“Thank you,” I said.
Savannah began rotating her glass again, seemingly lost in the swirl of liquid. “Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.
I wasn’t sure I did, but as I leaned back in my chair, the words came surprisingly easily. I told her about my dad’s first heart attack, and the second, and the visits we’d shared in the past couple of years. I told her about our growing friendship, and the comfort I felt with him, the walks that he began taking and then eventually gave up. I recounted my final days with him and the agony of committing him to an extended care facility. When I described the funeral and the photograph I found in the envelope, she reached for my hand.
“I’m glad he saved it for you,” she said, “but I’m not surprised.”
“I was,” I said, and she laughed. It was a reassuring sound.
She squeezed my hand. “I wish I’d have known. I would have liked to go to the funeral.”
“It wasn’t much.”
“It didn’t have to be. He was your dad, and that’s all that matters.” She hesitated before releasing my hand and took another sip of wine.
“Are you ready to eat?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said, flushing at the memory of her earlier comment.
She leaned forward with a grin. “How about I heat you up a plate of stew and we’ll see what happens.”
“Is it any good?” I asked. “I mean… when I knew you before, you never mentioned that you knew how to cook.”
“It’s our special family recipe,” she said, pretending to be offended. “But I’ve got to be honestmy mom made it. She brought it over yesterday.”
“The truth comes out,” I said.
“That’s the funny thing about the truth,” she said. “It usually does.” She rose and opened the refrigerator, bending over as she scanned the shelves. I found myself wondering about the ring on her finger and where her husband was as she pulled out the Tupperware. She scooped some of the stew into a bowl and placed it in the microwave.
“Do you want anything else with that? How about some bread and butter?”
“That would be great,” I agreed.
A few minutes later, the meal was spread before me, and the aroma reminded me for the first time of how hungry I actually was. Surprising me, Savannah took her place again, holding her glass of wine.
“Aren’t you going to eat?”
“I’m not hungry,” she said. “Actually, I haven’t been eating much lately.” She took a sip as I took my first bite and I let her comment pass.
“You’re right,” I said. “It’s delicious.”
She smiled. “Mom’s a good cook. You’d think I would have learned more about cooking, but I didn’t. I was always too busy. Too much studying when I was young, and then lately, too much remodeling.” She motioned toward the living room. “It’s an old house. I know it doesn’t look like it, but we’ve done a lot of work in the past couple of years.”
“It looks great.”
“You’re just being polite, but I appreciate it,” she replied. “You should have seen the place when I moved in. It was kind of like the barn, you know? We needed a new roof, but it’s funnyno one ever thinks of roofs when they’re imagining what to remodel. It’s one of those things that everyone expects a house to have but never thinks might one day need replacing. Almost everything we’ve done falls into that category. Heat pumps, thermal windows, fixing the termite damage… there were a lot of long days.” She wore a dreamy expression on her face. “We did most of the work ourselves. Like with the kitchen here. I know we need new cabinets and flooring, but when we moved in, there were puddles in the living room and bedrooms every time it rained. What were we supposed to do? We had to prioritize, and one of the first things we did was to tear all the old shingles from the roof. It must have been a hundred degrees and I’m up there with a shovel, scraping shingles off, getting blisters. But… it just felt right, you know? Two young people starting out in the world, working together and repairing their home? There was such a sense of… togetherness about it. It was the same thing when we did the floor in the living room. It must have taken a couple of weeks to sand it down and get it level again. We stained it and added a layer of varnish, and when we finally walked across it, it felt like we’d laid the foundation for the rest of our lives.”
“You make it sound almost romantic.”
“It was, in a way,” she agreed. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “But lately it’s not so romantic. Now, it’s just getting old.”
I laughed unexpectedly, then coughed and found myself reaching for a glass that wasn’t there.
She pushed back from her chair. “Let me get you some water,” she said. She filled a glass from the faucet and placed it before me. As I drank, I could feel her watching me.
“What?” I asked.
“I just can’t get over how different you look.”
“Me?” I found it hard to believe.
“Yeah, you,” she insisted. “You’re… older somehow.”
“I am older.”
“I know, but it’s not that. It’s your eyes. They’re… more serious than they used to be. Like they’ve seen things they shouldn’t have. Weary, somehow.”
To this, I said nothing, but when she saw my expression, she shook her head, looking embarrassed. “I shouldn’t have said that. I can only imagine what you’ve been through lately.”
I ate another bite of stew, thinking about her comment. “Actually I left Iraq in early 2004,” I said. “I’ve been in Germany ever since. Only a small part of the army is ever there at any one time, and we rotate through. I’ll probably end up going back, but I don’t know when. Hopefully things will have calmed down by then.”
“Weren’t you supposed to be out by now?”
“I reupped again,” I said. “There wasn’t any reason not to.”
We both knew the reason why, and she nodded. “How long now?”
“I’m in until 2007.”
“And then?”
“I’m not sure. I might stay in for a few more years. Or maybe I’ll go to college. Who knows—I might even pick up a degree in special education. I’ve heard great things about the field.”
Her smile was strangely sad, and for a while, neither of us said anything. “How long have you been married?” I asked.
She shifted in her seat. “It’ll be two years next November.”
“Were you married here?”
“As if I had a choice.” She rolled her eyes. “My mom was really into the whole perfect wedding thing. I know I’m their only daughter, but in hindsight, I would have been just as happy with something a lot smaller. A hundred guests would have been perfect.”
“You consider that small?”
“Compared with what we ended up with? Yeah. There weren’t enough seats in the church for everyone, and my dad keeps reminding me that he’ll be paying it off for years. He’s just teasing, of course. Half the guests were friends of my parents, but I guess that’s what you get when you get married in your hometown. Everyone from the mailman to the barber gets an invitation.”
“But you’re glad to be back home?”
“It’s comfortable here. My parents are close by, and I need that, especially now.”
She didn’t elaborate, content to let her comment stand. I wondered about that—and a hundred other things—as I rose from the table and brought my plate to the sink. After rinsing it, I heard her call out behind me.
“Just leave it there. I haven’t unloaded the dishwasher yet. I’ll get it later. Do you want anything else, though? My mom left a couple of pies on the counter.”
“How about a glass of milk?” I said. As she started to rise, I added, “I can get it. Just point me to the glasses.”
“In the cupboard by the sink.”
