Madison and Billy celebrated their six-month anniversary with a wild rapids raft trip in the Adirondacks.
Ian, permanently off Tinder as he’d always threatened, was focusing more on his studies and waiting for the right woman to find him. He brought his books to the Starbucks in Ashton to study, just to get out of the house. When he took a break and looked up, there was often a girl or two smiling at him. He’d found the more he ignored them, the more women showed interest in him.
“Had I known, I would’ve done this all along,” Ian said thoughtfully.
I was delighted for both of my kids. They deserved it.
One Sunday afternoon in the late-April sun, Lucy and I were sitting out front watching cars go by—not waiting for anything, just sitting—when I heard Lily singing before she even came around the corner on her scooter. She was wearing a blue dress and had a dandelion tucked behind her ear.
“Hi Jessie!” called out a taller, lankier Lily. “I missed you.”
It had been a long winter with only a couple of visits from Lily.
“You got another dog!” Lily said happily. “Wait, where’s Penny?”
“Honey, Penny went to heaven a little while ago,” I said gently.
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” said a tall man standing a couple of steps behind Lily. “If this is a bad time, we can—”
“Not at all,” I said, feeling my heart thud faster. I tried to stop myself from flat-out staring. He had wild blond hair and was wearing a broken-in pair of Levi’s. He had deep green eyes with flecks of gold like the inside of marbles, as if the sun was shining behind them.
“I’m Sawyer,” he said. “Sawyer Canton, Lily’s grandfather.”
I regained some of my composure. “You look too young to be—”
“Yeah, I get that a lot,” he said lazily. He took a step toward me and held out his hand. “And you are?”
“Jessica—” I got up out of the chair so fast it fell over backwards. “Jessica Gabriel.”
I took his hand, and his eyes crinkled with deep smile lines at me.
“Good to meet you, Jessie.”
I’ve always liked it when people call me Jessie right away. It’s a good sign.
Lucy had bounded off my lap and into Lily’s arms, and then they were both squealing and rolling around on the grass near the sidewalk.
“Looks like they’re going to be a while,” I said to Sawyer. “Would you like to sit down for a bit?”
I cursed myself for sounding so formal, but his hand had been warm and he’d had that firm grip that meant he was confident and he was still staring at me, his head slightly tilted as if trying to remember whether we’d met before.
I tried to look graceful as I upended my tipped-over chair.
“I’d love that, Jessie.”
And so we sat and rocked, almost in unison, for what I felt could be a very long time.
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Cari Scribner of Ballston Spa, New York, has been a journalist and a freelance feature writer for more than twenty years. With topics ranging from travel to trends and from breaking news to family life, her work has been published in many outlets, including The Daily Gazette, The Saratogian, Times Union, and more. Her short/flash fiction has appeared in Bartleby Snopes, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Corium, Drunk Monkeys Fiction Southeast, Fiction Southeast, Flash Frontier, Gravel, Litro, New World Writing, Nottingham Review, and Vending Machine Press. She lives with her two dogs, Lucy and Miloh, while her three grown children live nearby. A Girl Like You is Scribner’s first novel.
