by Laura Miller
The next day I’m passing my parents’ house on my way to Detmold. I feel a little guilty even if Amy and I are just friends, but it’s not enough to stop me from driving out to see Brooke. The driving out is the part that’s got me confused though. Last night, she said she lived in town. I glance down at the little piece of paper one last time just to make sure I wasn’t seeing things this morning. Dry Fork Road. She scribbled her address onto the back of a receipt last night. I didn’t even bother looking at it until I got into my truck this morning. I was too much on a high to even think about it, and I guess I figured that even if it were a California address scribbled in her handwriting on this little piece of paper, I’d still be making my way out to her today. The highway written on the receipt is the same highway that leads to my old stomping grounds. A stupid thought comes to my mind, but I push it away.
“DFK-008.” I say the number out loud. What the hell? That’s not an address. That’s a damn ENS number. Why the hell would she give me an ENS number?
I turn off onto Dry Fork Road. I’ve traveled this two-lane highway probably a million times now, but I never once paid any attention to the damn ENS numbers.
I slow down to read a little black sign. In white block letters and numbers I read: DFK-014. Damn, I don’t know if they’re going up or down.
I go another several hundred yards and spot another black sign at the end of a long driveway that looks as if it leads to nowhere. But I know it does lead to somewhere. It leads to the Cooper Dairy Farm. You just can’t see it from the road. They’ve got a mailbox in the shape of a Holstein, and next to it, the little black sign reads: DFK-009. I guess the numbers are going down. And that would mean... I bring my truck to a rolling stop. There’s no one behind me and no one coming at me. My adrenaline is shooting through my veins. I’m shocked. I’m relieved. I feel kind of slighted but not mad. Most of all, I guess, I’m awestruck because I know once I turn that corner, the only house I’m gonna see is Mrs. Catcher’s old place. And on its little black ENS sign, I know it’s going to be the number that Brooke scribbled onto the back of this receipt.
Shit. It wasn’t her, was it? Surely she wasn’t the one I was bidding against.
Sure enough, I roll up to the narrow driveway and that damn For Sale sign is gone and on that little black ENS sign it reads: DFK-008.
I slowly make my way down the graveled path, still in some state of awe or shock or something. And then when I get to the end of the driveway, I shut my truck off. Brooke is sitting on the porch swing. I can’t help but smile when I see her.
“Hi,” she says, as I get out of my truck. She gets up and starts making her way down those little concrete stairs that lead to the porch. But in the meantime, a black and brown coonhound runs around the corner of the house. And without warning, it jumps up and paws my arms.
“Winnie, get down,” she says, pulling at his collar.
Winnie. I stroke the dog’s fur and get a good look at him. It’s the puppy. Hot damn! It’s him. When I look back up, Brooke’s staring at me with a sideways smile on her face. “Do you think he remembers you?”
I shrug my shoulders. “I don’t know.”
The dog whimpers and beats his tail against my leg as Brooke tries to hold him back, and I continue to pet him.
“He doesn’t normally act like this around people he doesn’t know,” she says. “He’s usually a little more...guard dog.”
I give Winnie a few more pats.
“But could he still...?” she asks, half-surprised, half-unsure.
“Maybe,” I say, grinning and eventually turning my attention to her. I reach inside my truck, grab the flowers I picked out for her and then hand them to her.
She takes the flowers, looks at them and then at me. “These look familiar.” I watch as she brings the flowers closer to her face, closes her eyes and breathes them in.
I don’t say anything. I just smile. They’re daisies.
“They’re beautiful,” she says, opening her eyes again. “They remind me of a summer I once had a long time ago.” She stares at the flowers for a heartbeat. Then eventually, her stare wonders back to me. I was hoping she’d say something like that. I just shoot her a crooked smile and fix my gaze on her pretty eyes. I’d give anything right now to know what she’s thinking. Her stare is soft and welcoming, and it cuts my heart like a warm butter knife. I’ve missed her. I’ve missed looking into those eyes.
