May 25, 2026
The bunting on the bridge was starting to sag.
Kim noticed it on her drive to the shop. One long strip of red, white, and blue hanging loose from a lamppost, the bottom edge dipping toward the water. Nobody had fixed it. Nobody was going to fix it. The celebration was three weeks ago and the town had moved on the way towns do, quickly and without ceremony, back to being themselves. In a couple of months, they’d do it all again for the actual 250th.
The banners on Main Street were still up. Faded. Curling at the corners.
The hardware store still had David Fleming’s hand-painted GOD BLESS AMERICA sign, but it was partially obscured by a delivery truck that had broken down. The barber shop streamers had come down. The bakery flag cake was long gone from the window.
The town looked like a party the morning after. Not ugly. Just done.
Kim opened the shop and counted her customers. Eight by noon. Not the parade-day buzz, not volunteers with Post-its. Just people, coming in, buying things, visiting. On her way out, one woman said, “That parade was really amazing.” She said it like she was already filing it away. Past tense. But she’d bought a book first and said she’d be back.
Frank stopped by at lunch. He remained in the doorway the way David had two weeks earlier. Hands in pockets, leaning, not quite committing to entering. “Back to normal, I see,” he said.
“Not exactly,” Kim said.
Frank looked around the shop. Then back at her. “No,” he said. “I suppose not.”
“I knew it wouldn’t last forever,” Kim said. “The unity. The parade energy. It never does. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t real.”
“You keep saying that,” Frank said. “Because we all need to keep hearing it.”
He left and Kim let his words settle. Frank had a way of saying simple things that weren’t simple.
It never does, she thought. Three words that seemed to hold more than they should. The trying was real. The lasting was the problem.
She drove to Meadow View after closing.
Ron was in bed. He was always in bed now. The wheelchair sat folded against the wall, the quilt still draped across the seat. He hadn’t been out of the room since the celebration. Diana said he slept fourteen, fifteen hours a day. When he was awake, he was quiet. He ate little. He worked his crossword when his hands were steady enough.
Kim pulled the chair to the bedside. Ron’s eyes were open. Not sharp the
way they’d been before, but present. He knew she was there.
“Hey, Sergeant,” Kim said.
Ron turned his head on the pillow. Slowly. Everything was slow now.
“No one has called me that since the big day.” His voice creaked like an old dresser drawer. “You’re keeping our promise,” he said. No preamble.
No small talk.
“Yes,” Kim said. “I haven’t told Annie. I won’t.”
Ron nodded. “She’s okay?”
“She’s lighter,” Kim said. “She thinks you’ve forgiven her.”
“I have forgiven her,” Ron said. “But there was nothing to forgive. But she doesn’t need to know that part.”
Kim noticed the corrected calendar on the whiteboard and grimaced.
“Does it get heavy?” Ron asked.
“Yes,” Kim said.
Ron’s breathing was slow and measured, each one deliberate, like he was choosing to take them one at a time.
“Someone gets to live with the full story,” he said. “The town will remember the celebration. Annie will remember the confession. But someone needs to know all of it. The whole truth. Maybe you’ll tell it someday. When the time is right.”
Kim didn’t know what to say to that. She reached over and straightened the blanket. A small thing. The only thing.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
“Tired,” Ron said. “But I’m still here.”
Still here. The same words he’d said to Carol. The same words that meant ‘I’m alive and this is all I have left and it’s enough’.
Kim stayed until he fell asleep. It didn’t take long. His eyes closed mid-sentence, mumbling about the crossword, a clue he couldn’t get, seven letters, and then he was gone. Not gone. Sleeping. Kim had to remind herself of the difference.
She drove back to town. Parked on Main Street. Walked to the bridge.
The sagging bunting was still there. Kim reached up and pulled it free from the lamppost. It came away easily. The tape had loosened, the fabric damp from the morning dew. She folded it. Red, white, blue.
She looked up and down Main Street. The decorations would come down eventually. Someone would take them down. Maybe the weather would. The monthly cookout David and Jan had talked about. Maybe it would happen, maybe it wouldn’t. The unity had been real. But it had been tied to a project.
And the project was over.
Maybe that was the lesson, she thought.
Not one day. Not one parade. Just the choosing. Again and again.
There was no finish line. Just more days.
Kim carried the folded bunting back to Good Yarn. Set it on the counter beside the register. She’d throw it away tomorrow. Or maybe she’d keep it. She hadn’t decided.
The two flags were still on the wall.
She left them there.
