ron. Anyone who might mention to him that this charming little town had its Fourth of July decorations up in April. In April.
This was the plot twist they feared.
“That’s very kind,” Kim said. “But we’re really not looking for attention. Just a quiet celebration. For the community.”
Emma studied her. Reporters studied people like doctors did. Looking for the thing you weren’t saying.
“Well, here’s my card if you change your mind. I think there’s a story here.”
She was right. There was a story here. That was exactly the problem.
Emma took two more photos of Main Street through the window and left. Kim watched her walk to her car, get in, and sit there typing into her phone before driving away.
Kim called Frank before the car had reached the bridge.
“We have a problem,” she said. She told him. Emma Richmond. Valley Register. Regional features. Photos of Main Street. Human-interest piece.
Frank was still for three seconds, a very long time for Frank.
“I know people at the Register,” he said. “Their editor owes me a favor from when I ran the AP stringer network. I’ll make a call.”
“Can you kill it?”
“I can try. But Kim—” He paused. “That was close. Too close. If she’d walked in here on a day Annie had Ron at the store, with the fake newspapers on the counter—”
“—I know.”
“We’re past the point of turning back. You understand that, right? This thing is either going to work or it’s going to unravel. There’s no middle ground anymore.”
Kim glanced at the business card on the counter. Emma Richmond. She picked it up, tore it in half, and dropped it in the trash.
“Make the call, Frank.”
* * *
Annie brought the newspaper to Ron at 3:00.
It was one of Frank’s. The June 23 edition. Front page: a county fair that hadn’t happened. A weather forecast calling for mid-seventies and afternoon thunderstorms. She’d tucked it under her arm just like you carry a real newspaper, casual, like she’d grabbed it off a stack somewhere.
Ron was in his chair by the window. He took the paper without looking up from his crossword, which was his usual move. Accept the paper, finish the clue, then switch. Annie sat on the bed and waited.
He finished the clue. Set down the puzzle book. Unfolded the newspaper.
He read as he always read. Front page first. Then local. Then sports. Every word. Every column. Annie watched his eyes move across the print, steady and careful, the way you’d read a letter from someone you trust.
He stopped on page three.
“Strange,” Ron said.
Annie’s heart thumped. “What’s strange?”
“This piece about the county fair in August. Says the Rotary Club is in charge of the pie bakeoff.” He tapped the page. “I heard it was the Chamber of Commerce doing it.”
Annie’s mind raced. She didn’t know what Frank had written. She hadn’t read this one. She usually did. Not today. “You’re still pretty new to Pax River,” Annie said gently. “Who would you have heard that from?”
Ron looked up. “Geez, I don’t know. A nurse. Frank. Your mother. Maybe I dreamed it.”
“Huh. Well, you were in the hospital for a while,” Annie said. “Who knows what you dreamed, right?”
Ron gazed at her. Those eyes. Clear and sharp and patient, how a man looks at you when he’s giving you every chance to tell the truth.
Then he folded the paper and set it on the windowsill beside the photo of Grace and Jamie.
“Probably right,” he said. “Missed a lot. Just glad I’m here, right, Sweetheart?” He picked up his crossword.
Annie exhaled. Not visibly, she hoped.
She left Meadow View and drove straight to the school parking lot, where she was supposed to meet Neve to study for their government exam. Neve was already there, sitting on the hood of her mom’s Civic, textbook open but clearly not reading it.
“You look terrible,” Neve said.
“Thanks?”
“I mean it. You’ve been weird for two weeks. You don’t answer texts. You skipped Kizzy’s birthday. You’re at that nursing home every single day.” Neve closed the textbook. “How long are you going to keep doing this?”
Annie sat on the hood beside her. The parking lot was mostly empty. A custodian pushed a trash can across the sidewalk. The sun was low and flat and unhelpful.
“Keep doing what?”
“Lying to him, Annie.”
“Helping him,” Annie said. But it didn’t sound like she believed it.
Neve had been her best friend since seventh grade. They’d shared everything. Every breakup. Every fight with their mothers. Every embarrassing thing that had ever happened in gym class. Neve had never once looked at her like this.
“Like literally everyone knows,” Neve said. “You know that, right? It’s not some big mystery. My mom’s talking about a ‘community picnic.’ Mrs. Durfee has kids rehearsing patriotic songs after school. Nobody is saying it out loud, Annie, but everyone knows.” She made air quotes. “Everybody knows what it’s really for.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“The problem is you’re the one who walks in there every day and looks him in the face and lies to him.” Neve pulled her knees up. “The rest of them get to hang bunting and feel good about themselves. You’re the one doing it.”
Annie distracted herself with the parking lot. The custodian. The trash can. Anything that wasn’t Neve’s face.
“He’s dying, Neve.”
“I know he’s dying. That’s the part that makes it worse.” Neve’s voice wasn’t angry. That would have been easier. It was careful. The way you sound when you’ve been thinking about something for a while and you’re not sure you should say it. “What happens when he finds out? What if the last thing he feels is tricked?”
Annie ached. Because she’d asked herself the same thing in the dark hours of the night every night for twelve days. “He’s not going to find out.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Annie picked at a thread on her jeans. A long time passed. A car pulled out of the lot. The custodian disappeared around the corner of the building.
“I don’t know,” Annie said. “I don’t know what happens. I just know he wants to see July 4, and he’s not going to make it, and I’m the one who told him it was June.”
Neve stared at her for so long Annie thought she might be having a medical emergency of her own. Then she opened the textbook. “Fine. Chapter twelve. The Electoral College. This should be fun.”
They studied for forty minutes and didn’t talk about Ron or Meadow View or the things Annie couldn’t defend. But it sat between them on the hood of the car like a third person. Taking up space. Breathing.
Annie drove home in silence. No music. No phone. Just the road and the bridge and the river underneath.
A reporter with a camera. A best friend who thought she was wrong.
The charade wasn’t getting heavier because people didn’t know.
It was getting heavier because they did.
Everyone could see what she was doing. And the only person who couldn’t was the one she was doing it to.
Twelve days, she thought.
She gripped the steering wheel and crossed the bridge.
Hold it together, Annie. Twelve more days.
New chapters posted every Monday and Thursday until April 23.