Letters From Grace

by C. J. Carmichael

  She could tell the moment he spotted her back. First he paused. Then smiled and hurried forward.

  “You’re out early,” he said.

  “Wanted to catch the morning light. I’d forgotten how pretty this town is.” She eyed the rake. “Trying to earn some extra cash?”

  He chuckled. “I was just at my folks’, cleaning up their yard before I open the store. So what do you think of the old house?” He nodded at the structure in front of them. “It’s been painted a few times. New roof too, I believe. But other than that, it hasn’t changed much.”

  “No, it hasn’t. I have this odd feeling that if I went through the front door I’d be transported back to when I was eighteen and find everything exactly the way it was then.”

  “Want to test your theory?” Levi nodded at the entrance.

  She laughed. “I’d probably be arrested.”

  “Guess we better move along then, before the owners notice us gawking. I’m on my way to work. You?”

  “I’m heading to Main Street too. I’d like to take some photos. Maybe get a latte from a place I know.” She bumped her shoulder against his and instead of bumping her back, the way he used to do when they were younger, he gave her this long, intense look. His gaze pierced through the thick protective layers that separated them, making Grace remember how it had been for them when they were younger, and every touch had been charged with so much sexual energy.

  That energy was back, and she was certain he was going to kiss her.

  But all he did was suggest they walk together. “As long as you don’t mind being seen with a rake.”

  It took her a moment to spot the pun. This time she groaned. “Really, Levi?”

  “I can’t help it. It’s genetic. Take it up with my dad.”

  “So…the meeting last night. That was pretty intense.”

  “The Autumn Foliage Festival is serious business in this town. It’s the highlight of our peak tourist season.”

  “I remember going as a kid. I just never appreciated how much work was involved.”

  “Things will really get crazy on Thursday,” Levi said. “That’s when my sub-committee will start setting up the booths, signage and decorations. Port-a-potties and garbage bins come Friday morning.”

  “You’re going to be so busy. I was hoping you’d let me beat you again at chess. Also I’d love to get out for a hike while I’m in town. But it doesn’t sound like you’ll have time.”

  “I can make time. How about Wednesday?”

  “Tomorrow? But don’t you have to work?”

  “My staff can manage the store for a day without me.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “Me too. Fall migration is such an interesting time for bird watching. You never know what you’ll find.”

  She gave him a second look. Was it just the fall migration that made him so willing to change his schedule for her? Judging by the sparks a minute ago, she didn’t think so.

  *

  “So how far are we running today?” Jess caught up with Max outside the west door after school ended for the day. He looked cool in ripped jeans and a tight long-sleeved T-shirt that showed off his strong, lean physique.

  She felt a secret thrill that he’d been waiting for her. She knew many of her girlfriends were jealous. “He’s so devoted,” they said. When she protested they were just friends, the answer she got back was, “Yeah, right.”

  “Max?” He’d started walking as soon as she caught up to him, head bowed, mind clearly somewhere else. “Our run?”

  “Oh, um, I forgot about that. Let me check.” He pulled his phone out of his back pocket. “Supposed to be eight miles today. But we could make it up later in the week.”

  “Skip a run?” He’d never suggested such a thing before. “What’s going on with you?”

  “Nothing. I just thought it wouldn’t hurt if we missed a run. That’s all.”

  “Do you still want to do the Spring Fling marathon together in April?”

  “Yeah, of course I do.”

  Where was his normal enthusiasm? “Cause the marathon was your idea. And you’re the one who drew up our training schedule. And told me I had to take it seriously and not skip a run just because I wasn’t in the mood.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. You’re right. I’m just not up to running today.”

  “Fine,” she said, but she didn’t feel fine. She knew things were going to change between her and Max once they started college. But she hadn’t expected things to start changing already.

  It wasn’t just his unusual disinterest today. Or the way he never stayed for dinner anymore. He was also texting her a lot less frequently in the evenings. Max was drifting away from her at the exact time that she wanted him to be closer. She was scared to ask him what the problem was. What if she ended up pushing him even further away?

  “So what do you want to do?” Max asked as they neared her house. “Want to play Fortnite? Binge-watch cat videos?”

  “I just got a text from Dad. He wants me to put some potatoes in the oven to bake. After that we can play Fortnite if you want.” Max followed as Jess marched up the porch steps, unlocked the front door and headed to the kitchen. While she scrubbed the potatoes and pricked them with a fork, Max tore off two pieces of aluminum foil.

  “Want me to put in a potato for you? We’re having these with Dad’s baked beans and coleslaw.” Both of which were favorites of Max.

  “Can’t. Thanks though.”

  She stared at him. “I thought Dad’s baked beans were your absolute favorite.”

  “They are. I’ve just got other places to be, okay?”

  She strove to hide her hurt feelings and keep her tone casual. “I can’t remember the last time you stayed for dinner. You used to be here three or four nights a week. What’s up?”

  Max drummed his fingers on the countertop. “Just hanging close to home.”

  Jess waited, but he didn’t say anything else.

  *

  Wednesday morning Levi woke up with an unaccustomed giddy feeling in the pit of his stomach. He felt like a kid about to play hooky from school.

