by Claire Adams
“And remember how we talked about riding horses? I was thinking maybe you could come by and I’d give you a lesson. If you were still interested.”
“Why, I’d love that!” she said. “Lena, I’m going to be a cowgirl after all!” she called across the room to one of the waitresses. “When should I come over?”
“Does tomorrow work?”
“Sure does! Oooh, I’m excited!” She grinned, and I found myself grinning back at her, her enthusiasm contagious. There was something alluring about her, not just the fact that she had a pretty face, but something else that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
After I had my coffee, I said good-bye to Wren. I had another matter to take care of, and I checked my pocket to make sure the little slip of paper was in there.
Carolyn had left me her phone number, but when I went to use a pay phone, I couldn’t find one. The one phone booth I could remember, near the library, was still there, but the phone had been removed. Ripped out, maybe. It looked pretty rough, and it didn’t look like it was going to be fixed it any time soon.
An older guy was coming out of the library and stopped when he saw me standing there, looking at the phone booth. “Gonna be standing there a while, sonny, if you’re waiting for that thing to ever work again,” he said. “You forget to charge your phone or something?”
“No, I don’t—”
“’Cause my wife, she’s always forgetting to charge the damn thing, until I did some research and got her one of these portable chargers; it’s good for up to three full phone charges. Except you have to remember to charge that. But it’s been a good investment. I recommend you get one.”
“I don’t have a phone,” I said.
“Why in hell not? Even I have one. Granted, it’s not one of those fancy pants ones, but it works.”
“I used to have one. But there were still phone booths.”
“What—you been living under a rock all these years? Get with the times,” he chided. “I’d let you use mine, but I can’t seem to find it. It can’t seem to stay in my pockets, I’m always misplacing it, and unfortunately, they don’t make something that can be any help with that.”
“A fanny pack?” I said jokingly.
He didn’t say anything right away, but then his eyebrows shot up and he grinned. “Now that’s a bright idea! My wife was trying to get me to carry some sort of satchel or something ridiculous like that.” He patted my upper arm. “You have a good one, now! Maybe go out and get yourself a phone.”
I stood there for a minute after he’d walked off, and then decided to go back into Ollie’s. Wren was right there, leaning on the counter, chatting with one of the customers. “Back so soon?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “I went to use the pay phone but it’s not there anymore.”
The customer she was talking to, a heavyset woman with short, curly hair, swiveled on the stool and looked at me. “That’s been out of service for years now!” she said. “There’s no point in them leaving that thing up there, but they do.” She squinted at me. “You trying to use it or something?”
“I was.”
“Your phone died?”
“I don’t actually have one.” I looked at Wren. “Could I use the one here?”
“Of course you can, but maybe we should go get you a phone. There’s a place a few blocks down. Come on, I’ll go with you.”
She untied her apron and tossed it under the counter. “I’ll be back in a little bit,” she said to one of the waitresses. She smiled at the curly-haired woman. “See you later, Renee.”
“Bye,” Renee said. “Have fun phone shopping,” she said to me.
“You can just leave like that?” I asked Wren as we stepped outside.
“Sure I can.” She shrugged. “I’m the boss, right?”
“Good point.”
“I wouldn’t leave like that if we were in the weeds or anything, but it’s slow. And you need to get a phone.”
I smiled. “I thought you said you liked that I didn’t have one.”
“I think I said it was refreshing. Which it is. But it’d be nice to have a way to get in touch with you.”
“You know, there is a phone in my cabin, but I don’t know the number. Actually, I’m not even sure that it works.”
“You don’t strike me as the type who’s in his cabin too often. I’m not saying you should turn into one of those people that’s glued to their phone, but having a way to be in touch is good. And what if you’re out riding and you get bucked off and need to call for help?”
“Guess I better not get bucked off.”
We came to an intersection and stopped on the curb, waiting for the light to change. There was absolutely nothing remarkable about this, but I felt a surge of happiness go through me. Here I was, on this nice day, standing next to an attractive woman under the clear blue sky, the sun shining down on it all. At that moment in time, I felt like I was about the luckiest man alive.
I looked at Wren, who was watching the traffic light, and took in her profile—the way she had a handful of freckles scattered across the bridge of her nose, her long eyelashes. She must’ve felt me looking because she turned and smiled, and she had one of those smiles that went all the way up to her eyes.
“Phone shopping can often be a painful experience,” she said, “but let’s see if we can make it as quick and painless as possible. Luckily, I know the manager here—he comes in most mornings for his muffin and coffee. He knows I’ll have no qualms withholding either—or both!—if he tries to give us the runaround.”
The light changed and we started to walk across the intersection. “You can do that?” I asked. “Refuse service like that?”
“Of course I can. Here’s his place right here.”
The manager, Steve, seemed more than happy to see Wren, and when she told him I was getting a new phone, he seemed more than happy for me, too. He started showing me a number of different phones, all of them that same sleek, rectangular shape that seemed like they’d break if you even looked at them the wrong way.
