One very strong memory of him came rushing back. I pointed at him again. This was becoming a very bad habit. “You proposed to me!” I sputtered out. He grimaced and ran a hand through his thick hair and then rested it at the back of his neck. “You proposed to me the night before I left.”
He shrugged his shoulders and turned away from me slightly.
I laughed and brushed off my dress. “What would have possessed a twelve-year-old boy to do that? Was it a dare?”
He turned around sharply, and I could imagine that gangly boy better now. He’d been so shy. He had spent days lurking around me as I’d delivered baskets before I was able to draw him in with interesting rocks and some foolish games we could play while we walked.Even when he had proposed, he’d had to do it twice because I hadn’t heard him the first time.
“I was nearly fifteen.” He said, straightening his back as though the addition of a few years would have made his proposal any less absurd.
“So you were fourteen?” I sighed in mock relief. “That’s infinitely better than twelve.” I hoped he noticed my sarcasm. I was fairly certain he did. Even when we were younger, once he started talking, we’d had no problems understanding each other.
He shrugged. “I just wanted to be the first one to do it. Of course I knew you wouldn’t accept.”
“Still ...” I sneaked another glance at him. The last eight years had been very kind to David. “It was rather awkward, wasn’t it?”
“Trust me.” He coughed out a laugh. I’d heard him laugh more in one afternoon than I had for weeks when I’d first met him. It was like that boy had been some dirty, forgotten egg everyone had given up on hatching, but when it had, he’d emerged as a mighty falcon. “It was much more awkward for me than it was for you.”
“I can imagine—I had to turn you down.” Without discussing it, we both headed in the direction of the cottage, our feet moving in unison, like two people who walked together every day. David had known where I lived, but I had never figured out exactly where he’d come from. He used to show up at random times but often enough that I’d grown to expect him.
We walked several feet in silence, and I was certain he must be reliving those moments of our summer the same as I was. But I wouldn’t look like a falcon to him. Nothing about me had flourished in the past eight years.
He kicked a stone along the path in front of us, and the motion solidified the boy David and this man into one in my mind. When he turned to look at me, I should have been flustered to be caught staring at him, but this was David. We’d spent hours together thatsummer and often in comfortable silence. I couldn’t help but smile at him. He was so changed, clean-cut and grown, and, yet, somehow the same.
He placed both hands behind his back, but instead of returning my smile, he raised an eyebrow. “So, was I?” he asked.
I blinked. “Were you what?”
“The first man who—”
I cleared my throat loudly. He definitely hadn’t been a man. My grin broadened, and I narrowed one eye to question his wording. He sighed and gave me that expressive half grin that told me he understood my unspoken protest. “The firstpersonto ask you to marry him?”
I laughed softly. “Yes, yes you were. Thank you. I believe I may not have told you at the time, but it was quite flattering.”
He nodded and then got quiet. “And was I the last?”
I thought of Mr. Green, and my stomach twisted. “No.” I shook my head. “You were not.”
“Ah.” He nodded again, and his lips made a hard line. He stopped suddenly, and I turned toward him. With an apologetic look, he lifted a finger for me to wait. “Pardon me for a moment,” he said, then swiftly turned around and walked back the way we’d come.
I stared hard at his retreating form and the question he’d first asked me came into my mind:Are you real?It had surprised me, but now it made sense. Seeing David again, in the same places and on the same paths we’d haunted years ago, but with our circumstances and ages so altered, felt as though I’d stepped into another world, one where everything had twisted to the point of becoming unbelievable.
“Mr.—” I stumbled over what to call him as he walked away. Had I ever known his surname? I couldn’t call him David now that he was a grown man.
He waved back at me but didn’t turn around to look. “I left my hat,” he called. His march turned into a jog, his arms pumping while his fur-lined coat trailed out behind him.
My cheeks warmed, and a sneaky bit of pleasure rose in my throat. My life was currently a disaster, but once upon a time, I’d been proposed to by this man. His boyhood proposal had been clumsy and mortifying for both of us, but looking at him now, I couldn’t help but wish Mama could see him and know her daughter wasn’t a complete disappointment.
W
Chapter 2
“I sneaked out today and saw a girl who sings as she walks even though she isn’t good at it. I don’t understand her. And I wish I had the kind of life where confidence and joy made sense to me.”
—David Tate, 1841, Age 14
David bent over, picked up his hat, and dusted it off with his fist. He stamped his feet once before turning around and striding back toward me. When he arrived, his smile was back on his face, but his eyes were a duller blue than they had been when we’d first tumbled to the ground together.
“So, Mrs....” He started, then paused, turning his statement into a question, his voice businesslike and formal.