  Jess was unusually quiet at the breakfast table. Come to think of it, she’d been quiet last night, too.

  “Everything okay?”

  She stirred her yogurt with no apparent interest in eating it. “Max is being so weird lately. Have you noticed?”

  Levi hesitated. “Have you tried talking to him about it?”

  “He says he’s just spending more time at home. But—”

  “Are you worried he’s out with other friends? Maybe…a girl?”

  She nodded. “It would be okay if he was.”

  Levi doubted that.

  “I just wish he was being honest with me.”

  “Maybe it’s time you made an effort to go out with your other friends more often?” Jess and Max both hung out with a group of mutual friends on Friday and Saturday nights, but they normally just saw each other the rest of the time.

  “I could do that,” she agreed.

  But she didn’t look excited about it. Levi wished his daughter would tell him how she really felt about Max. Then he might be able to offer her some better guidance. Or could he? He was pretty rusty at this dating business. So rusty he wasn’t even sure if his plans with Grace today could be considered a date.

  Whoa. Where had that thought come from? Their hike today was definitely not a date. He went back to studying his daughter, who looked no happier after his well-intentioned attempt to talk to her.

  “Want me to drop you off at school today?”

  “You’re driving to work?”

  He almost always walked when the weather was decent. “No. I’m taking the day off. Going to the Westland Nature Preserve.” He forced himself to add—because if he wanted honesty from Jess, he ought to offer it himself: “With Grace.”

  “Oh. That was fast work, Dad.”

  “She suggested it. She’s hoping to get some shots of some rare birds.”
r />   “Uh-huh.” Jess’s tone was teasing. “Just make safe choices, Dad.”

  *

  “I know it’s cliché but I just have to say it. This feels like old times.” Grace was in the passenger seat of his Ford F-150, windows open and music from the New Radicals playing on the sound system.

  “Yup. On the highway, headed for adventure.” With a pretty woman by my side, he thought but didn’t say.

  “This new truck is pretty swank. What happened to your old Jeep?”

  “Pretty much fell apart the year Maggie and I got married. But I got a lot of good years out of it.”

  “Yes.” She was silent for a moment. When she spoke next her tone was subdued. “About your wife. Maggie. We haven’t spoken since she died, and I’ve never had a chance to tell you how sad I was for you and your daughter. I can’t imagine how hard that was.”

  For a long time Levi had been unable to speak about Maggie’s death without experiencing visceral, gut-wrenching pain. But his grief had dulled over time, just as his parents had told him it would. “I felt pretty angry for a time. All it took was a patch of black ice and a deer on the road and she was gone. It seemed more than unfair. I felt like it was something God—or fate—had done deliberately to hurt me. And what made it even more unbearable was knowing my daughter would have to grow up without a mother.”

  “It was unfair,” Grace agreed. “So unfair.”

  “I got past the resentment. I had to. It wasn’t possible to be angry and bitter and be a good father to Jess too. So, while it was challenging being a single parent, having a kid to worry about also kind of saved me.”

  “Jessica is lucky to have a dad like you, Levi.”

  “I couldn’t have done it without my folks. They helped so much, especially when Jess was too young for school.”

  “Even so. Being a single parent seems pretty daunting to me.”

  “Is it something you’ve ever considered?” Levi asked. “Being a parent…single or otherwise?”

  “Not in the cards for me, I’m afraid.”

  Her tone seemed artificially light. He waited to see if she would say more on the subject. She didn’t.

  “What about marriage?”

  “Relationships are challenging when you travel as much as I do. What about you? You’ve been a widower a long time.”

  “Between the store and Jess and looking after my folks I don’t have much spare time. I had a buddy get divorced and then remarried. He had kids with the new wife and that was great. But it seemed to me that the kids from his first marriage got shortchanged.”

  “And you didn’t want that to happen to your daughter?”

  “Exactly. She’d lost her mother. I never wanted her to feel like she’d lost her father too.”

  “You must have been lonely though. At times?”

  He shrugged. “I’m not complaining. I really got to enjoy all it means to be a father, to raise a child.” He shot her an uncomfortable look. “Sorry, I hope you don’t take that as some sort of judgment on you. Not having kids, I mean.”

  “That’s okay. It wasn’t a decision I necessarily made. It’s just the way life has turned out for me.”

  Levi had a sense there was more to this story. But they had reached their destination and he let the subject drop.

  There were no other vehicles in the small parking lot. Coming very early in the middle of the week was working in their favor. They got out of the truck, grabbed their gear.

  “I feel so happy to be here,” Grace said.

  “Me, too.” He loved the way he felt at the beginning of a hike, the anticipatory buzz. What would they see today? Anything was possible.

  Making it all so much better was having Grace by his side. It felt so natural and right, as if only weeks, not years, had passed since they last went trekking together.

  They slipped on their backpacks. Grace slung her camera around her neck, and he did the same with his field binoculars.

  “Want to do the full circuit?” Grace asked him.

  He didn’t answer for a moment. He was struck how, even in basic hiking clothing, there was something so elegant about her. Being tall and lean helped. But it was also the way she moved, her poise and adroitness.