“No flip phones?” I asked. “That’s the kind I used to have.”
“We’ve got one,” Steve said, casting a doubtful glance at the one flip phone they had. “But really . . . that technology’s so dated. Get yourself a phone like this and you’ve got the world at your fingertips. If you’re afraid of it breaking, I recommend this one, which has a shatterproof screen and is waterproof, to boot.”
It seemed like way more phone than I’d ever need, but I figured I might as well get with the times. The world at my fingertips? That didn’t sound so bad.
We spent another fifteen minutes in there, getting everything set up, deciding on what plan I should pick, getting a quick tutorial.
“If you run into any problems, just ask Wren about it, she’s a whiz,” Steve said. He looked at Wren. “You going to have the morning glory muffins tomorrow?”
“Since you asked so nicely, I think we will,” she said.
He grinned. “Makes getting up in the morning so much easier when you know you got a good cup of coffee and a muffin. You two have a good day, now.”
“See?” Wren said when we stepped outside. “That was pretty painless, wasn’t it?”
“It was,” I said.
“And now you have a new phone. What’s your number, by the way? I’ll call you and then you’ll have mine.”
I had to read the number Steve had written down for me on the receipt. She typed it into her phone.
“I appreciate you helping me out like this,” I said.
“Any time,” she said.
I walked her back to the restaurant. “Thanks again.”
“Don’t mention it. I’ll give you a call tomorrow before I head over for my riding lesson!” She gave me one more smile and then went inside. I stood there for a minute, smiling after her, then I turned and went over to my truck. I called Carolyn, and asked her if she was busy. She said no.
“Where are you?”
“I’m down at Ollie’s, actually. Was just getting a cup of coffee.”
“Why don’t I come meet you there? I was out running errands; I can be there in five minutes.”
“Okay, sure,” I said. “I’ll see you soon.”
I fiddled with the phone while I waited for Carolyn, getting used to swiping the screen to navigate. When she arrived, she parked next to me.
“Looks like someone got a new phone,” she said.
“Yeah. Still trying to figure it out.”
“They make them pretty user-friendly nowadays. Are you hungry? Want to go get something to eat?”
I slipped the phone into my pocket. “I was thinking maybe we could take a little walk.”
“A walk? Sure.”
We took a right out of the parking lot and started walking, in the opposite direction from the phone store. Carolyn was awful close to me, and I could tell she wanted to reach out and hold my hand. I took a deep breath.
“There’s something I wanted to talk to you about,” I began.
“Oh? What’s that?”
“Well . . . There’s no real good way to put this,” I said. “It’s something that I should have told you, and I’m sorry that I never did.”
“Told me what?”
“I was going to break up with you.” There was no nice way to phrase it, after all these years. “I’m sorry. I’d been thinking about it for a while and then . . . .” My voice trailed off. “And then everything happened the way it did.”
Her mouth was open like she was going to say something, but no words were coming out. Her brow furrowed, and a line appeared across her forehead. She blinked.
“A while?” she finally said. “You were wanting to break up with me for ‘a while’?”
“Maybe not a while. Not months and months, or anything. But—”
“Before or after we slept together?”
“What?”
“When we slept together—were you thinking of breaking up with me then?”
“I . . . I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
She shook her head. “God, I’m an idiot,” she said. “I’d been feeling like shit about the divorce, and then I heard you were back around and after the barbecue that night I thought it was really a sign that I was doing the right thing, and that maybe you and I would pick up where we left off. Because we were meant to be. I actually thought that when I got home from the barbecue that night. But I’m an idiot. I really am, aren’t I? And not just because of the other night, either. All those times I came down to the prison, hoping you’d come out and see me. Writing you all those letters you never responded to. You should have come out to see me, you know. Because I actually had something to tell you, too. Did you even read the letters I sent?”
I looked down at my boots. “No.” A few people had written while I’d been in, and I hadn’t read or responded to any of them. How could I explain it? I couldn’t, other than I was ashamed about what had happened and any contact with the outside world just seemed to serve a reminder of what a shitty person I was. Because not only had I killed someone, I had also caused all these other people considerable pain.
Carolyn folded her arms across her chest and sniffed. “I didn’t think so,” she said. “Because if you had, I figured you would’ve at least said something when I saw you the first time.”
“Said something about what?”
“If you’d read the letters, you’d know. Or if you’d come out to see me, even just once, you would’ve known. But you didn’t. So, maybe we should just keep it that way. It’d probably be better.”
Her face was twisted in anger, red splotches rising on her cheeks. There were tears in her eyes.
“Carolyn,” I said. “Please. I’m sorry. I’m just trying to do the right thing. I’m not trying to hurt you and I realize now that I should have—”
“I was pregnant!” she screamed. “I was pregnant and I didn’t know what to do and you were in prison and wouldn’t give me the time of day!”
“You were?” I asked dumbly. “Wait, but—”
“You didn’t have a condom, remember? No, you probably don’t remember.”
“Of course I remember.”
“Then you’d recall that you didn’t wear a condom, and I wasn’t on the pill or anything.”
