April 27
Ron’s June 27
Kim didn’t open the shop.
She sat in the back room with the lights off and Frank’s newspapers spread across the folding table. Her phone face-up beside her coffee, waiting for Annie to call back. Annie had not called back. Annie had not answered the three texts Kim had sent the night before, or the one she’d sent this morning, or the call that went straight to voicemail. The coffee was cold. She’d made it two hours ago and hadn’t touched it.
Kim picked up one of the newspapers. June 28. Frank’s best work. The layout was perfect, the fonts exact, the fake weather forecast calling for partly cloudy skies and a high of eighty-one. A letter to the editor about the burn ban. A half-page ad for the Pax River Fourth of July Parade, with a route map Frank had drawn himself. It looked more real than most real newspapers Kim had ever read.
She held it over the shredder.
Shove it in. Listen to the teeth rip apart. Call the committee. Tell Mayor Balcerzak and Bill Hayes and Jan and David and Mrs. Durfee and Pastor Josh that it was over. Tell Carol. Tell Annie. Walk into Room 8 and tell Ron that his young friend had lied to him because she loved him and everyone had gone along with it because they didn’t know what else to do.
Kim held the newspaper over the shredder for a long time. Then she put it back on the table.
Not because she was sure. Because she wasn’t ready to be done.
She tried Annie again at noon. Voicemail. She called Carol at 1:00.
“She’s in her room,” Carol said. “Door closed. Won’t talk to me either.”
“Is she going to tell him?”
Carol sighed. “I don’t know. She meant it when she said it. But she also hasn’t gone to Meadow View today, which means she’s thinking.”
“Is that good or bad?” Kim asked.
“She’s a teenager.” Carol said. “Could go either way.”
Kim laughed, and the release was refreshing.
“Give her the day, Kim. She’ll come out when she’s ready.”
Kim could do that. A day. A breath. Then at 5:00 she locked the shop, got in her car, and drove across the Pax River bridge. She wasn’t heading to Meadow View or Annie’s house. Just across the bridge and back. Then over again. A thinking route. A soothing route. The bridge was the middle of everything in Pax River. Literally and otherwise.
Annie was sitting on the pedestrian bench at the midpoint of the bridge, the one nobody ever used because it faced the parking lot of the bank instead of the river. She was in her hoodie, hood up, legs pulled to her chest. She looked like she’d been there all afternoon.
Kim parked on the shoulder. Walked to the bench. Sat down beside her without asking.
They watched the river. The light was dimming. The water was dark green and slow and carrying nothing.
“I wasn’t looking for you,” Kim said.
“Yeah you were.”
Kim almost smiled. “Maybe a little.”
Annie didn’t look at her. She kept her eyes on the river. Her face was puffy, which meant Carol was wrong. Annie hadn’t been thinking. She’d been feeling. Those were different things.
“You were right,” Kim said. “About all of it.”
Annie turned her head slightly. Just enough to show she was listening.
“This is about the town. It is. It’s about me. My store. The flags. Wanting to believe people could still come together. You were right about all of that. I needed this as much as anyone. Maybe more.”
Annie pulled her hood tighter.
“But it’s also about Ron,” Kim said. “And it’s about Charlie. And it’s about a promise that matters, even if the way we’re keeping it is wrong.”
“You can’t have it both ways,” Annie said. Her voice was flat. Emptied out.
“No,” Kim said. “You can’t. That’s what makes it hard.”
A car crossed the bridge behind them. Then another. The bench vibrated slightly with each one. Kim let the silence hold.
“Did you know Ron lied about his age to enlist?” Kim said. “Seventeen. Told the recruiter he was eighteen. His mother found out and tried to get him sent home. Ron refused. Said he’d made a commitment and he was going to honor it.” Kim paused. “He lied to serve. Charlie lied about a back injury to follow him. Two brothers, both lying, both doing it for love. Maybe that’s what love looks like sometimes. Complicated. Wrong and right at the same time.”
Annie wiped her face with her sleeve. “That’s not the same thing.”
“No. It’s not. But it’s not completely different either.”
The river ran. The light kept fading. Somewhere downstream a bird called and didn’t get an answer.
“What if he dies believing a lie?” Annie said. Like she’d been carrying the question all day and it had finally worn through.
Kim turned to face her. “What if he dies knowing people cared enough to try?”
Annie closed her eyes.
“I’m not asking you to feel good about it,” Kim said. “I’m asking you to finish it. Eight more days. And then you tell him. Everything. The lie, the date, the whole conspiracy. You walk into that room and you tell him the truth and you let him decide what to do with it.”
Annie opened her eyes. “You promise?” Annie said. “After the celebration. I tell him.”
“You tell him,” Kim said. “That’s the deal.”
“What if he hates me?”
“He won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do know that. I know that man, and I know you, and I don’t think hate is anywhere in this story.”
Annie uncurled her legs. Set her feet on the ground. Pulled her hood down. Her hair was a mess and her eyes were red and she looked exactly like what she was. An eighteen year old carrying something too heavy for anyone, let alone a kid who’d only wanted to help a lonely man keep a promise.
“For Charlie,” Annie said.
“For Charlie,” Kim said.
They sat on the bench for a while longer. The streetlights on the bridge came on, one at a time, as the sky turned from blue to gray to a shade darker. The bunting on the lampposts moved in a breeze neither of them felt.
Annie moved first. “I’ll go see him tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
“I’m still mad at you.”
“I know.”
Annie walked to her car. Kim stayed on the bench. The river below was nearly invisible now, just sound and movement in the dark. She could hear it, but couldn’t see it, which felt about right for everything in her life at the moment.
Eight days, Kim thought. We finish this for Charlie.
She walked back across the bridge. Halfway across, she stopped. The bunting was up on every lamppost. Bright and clean and ready. Below it, the bench where they’d been sitting was empty now and dark now.
Both things at once. That was Pax River. That was all of them.
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