  She asked again, “The circuit?”

  He refocused. There was a network of trails through the preserve, but the circuit touched on all the main habitats…the woodlands, the pond, the marsh and the meadow.

  “That would be perfect.”

  Whenever he was out looking for birds, Levi liked to imagine he was a mountain lion, moving silently and stealthily along the path. In his experience most hikers were careless and loud. They created a wake not unlike that of a motorboat—pushing out the birds and other animals who would hide until the disturbance had passed.

  Grace, like him, had perfected this way of movement through the forest and he could barely hear her footsteps as they traveled abreast on the dirt path. The multi-colored leaves of the deciduous forest at this time of year were beautiful but they also provided excellent camouflage to the foraging birds.

  Levi tuned in to the sounds of the forest. The distinctive song of the eastern wood peewee led them to a juvenile, perched on a branch of a red oak, on the lookout for insects. Next he and Grace traced the distinctive drumming of a woodpecker to a female yellow-bellied sapsucker. When they reached the border of the marsh Grace froze and touched his arm—their long-ago signal that something interesting had been spotted.

  Levi followed her gaze to a low point in the thicket. A flash of yellow caught his eye. Sure enough a male common yellowthroat was feeding on the lower branches of a black willow. Levi slowly brought his binoculars to his eyes while Grace did the same with her camera.

  The shy yellowthroat was small with a rounded belly. His striking black mask contrasted beautifully with his bright yellow throat. Levi hoped Grace was getting some good pictures.

  By lunchtime they reached the meadow. It felt natural to gravitate to the same grouping of rocks where they had stopped for picnics when they were young.

  Levi pulled out pita pockets packed with falafel, chopped veggies and tahini sauce. Grace had a thermos of iced tea to share. They sat side by side, munched their food quietly, watching as a half-dozen robins, about fifty feet away, pecked at the grass in their hunt for worms.

  When they were finished eating, Grace stretched out on the ground, using her backpack as a pillow.

  “Is your daughter going to college next year?”

  “That’s the plan and I hope she does. If she had her way, though, she’d stay in Woodland and work full-time at the store.”

  “Do you think she’s trying to please you?”

  “I hope not. The business will be hers one day if she wants it. But only if she wants it. I’ve always been very clear on that with her.”

  “Unlike your own parents,” Grace said softly.

  Levi couldn’t deny it—Grace had been around his family enough to know how it had been—but he felt bound to defend his parents. “Not every kid is lucky enough to get handed a family business. And it’s worked out well. I’ve had a great life.”

  “You’re talking as if you’re seventy, Levi.”

  “I’m not?”

  She smiled and shook her head. “You’re impossible.” She hesitated then added, “Ever wonder what our lives would be like if we hadn’t broken up?”

  “We went our separate ways for good reasons. My path led to my daughter and to a rewarding life in a town I love. Yours has taken you to an amazing career and experiences I can only imagine.”

  “True.” Grace sounded resigned, if not disappointed by his answer.

  Levi touched the side of her head, brushed back the hair that gleamed like gold in the noon sun. “It’s kind of shocking how good it feels to be with you here. I guess I thought the twenty years we’ve spent apart would have created more of a barrier. But—you’re still you.”

  She turned so she could see his face. “And you are still you.”
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  He sensed she wanted him to kiss her, and Lord did he want to. But something made him hold back. Was it the things his mother had said yesterday? Or Jess reminding him to make safe choices?

  No, much as he loved them both, it was his own voice of caution that was sounding out the warning.

  “You’re so beautiful Grace. I can’t believe you have any time for a small-town guy like me.”

  “What’s so wrong with a small-town guy? When I was young, I didn’t think you’d be hard to replace. I thought I’d fall in love a bunch of times in my life before I settled down. But I was wrong. What we had was more rare than I appreciated.”

  “I feel the same.”

  “You married. Had a child. Obviously I wasn’t that hard to forget.”

  She seemed to forget that she hadn’t given him much choice but to forget her. “Maggie was sweet. I was lucky to find her. I’m sorry you haven’t been as fortunate.”

  “I’ve met a lot of interesting men. But life always seems to pull us in opposite directions. It’s probably my career. I don’t just love it. I’ve been consumed by it. I guess that makes me pretty selfish.”

  “No. It makes you complicated. And fascinating.”

  As their gazes connected again, Levi found himself drawn to her in a way he hadn’t felt for a very long time. She sat up and he brushed some crushed leaves and bits of grass from her back. He wanted to keep touching her. To tangle his hands in her hair and pull her mouth to his.

  He was inches from kissing her when he sensed movement in the tall grasses to his right.

  Grace had spotted it too. “Oh wow, Levi. I think that’s a Henslow’s sparrow. I haven’t seen one of those in years.”

  For once Levi was not excited by a rare bird sighting. Slowly he reached for his binoculars and trained them on the small, dull-colored bird. His first thought was grasshopper sparrow. But as he focused on the delicate black markings on the olive-colored face, he saw that was wrong. “Sure looks like it.”

  Grace was already crouched in the grass, taking pictures. He watched her work, as absorbed in her as she was in the sparrow.