“I pulled out, though, I didn’t—”
“Were you not paying attention in health class, Oliver? Don’t be stupid. Do you think I’m lying to you?”
“No, of course not.”
“I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t tell anyone. All I wanted was to be able to talk to you about it, and you wouldn’t even acknowledge me. So, I got an abortion.”
“I’m so sorry, Carolyn.”
And I was. I’d had no idea about any of that, and I hated the idea of her having to deal with that all by herself. But even if I had met with her when she’d come to see me, or if I’d read one of the letters, she’d still have had to deal with it on her own.
“I wanted to talk to you about it, I wanted to know what you wanted to do,” she said. “Of course, at the time, I was thinking we were still together. I thought you still loved me.” She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. “Would you like to know why I’m getting divorced? Because I can’t have children. Because Jeff wants a family and I can’t give it to him.”
“I didn’t think you were supposed to divorce someone just because you couldn’t have kids together.” I realized what a foolish thing this was to say only after the words had left my mouth and a look of enraged disbelief settled on her face.
“What the hell would you know about it?” she asked coldly. “You, who doesn’t even have the decency to respond to your girlfriend after you go to prison. And no, it’s not, but our marriage couldn’t withstand the fucking years of IVF treatments and heartache that I’ve had to endure. I can’t bear waking up each morning next to someone who thinks that I’m a failure.”
“You’re not a failure, Carolyn. And since . . . since you already got pregnant once, couldn’t that mean the issue is with him?” I knew I should really just keep my mouth shut, that I should stand there and take whatever it was that she wanted to dish out, because I truly did deserve it. But I also hated that look of pain on her face, hated that it was me who had caused it.
“Oh, that’s exactly it!” she exclaimed, clapping her palm to her forehead. “Why didn’t I think of it? Why didn’t any of the fertility specialists, who we gave tens of thousands of our dollars to, realize this? That’s completely amazing that after a five-minute conversation you’ve been able to figure out exactly what the problem is.” She shook her head. “You’re such an asshole, Ollie, do you know that? You’re such a fucking asshole. Why am I here taking this fucking walk with you right now, anyway?”
I looked back down at the ground again.
But she wouldn’t relent. “Really, Ollie, why are we out here? Why did you call me and have me meet you here and take me for a walk? Why?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. I raised my head and met her gaze. “That’s what I wanted to tell you. That I was sorry.”
“You could’ve just done that over the phone. Or sent a postcard. Or a singing fucking telegram. But the real reason you’re out here is for you. You don’t give a shit how I feel about it—you’re out here because you feel guilty and you’re trying to somehow mitigate it. Well, guess what? I don’t accept your fucking apology. You don’t get to get off that easily. You broke my fucking heart and you didn’t even have the decency to do it to my face. And now, all these years later, you’re just trying to make amends to make YOU feel better.” She snarled these last words, and I had the feeling if I’d said anything else, she probably would’ve clawed my eyes out. She turned on her heel and stormed off, leaving me standing there, wondering if she was right, if the real reason I was doing this was just to make myself feel better.
11.
Wren
“Now, I am a total beginner,” I said to Ollie. “Probably mo
re so than most. I mean, I know that’s the front end and that’s the rear end, but that’s about it. Oh, and to hold your palm flat when you feed them, but I learned that the hard way.” I’d been seven years old and we’d gone to the county fair and I made the mistake of holding a slice of apple with my two fingers and trying to feed it to a Shetland pony that I thought was adorable until he chomped down on my fingers along with the apple.
“Well, I’d say you’re off to a pretty good start, at least,” Ollie said. He gave the horse, Sweetpea, a pat on the neck. I’d watched as he tacked her up, putting on a woven blanket on her first, then the heavy saddle, which he easily hoisted up as though it were nothing. He told me the part that secured the saddle to her back was called a cinch, though in English riding it was called a girth.
“So, this isn’t English riding?” I’d asked.
“Nah,” he said. “If it were, the saddle would be a lot smaller, this horn wouldn’t be here—” he patted the front of the saddle where there something that looked to me like a handle or grip of sorts, “and when you held the reins, you’d be using two hands, not one. I’ve only ridden English a few times, and I personally think it’s easier to learn to ride western. More comfortable, that’s for sure.”
He did have a helmet for me to wear, though. I’d been expecting to don a cowboy hat, maybe a pair of fringed chaps, but the only thing he made sure was that I was wearing boots with a heel and that I had the helmet secured on correctly.
“Now, I don’t expect Sweetpea to spook at anything,” he said. “But for at least the first couple rides, I recommend that everyone wear a helmet.”
“That’s fine,” I said, knowing I probably looked like a fool in this one, but did that really matter? I was about to get on a horse for the first time and then I’d really be looking foolish.
“So, this here’s the stirrup.” He touched one of the bell-shaped wooden things attached to a leather strap, connected to the saddle. “You always mount and dismount a horse from the left-hand side. Sweetpea could care less which side you did, but some horses get freaked out if you try from the right.”