June 25, 2026
Kim visited Ron on Thursdays now.
Not because Thursday was special. Because it was what she could manage. The shop needed her the other days, not that business was booming, but there had finally been an uptick. More traffic. More curiosity. She’d launched a thriller bookclub that had sparked some sales and buzz. Closing more than once a week felt like giving up, and sometime in May, Kim had decided she wasn’t going to give up on anything again, even when it would be the sensible thing to do.
She brought him butterscotch. He rarely ate them anymore. She brought them anyway and lined them up on his nightstand beside the photo and the crossword book he hadn’t opened in weeks. The wrappers accumulated in a small golden row. Untouched. Golden offerings at a shrine.
Ron was only half-conscious most days. Diana said he woke for an hour in the morning, sometimes two. He’d let them check his vitals. He’d close his eyes and drift back to wherever he went when he wasn’t here. The crossword was done. The butterscotch was done. Even the river-watching seemed to be over.
Kim pulled the chair to the bedside. Ron’s eyes were closed. His breathing was thin, shallow, as if being rationed. She sat and waited.
After a few minutes, his eyes opened. Not all the way. Enough.
“Hey, friend,” Kim said.
Ron’s lips moved. The sound came a beat after, like the signal was traveling a long distance.
“Still here,” he said.
“Still here,” Kim said.
It had become their greeting. Two words, back and forth, like a call and response at the end of a sermon. It meant ‘I’m alive’. It meant ‘I see you’. It meant ‘we’re both still in this, whatever this is’.
She didn’t talk much anymore during these visits. There was a time when she’d bring news from town, tell him about the shop, mention a funny thing Annie had said. But Ron didn’t have the energy for news. He had energy for presence. For someone else being in the room.
She admired the river. It was bright under the June sun, high and strong, the water catching it in sheets of white. Summer. Real summer.
Nine days.
Kim knew. She was the only one who knew. Ron Drummond was not hanging on because of stubbornness or habit or some medical mystery that baffled Dr. Searcy. He was hanging on because July 4 was so close and he had made a promise to his brother and the promise was not yet kept.
The fake celebration had fulfilled the spirit of it. Ron had said so himself.
The town came together. The trying was real. Charlie’s question was answered.
But the date was the date. And Ron Drummond was a man who kept his word completely.
His eyes were open. He was looking at her. Kim couldn’t tell how much he could see. His gaze was unfocused, drifting, but when it landed on her, it held.
“Waiting,” Ron whispered.
Kim leaned closer. “Waiting for the right day,” she said.
Ron’s mouth moved. It might have been a smile. It might have been a breath. Kim chose to believe it was a smile.
His eyes closed. His breathing settled into the slow, rationed rhythm that meant he was gone again. Not gone. Sleeping. Kim still had to remind herself.
She sat with him for another hour. She didn’t read. Didn’t check her phone. She watched the river through the window and the light moving across the ceiling and the subtle rise and fall of the blanket.
The photo of Grace and Jamie. The faces that had watched over this room since April. They’re waiting too, Kim thought. Everybody was waiting.
When she left, she stopped at the nurses’ station.
“How is he?” Diana asked. The question she asked every week. The one that meant more than it said.
“Still here,” Kim said.
Diana nodded. There was nothing else to ask.
Kim drove back to town. Crossed the bridge. The bunting was gone now.
All of it. Just the bridge. Iron and concrete and the river underneath.
Nine days, she thought.
Hold on, Ron.
