“My grandfather repaired farm equipment. My mother grew up helping him clean his shop. I don’t know where Bryce got the idea that work boots would upset them.”
I remembered his certainty on the phone.
“These people are different.”
He had wanted them to be.
“What happens now?” I asked.
“I go back to living without a seating chart on my dining table.”
That made me laugh a little.
She smiled, then pressed her lips together.
“I’m embarrassed I didn’t figure it out sooner.”
“You asked questions when something didn’t make sense.”
“I should have asked at the party.”
“You had no reason to think he’d lie about that.”
She nodded slowly.
Before she left, she stood beside my chair.
“I liked you that night, you know. At the party. You told Paul to take some cake home to his wife.”
“She’d had her knee replaced.”
“I remember. I thought you were kind.”
I had forgotten that Caroline was standing near us then.
She leaned down and hugged me.
After she drove away, I stayed in the chair a little longer.
Then I went back to the starter.
Paul called again in April.
Victor and Whitney were considering a smaller house. He said Victor had admitted that maintaining their lifestyle had become expensive, especially with the help they had been giving Bryce.
I didn’t ask for account balances.
I knew how easily family news became entertainment, and I had had enough of being discussed by people who weren’t in the room.
Bryce had moved back in with them after deciding not to renew his apartment lease.
He was still working. His life hadn’t been destroyed. He had lost a relationship and had some practical decisions to make.
Moving home at twenty-six wasn’t a punishment.
I hoped, privately, that being there without a wedding to plan might give him time to think.
“Victor asked whether you’d meet for lunch,” Paul said.
“To discuss what?”
“He said putting things behind you.”
“Did he say anything about correcting what he told people?”
Paul was quiet.
“No.”
“Then I’m not ready for lunch.”
He accepted that.
I didn’t ask him to carry a speech back.
That summer, a letter arrived in my mailbox.
No return address. Three pages in Bryce’s handwriting.
I read it at the kitchen table.
He wrote that he had wanted Caroline’s family to like him. He said he had felt caught between households for years. He described being fourteen and wanting everything to stop changing.
I understood that boy.
I wished I had known how much of him was still living inside the man.
But the letter moved around the central facts without settling on them.
He hadn’t written, “I told Caroline you were a family friend.”
He hadn’t written, “I knew you would see that photograph.”
He wrote that he hoped we could move forward because we were family.
I put the pages down and looked toward the hallway.
The graduation photograph was still there.
I hadn’t taken it down after the church meeting. I hadn’t replaced it with something that made me less sad.
It was a good day we had actually shared.
Whatever Bryce said about it afterward, I had been there.
I folded the letter and put it in a drawer.
I might answer. I probably would, when I could write something that didn’t try to solve the whole thing for him.
For now, the drawer was enough.
That evening, I carried my supper onto the back porch.
Roxy called to ask whether I wanted to go to a flea market on Saturday. I said yes. We spent ten minutes arguing cheerfully over whose turn it was to drive.
After we hung up, I stayed outside until the porch light came on.
There was a loose screw in one of the chairs. I noticed it when I shifted my weight and made a mental note to bring out a screwdriver.
Inside, my phone remained on the kitchen counter, where I had left it.I finished eating before I went to check it.
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Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction created for entertainment purposes. Any resemblance to real persons, events, or places is coincidental.