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She opens her eyes wide. “I have everything you ever gave me. In my memory box. I promise you that the rock is in there. I’ll show you if you don’t believe me.”
“You might have to, because I don’t believe you.”
“After the rain, I’ll show you.”
She starts to walk slowly down the path toward the dock.
“I thought you were nuts that first time I saw you sitting there waiting for the rain. Everybody else was rushing to get home, and you were just waiting for the raindrops to fall.” I laugh at the memory.
“You sat there with me, so you might have been a little nuts yourself.” She sees a puddle in front of her, and she jumps in it, making a splash. The rain is falling steadily now, and it’s pooling up in the dirt path.
“Did you have a good birthday?” she asks.
“Best one I’ve had in a really long time,” I say with a nod.
Suddenly, the quack of a duck running up behind us grabs her attention. “Oh, there’s Wilbur.”
I laugh. “He was asleep when I left. I guess he missed me.”
“He’s going to get wet,” she warns.
I feel led to remind her: “He’s a duck.”
She walks silently on, but it’s not awkward. “Can I ask you something?” I finally say, the words rolling out of my mouth in a frenzy.
She turns to face me, and I can see her eyebrows shoot up in the dark. “I’m pretty sure you just did,” she teases.
“Hardy-har,” I reply. “No, it’s about personal stuff. Just something I’m curious about.”
She nods. “Shoot.” She holds up one finger. “But I reserve the right to keep my secrets if it’s something I don’t want to talk about.”
“Fair enough,” I reply. “I was just wondering…” I let my voice trail off as I try to figure out how to ask what I want to ask. Apparently, she runs out of patience.
“Will you just ask it already?” She rolls her eyes at me, which makes me grin.
“All right, here goes nothing. How come you’re not a little bit torn up about what happened with your husband?”
She stops dead in her tracks, and she doesn’t say a word. The question hangs there between us like a bomb that’s about to go off, and I want to knock it out of the air, but it’s out there now, so I can’t.
“You think I should feel like screaming and crying and doing the woe-is-me thing, since my husband cheated and got somebody else pregnant, and I had to find out at work, where I lost my job because of it, and then he moved her into my house? You think I should be a little more upset about all that?”
I suddenly feel like the worst sort of heel. “Well, I was just curious,” I say, contrite. I don’t want to know any more. Not at all. “Curious why you’re not a little more bothered by it all.” I hang my head and groan. “It’s really none of my business. Forget I asked.”
“No, it’s a good question,” she says generously. She rocks her head from side to side like she’s thinking about it. “I guess I should be upset about it, huh?”
“Most women would be.”
“I guess that explains it, then.”
I’m confused. “Explains what?”
“Why my marriage didn’t matter as much as it should have.” She shrugs. “I should be absolutely wounded. I should feel like I took a dagger to the heart.” She shrugs again. “But I don’t. I don’t feel anything. So I guess that explains why he cheated.”
I stare at her. “He cheated because he’s a cheater.”
“He cheated because he wanted to be loved, and he found somebody who wanted to do it.” She bites her lips together and gnaws on them. “I don’t know that I ever loved him. I think I liked him a lot, and we had a few things in common, and we liked to do things together. But I think we probably should have stayed friends and never become lovers. I could have stayed friends with him forever and we would have been fine. But we didn’t make a fine husband and wife.” She throws up her hands. “And the thing is I really don’t care that he cheated. And that is…well, that’s really sad.”
“Huh,” I say, not knowing how to respond.
