"Pen hasn't pawed at the side of her face once in two weeks."
We left the diner at a quarter to nine.
Main Street did its Saturday-night-in-October routine: quiet but not empty, the bookstore windows lit gold against the dark, leaves coming down off the maples and gathering at the bases of the parking meters. The air had finally gone cold enough that I needed to button my coat.
He bought me an ice cream cone from the place two doors down. Mint chip. I hadn't had to tell him. He'd rememberedfrom something I'd said in his kitchen weeks ago and filed it without making me notice.
He got pistachio.
"Pistachio?"
"What about it?"
"That's a grown-up flavor."
"I'm a grown-up."
"It's a flavor for a man at a wedding."
"Do you want some?"
"Yes."
He held the cone out. I leaned in and took a small bite off the side, then looked up at him over the top of it.
His eyes did something I was going to think about later, when I had the privacy to think about it.
We walked.
At the corner of Main and Elm, I needed both hands to button my coat, and he carried my cone without making a thing of it. He held it on the side I wasn't on, so I wouldn't have to reach. He didn't look at me while I buttoned.
I'd been married to a man who never once held my coffee.
The water tower was at the edge of town, on the rise behind the old fire station. I'd climbed it exactly once in my life. Audrey, at sixteen, on a dare she'd lost to me and made me carry out. We sat up there for forty minutes and decided what we were going to do with the rest of our lives. She was wrong about her plan. I was wrong about mine.
I stopped at the foot of the ladder.
"Have you ever climbed this?"
"I've been working out of the firehouse a block from it for two and a half years. Of course I've climbed it."
"On duty?"
"Yeah."
"Off duty?"
"Never."
I lifted my chin at the rungs.
"Bet you won't."
He laughed. The Queens crept in when he was relaxed.
"You're betting me to climb a water tower."
"I am."
