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“Oh God, Joe.”
“I’m not telling you to make you cry, Pip. You wanted to hear this story, so I’m telling it.”
She waved him on while blotting her eyes with a napkin.
“She then got out a ham-and-cheese sandwich and gave me half. A box of Apple Sours, and an orange. She split them in half too, placing half on my legs that were stretched out before me.”
Pip sniffed while Joe lost himself in the memory.
“She took out a book, I remember the title wasMatilda. I sat there for two hours while she read it to me that day.”
“Oh God,” Pip wailed, burying her face in the napkin.
“Get a grip.” Joe’s words were soft as he took her hands in his. “This is my story, not yours.”
“It’s just so... I don’t know. Sweet maybe, painful to hear, but I’m so pleased you found her when you needed someone, Joe.”
“So am I.”
“What happened then?”
“We met there twice a week for two years. We never talked outside that place. If I saw her in the street, we walked past each other, and we both knew it was for the best, because her parents would never have allowed it, and mine would have used her against me.”
“That sucks!”
“It did, but then I was older, and supposedly cooler, and hung with a bad crowd. No one would have understood what we had.”
“What did you have?”
“Friendship... and so much more. When she realized I couldn’t read very well, she taught me. Bullied me into doing my homework, and learning. I had to read to her for hours. And every time we met, she brought food for me to eat, and sometimes more to take home for Luke and Jack.”
“If I hug her next time we meet, do you think it will freak her out?”
“Yes, and you need to keep this to yourself, Pip. I mean it.”
“Okay, but tell me the rest of the story.”
“It’s hers too, so I’m telling you things she may not want anyone to ever hear.”
Piper crossed her heart with a finger.
“One day I was waiting for her, and heard her coming. She was screaming my name, and sobbing. I ran to meet her, watched as she hurried down the hill. She fell, and I caught her. It was the first time we’d ever touched. I carried her inside and she sat on my lap and sobbed out her story.”
Pip grabbed more tissues.
“Her parents were separating, and she was leaving with her mother to go and live with her grandfather in Boston. That was the last time we saw each other, until I found her in the grocery store three days ago.”
“What? No.” Pip shook her head. “Surely you wrote to each other. Made contact somehow?”
She wrote, Joe thought,but not me. I was too busy self-destructing.
“The end,” Joe said, picking up his now cold coffee and taking a large mouthful to ease the dryness in his throat.
“But there’s more, isn’t there? Lots more.”
Joe just shrugged. “Heads up, the rest of the Trainer clan is arriving,” he said.
“Your secret is safe with me, Joe. But talk to her; don’t let her leave without that at least. You owe each other something. A connection like that is never truly severed,” Pip said before she got to her feet to greet his brothers.