We leave our words for the quiet then before she turns and walks back onto the porch with the flowers in hand. And I watch her find an old milk bottle sitting in the corner. She dusts it off, blows a cobweb away from the bottle’s opening and places the flowers inside the glass. In the meantime, I plant myself on the little concrete stairs and lean my back against the wood porch railing.
“So, this is your place?” I ask it like I’m still not sure because I don’t think I believe it quite yet.
She looks up at me and presses her lips together. I can tell she’s trying her damnedest not to smile.
Hell. It was her. I was bidding against her the whole time. I can’t help but smile too. “I thought you lived in Washington.”
“I do, for now,” she says, pouring water from a water bottle into the makeshift vase.
“Wow,” I exclaim, reaching for the bill of my cap. I find it and squeeze the sides together. I’m still trying to wrap my head around her being here and her buying this house. I nod, and it’s quiet again, until I just can’t take the quiet anymore. “Just tell me one thing.”
She shoots me a suspicious grin. “What?”
“Why’d you pay so much for it?” I ask.
Her smile gradually fades, and a question plants itself on her pretty little face. “How do you know how much I paid?”
I shake my head and just grin. I can’t seem to get the stupid look off my face.
“Wait,” she says, eyeing me closely. “You were the other bidder?”
She looks at me with lips parted, as if she can’t quite believe it herself either.
My eyes instinctively lower to the dirt in the flower bed, and I just nod before I look back up again.
“No,” she says, shaking her head. “You really were?”
“I really was,” I confirm.
“If I would have known...,” she starts, but I don’t let her finish.
“Brooke, it was your home, not mine,” I say.
She gives me a soft smile. “This whole place was your home, though. You knew everything about these creek bottoms. You loved this place.”
She’s right. I did love this place. But of course, that’s not why I wanted the house.
“It’s yours now. I’m only sorry I bid ya up,” I add.
A laugh escapes her pretty lips. “You sure did,” she agrees. “But part of that was me too.” She looks back at the house. “I wanted this place so bad I’d pay anything for it, no matter how stupid it was.”
She lets out a soft sigh and then plants her gaze back on me.
“But why not just tell me last night—that this is where you’d be?” I ask.
Her lips part again, and she starts to smile. “I wanted it to be a surprise.”
I laugh to myself. “Well, it’s a surprise all right.”
She laughs with me, and when our laughter slowly dies, she gestures toward the field next to the house. “You wanna walk? I’d invite you in, but technically, it’s not mine yet. And I’m already trespassing.”
“I won’t tell anyone,” I promise.
She looks up at me through those long, dark eyelashes of hers. She still knows how to make me nervous. I nod my head and smile wide—for no particular reason. “Yeah,” I say. “Let’s walk.”
“Come on, Winnie,” she says. She sets the milk bottle full of water and daisies gently onto the porch railing before making her way down the concrete stairs again. Meanwhile, I’m frozen in my spot just staring at her—trying to convince myself that this is all real—that she’s real.
“You comin’?” she ask
s, turning back toward me. She gives me a puzzled look. “What?”
“It’s nothing,” I say. I try to shake off my stupid grin. “Winnie’s grown up, that’s all.”
She laughs. “Yeah. He’s not the only one who’s grown up.” Her eyes rake me up and down once. I don’t think she tries to be seductive about it. That’s just her way. She’s as sexy as the day is long. And I try like hell not to blush as I grin like a damn teenager.
I really want to take her hand right then, but I’m too damn scared that I’ll realize that this too has an expiration date—or that at any minute, I’ll discover that we’ve not only grown up but grown apart. So, with that thought, I keep my hands to myself.
“Your ring,” I say, pulling off the ring she gave me last night and handing it to her.
“Well, thank you,” she says, taking it and slipping it onto one of her fingers. “But truthfully, I knew you’d show.”
