Gerrit parked along the road in front of Luisa’s bright blue ranch-style house. He never could decide whether he was pleased she hadn’t remarried or whether it was a shame. She was a nice-looking woman. Fiery and confident. She could’ve found another man. Still could. But what she and Luke had together . . . well, you don’t find love like that twice.
As he walked up the path to her door, he noticed her gutters dripping over in a few places from the rain that morning. When was the last time they’d been cleaned? And her screen door had a tear in it. He had a utility knife in the truck but hadn’t brought a spline roller. There was a hardware store nearby. He could run and get one.
He stuck his finger in the tear. Was it small enough to patch or should he replace the whole screen?
The door opened. “Are you coming in, or do you plan to stare at my door all day?”
Gerrit pulled his hand back as if he’d been caught stealing a cookie. “Your screen’s ripped.”
“Oh, that.” Luisa waved a hand. “I was carrying a bunch of things into the house a couple weeks ago, and I got caught on the screen.”
“You should’ve called me.”
She pulled the door wide and ushered him in. “It’s nothing. And you’re here now, aren’t you?”
She was a diminutive woman, dark hair and distinctive features. Her personality always made her seem bigger than she was, and the wisdom and grief in her eyes made her seem older.
She urged him into the kitchen and pulled open the fridge with a flourish. “What can I get you? Iced tea? Milk?”
He’d seen and hauled and cleaned up enough milk to last a dozen lifetimes during his years on the farm, but he’d never grown tired of it. “Milk, please.”
She poured him a tall glass of milk and set it in front of him, along with a small white plate piled high with Oreos.
He picked up a cookie. “No pizzelle?”
He couldn’t remember a time Luisa had no homemade pizzelle on hand.
She threw up her hands. “And who would eat it? There’s only me. I grow tired of eating all the pizzelle.”
Her accent thickened when she was agitated. He ate three Oreos in silence and took a long draught of milk, the wheels in his mind turning, turning. Should he bring up the boxes or leave well enough alone?
She wiped the immaculate countertop with an equally immaculate dishcloth. “You’re not here to get the pizzelle. And you didn’t come to fix my screen door.”
He kept his eyes on the counter. “I haven’t seen you since Jim’s office. I wanted to check on you.”
She held her arms out and spun in a circle. “See? I am fine.”
Her parents had both died years ago. She had no siblings or children. She’d never returned to her homeland, where she’d lived the first twenty years of her life. But apparently she was fine.
“How is Hannie?”
He flinched. “Good. Busy.”
“Yes, yes. I go visit her in the shop sometimes. Such beautiful arrangements. And how are the kids?”
He wouldn’t know, yet he didn’t want to tell her that. “Fine.”
She gave him a knowing look. “Good.”
“I was in the barn the other day.” He gripped his glass in one hand and rubbed at the condensation with his thumb. “Luke’s boxes are in there.”
“So that’s what this is about.”
He kept staring at the counter.
She sighed. “Did you open them?”
“No.”
“I think you should.”
He looked up. “Why?”
Her eyes had a faraway look. “It’s good to remember.”
He wasn’t so sure about that. There were a lot of things he’d rather forget. “I could bring them here.”
“I kept all of Luke’s things from our time together.” She put a hand to her cheek. “They keep me company. But those things are yours. From before there was me.”
When Luke married Luisa, he took nothing from the tiny apartment over the garage on the farm except a few clothes. Not much had been in there, anyway. Almost everything from his younger years had still been in his old bedroom in the house they grew up in.
Their father had moved everything left behind in the apartment into his own house so he could rent out the space to migrant workers. But after Luke died, their father had demanded Gerrit remove everything from the house that might remind him of his oldest son. His pride and joy. And then he never spoke another word to Gerrit again, aside from the logistical communication necessary between two people running a farm together.
“Did Luke ever show you his old stuff? The yearbooks or anything?”
Luisa shook her head. “He said he started a new life the day he met me and none of that stuff mattered to him anymore.”
“Would you like to see it?”
A wistful look softened her face. “Maybe. If there were old photos, baby pictures . . .” She paused and smiled. “Yes, I would like to see that.”
He nodded. “Okay.”
Rising from his stool, he set his empty glass in the sink. “Thanks for the milk and cookies.”
“Where are you going?”
“To get the ladder from the garage. Gotta clean out those gutters.”
GERRIT’S BACK ACHED as he climbed down the ladder for the last time. There. Luke couldn’t have done it better himself. Not a single leaf remained.
Luisa pulled her car into the tidy garage as he was setting the ladder back in its place. She had offered to run to the hardware store for a spline roller once it had become clear Gerrit would not leave until he took care of the torn screen.
She hopped out and waved the roller in the air. “I got it.”
He grunted and took it
