“That was a sad story,” he says.
“It’s really not a sad story. Not to me.”
“But everybody dies.”
“Well, that’s not the problem with my story,” I say. “That’s a problem with life. But anyway, it’s a story about a lot of people doing a lot better than they expected to. A lot better than anybody thought they would. And I don’t mean to be wrapping it up on a bunch of sad notes, but, the trouble is, I’m in a bind here, Harris, because how do you tell a fifty-year-old story without reporting that most of the principals have ended their run on this earth? Well, there’s really only two possible answers for this one: You lie. Or you can’t do it. And you know me. I’m not one to lie. But I still have to say it’s not devastating that people and animals live and then die. Other people may think so, but I don’t. It’s hard, but those are the rules of the game.”
We walk again.
And I think to myself, If you think having and losing is so bad, try never having. Now that’s devastating.
By the time we get back to the Barneses’ house together—Evvie took me up on my offer to ride with me—Dotty, Connor’s widow, is already a little bit in her cups. And Dotty was never much of a drinking woman.
Her family is trying to gently pry the glass out of her hand and talk sense to her, but I don’t interfere. I figure if she can’t get drunk on the day she buries her only husband, on what day of her life will it be okay?
As I step into the house, she’s surrounded by all three of her sons-in-law, all trying—mostly at cross-purposes to one another—to get her to sit down on the couch and relax. But she doesn’t. She looks up and sees me, and her gaze just locks on me. It’s almost a little scary. She’s like a bird of prey, tracking on a scampering mouse in the grass.
I move across the room, but her eyes follow me.
“You,” she says.
Just in that moment it doesn’t sound like much of a compliment.
I move in her direction, thinking a hug might help.
But she stops me with one hand extended, her index finger pointing at the “you” in question. Her dark hair, which was pinned up in a careful bun at the funeral, is coming down in wisps across her face and shoulders. Just here and there. She looks a little too red in the face.
“You,” she says again. “It was always you. Connor told me so.”
She has a son-in-law holding her by each arm. The third is behind her. And now they’re all four staring at me. Probably everybody in the room is staring at me—though I don’t look around to see—wondering what I’ve done.
In that split second before I answer, I swear you could hear the proverbial pin drop in that living room.
“What did Connor tell you?” I ask Dotty. My voice is soft because I know Connor never said a bad word about me to her. I don’t doubt what I know. You don’t know a guy for sixty-one years and then start having doubts like that.
“He said we never would’ve met if it wasn’t for you, because he wouldn’t have lived that long. He said it was all you. Everything after he was fourteen was all because of you.”
“It wasn’t all me,” I say.
I still don’t look around, but I can actually hear people start breathing again. Because now we realize her grief has simply brought out a passion and an intensity in her face and her words that was making even a good thing sound bad.
She’s shaking her head hard now. Too hard. She looks as though she might unbalance herself. Then again, those sons-in-law will never let her hit the carpet.
“He said it was you.”
“It wasn’t. It was Zoe.”
“But who introduced him to Zoe?” she asks, her voice far too loud, her arms flailing wildly for some kind of inexact emphasis.
“I’ll take credit for introducing him to Zoe,” I say. “But I can’t take it all. Connor was a kind man. He was generous. He gave me too much credit. The truth is, it wasn’t me. The truth is, we took care of each other. Zoe and Connor and Roy and me. We just took care of each other. That’s all that was.”
She reaches out and pats my cheek, then nearly falls over.
The sons-in-law usher her out of the living room and into her bedroom for a much-needed nap.
Harris corners me on the back deck a few minutes later and reminds me I never told him what happened to Rembrandt and Vermeer. It seems like a question with an obvious answer. I mean, it’s a fifty-year-old story. So on one level, he knows. But he clearly wants more details. More color, as they say on Monday Night Football. So I drop back into my storyteller mode.
“They lived pretty long lives for Dane mixes. Rembrandt lived to be eleven, Vermeer nearly thirteen. I ran with them up until nearly the day they laid their heads down on their beds and chose not to pick them up again. I’m not saying that’s always a choice. I’m just saying in their cases I think it was.”
“Wait. How do you know?”
“Now . . . that’s a question I can’t answer. It’s not a thing I can wrap words around. You just had to know them. If you knew them, I think you’d understand. Anyway. They both passed quietly at home, in their doghouse next to their cabin in the woods.
“I cried like a baby both times.
“I had my own dogs by then, but that didn’t help as much as you might think.
“Grandma Zoe swore she was done with dogs, I think because the losses hit her so hard. But not three weeks after Vermeer left the world, somebody abandoned a litter of puppies at the county pound, and the shelter