“Oh, that confident, huh?” I ask.
She shrugs her shoulders. “Well that, and I also figured that eventually you’d look at that address, and your mind would go to wondering. I figured you’d want to know why I gave you an ENS number to this old place.”
“The ENS was clever,” I admit.
She lowers her eyes and laughs. “Thanks.”
I just smile and shake my head. Too bad that’s not the reason I showed.
“What? What is it?” she asks, letting her laugh slowly die. Damn, I’ve missed her laugh.
“It’s just...you’re here,” I say.
Her gaze falters to the ground at our feet, but her face quickly lifts again, and she’s wearing a beautiful smile. “I know. It’s kind of crazy, isn’t it? How long has it been?”
“Too long,” I say, without hesitation.
Her smile widens.
“What?” I ask.
“You know, you were my hardest good-bye?” she says.
I can’t help but grin at that. “Your hardest good-bye, huh?”
She nods. “Mm-hmm. And I’ve said a lot of them.”
We’re both quiet then. I think I’m still just letting her words sink in. I’ve said a few good-byes in my life, and she would have been right up there too, if I had ever really said good-bye to her.
“Tell me something about you,” she says, breaking my thoughts. “Tell me something I’ve missed. I feel like I’ve missed so much.”
“Okay.” I pause for a breath and think about it. “I have a cat named Corn now.”
She laughs. “I always pictured you as a dog person.”
“Well, I think I am, but this cat’s okay. It was the neighbor’s, until she realized her little boy was allergic to it. I said I’d take it in, but the little boy had already named it. I guess when you’re two, Corn is a pretty damn good name for a cat.”
She laughs again and then settles back on my eyes. “Corn?”
Damn it, her eyes still make me nervous. That hasn’t changed. I push my lips to one side and just nod. “Yep.”
“And that’s all I’ve missed, huh?”
I nod. “Pretty much.”
She lowers her gaze.
“What about you? What have I missed?” I ask.
Her smile starts small and then grows wide.
“What?” I ask.
“I found Winnie-the-Pooh.”
I cock my head. “The original Winnie-the-Pooh?”
She nods. “The day we left this place, I found it stuffed in between two boxes in the basement.”
“So you never really lost it after all?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “No, I guess not.”
She’s quiet then. We’re both quiet then. I’m thinking about the thing I lost in the move. Turns out, I found her after all too.
We both step over a fallen oak. We’re at the tree line that leads to the creek now. And I’m well aware Brooke hasn’t said anything about a boyfriend yet. But now, I guess, I’m pretty convinced there isn’t one. It might just be my wishful thinking, but I’m guessing she wouldn’t be here with me if she had one. Then again, maybe she would. I only know the girl who showed up at the creek that one summer nearly nine years ago. And there’s a lot of life in between there. And then, of course, there’s Amy. There’s Amy swimming around the back of my head. Amy, my friend. Amy, my ex-girlfriend. Amy, the girl who just wondered back into my life—and maybe even my heart.
“And high school?” I ask.
She shrugs her shoulders. “It was...high school. We stayed in one place for four years, and I ate questionable lunches and managed to sleep through most of Mr. Ethan’s classes. And I ran track in the spring...and my best friend and I drove way too many loops around town when I first got my driver’s license.”
I laugh. “I think that pretty much about sums up my experience too.”
She smiles as we keep walking.
“But you ran track?” I ask.
“Yeah,” she says. “It turns out I wasn’t such a bad 800-meter runner. I hated every second of it.” She stops and furrows her eyebrows. “But for some reason, I never quit.”
I snicker under my breath. “Pain is in your nature, I think.”
She gives me a sideways look.
“You did bale hay with me once. Don’t think I forgot.”
She smiles wide, showing her teeth this time. “That I did.” Her lips start to slowly fall then, but the smile just barely remains as her eyes lock on mine.
“River, it...” she starts.
I wait for her to continue, but it doesn’t look as if she’s going to.
“It...,” I repeat, trying to coax her to finish her sentence.
She shakes her head. “Never mind. It’s nothing.”
I know it’s something, but I don’t push her.
“So, you’re a writer now?” she asks.
“Yeah. As it turns out, not many people read newspapers anymore, but someone forgot to tell me that when I was getting my degree.”
Another pretty laugh falls from her lips. “And even if they did...tell you...”
She pauses and I just nod. “I guess I would have done it anyway,” I say.
Suddenly, we’re at the creek bank. And all too soon, I notice the sun is setting. I look around. We’re about a mile away from the house. How did we even get here? Had we really walked that far?
“You want to sit down?” I ask her.
She looks at me like she’s thinking about it. “Okay,” she says at last.
We sit on the grass, and there’s still so much running through my head. I’ve heard some, but I want to know everything—everything I’ve missed. I want to...
“I can’t believe we’re here again,” she says, stopping my thoughts. Her voice is low but songlike.
I nod. “You know, I had my last perfect summer here.”
“Your last?” she asks.
“Yeah, life hit me after that—high school and decisions...and thinkin’ too much,” I add. “That summer, I didn’t have any of that.”
She smiles. “Yeah, I guess it was mine too.”
We’re quiet again, just listening to the tree frogs and the wind blow through the maples and the oaks and the river birch. A snapping turtle fans out its webbed feet and glides past us right under the water’s surface. It feels as if just yesterday we were both here together, both figuring out what life and love were all about. I wish there were something I could say or do that would erase nine years and that would bring us back to that time where we didn’t really know what to say, but we said it anyway.
“River?” Her voice breaks my thoughts again.
“Yeah?”
“It...wasn’t just the job...that made me want to come back here,” she says.
I watch her green and grays leave mine and settle on the water instead.
“And it wasn’t just that I liked it here either,” she goes on. “I mean, I did like it here—a lot; it just wasn’t the only reason.” She pauses before she continues. “River, I got a letter recently. And it made me remember. It made me
remember how happy I was here.”
And just like that, the air in my lungs vanishes. It’s as if I turn smack-dab into a brick wall.
“It was from you.” She smiles at me. “From 1999.”
I can’t believe my ears. “Wait,” I say. “The letter I wrote you, saying that I hadn’t heard from you or got your new address, that one?”
She nods. “The envelope was full of forwarded addresses stamped onto it, and it was returned to you once, I think. But yeah, somehow, it eventually got to me.”
She pulls her knees closer to her chest. “But anyway, that’s why I’m back here,” she says.
I bite my bottom lip, then let it go again as her smoky eyes go to searching mine. “What?” she asks. She must notice my surprise.
“Brooke, I got a letter too...recently...from you.”
Her face goes blank. There’s a question on it; I can tell. But I keep going.
“I got it a couple months ago...the letter you wrote me back then.”
“Really?” Her eyes narrow, but in a way, they still kind of sparkle.
“Yeah,” I say. “I don’t know how, but it showed up at my parents’ house right before graduation, and...” I stop. I’m trying to decide if I want to tell her about my little ten-hour journey to her—about how I saw her with a punk in a truck, how I found her and then how I left her. I think about it, but in the end, I decide to keep that little part to myself...for now.
Her eyes turn down and follow a water bug skimming along the surface. “Oh,” is all she says, and then she’s quiet again.
I watch her fingers play with the hem of her skirt. And after a moment, she looks back up at me. “So, you didn’t get my letters either, until now?”
“Letters?” I ask. “There was more than one?”
She nods. “I wrote you two letters after we moved to Nashville.”
I know I’ve got a question hangin’ on my lips, but I set it aside. “I only got one,” I say.
“Which one did you get?” She looks sad all of a sudden, and there’s a seriousness in her question that I can’t figure out.
“It had your new address in it. You talk about liking eighth grade and telling everybody where you’re from.”
She almost looks relieved. I wonder why.