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“Moosehead. Tomorrow I'm thinking of doing Yarrow.”
“Yarrow is lovely, but Moosehead is my favorite. Or it was. I haven’t gotten to the trails for a jog or hike for so long, I hate to admit.”
Chandler perked a little and his back straightened slowly. “Why not go with us tomorrow, Dad?”
I was shocked, but my surprise was nothing compared to Rick’s. “Really?” he asked after his jaw righted. It had fallen instantly when Chandler asked.
“Yeah, sure. Phoebe will be here to watch the kid.”
“Not the kid,” Colby protested before shoveling potatoes into his mouth.
“You’re the kid,” Chandler repeated and laughed as Colby showed him a mouthful of food.
“Colby, manners,” Rick chided before he shook his head and told Chandler, “I’d hate to intrude.”
“Not an intrusion, Dad, if I invited you.”
Rick looked at me and I agreed. “We’d love to have you.”
“I’d…love to come,” he whispered.
We met on the patio again as I was watching the starry sky. There was a shooting star that fell in the east just as Rick sat. “I feel like I keep intruding on you.”
“Not at all. I like the company.”
“Not just now. I mean, you know, the run in the morning. Did Chandler speak out of place and put you on the spot?”
“No, Rick. You’re very welcome.” That reminded me of what Chandler had said. “Rick, when you thought of me for this job, it couldn’t have been just from seeing me at the diner.”
He smiled as he ducked his head a little. “No, no. I saw you and asked Phoebe about you at dinner that night. She usually knows the scoop on all the new people in town. She didn’t know much, so she asked around to her usual cohorts in the rumor mill. You were an enigma, so to speak.”
“Was Chandler there when you asked?”
After a cock of his head, Rick thought on it briefly then moaned, “Mmhmm, I think so. It was at dinner, but he’s usually nose-deep in his phone.”
“It’s been my experience that most people stare at their phones but still comprehend a little bit of what’s going on around them. Anyway, that’s good to know.”
“Am I going to get an explanation?”
I laughed and whispered, “Not yet. Maybe soon.”
“Okay. I’ll have to be patient.”
We sat quietly for a while before I mentioned to Rick, “You have a good son, in case you ever worry. And he’s really smart.”
“That, I do know. He’s too damn smart, but he thinks he’s smarter. Like anyone that age, he thinks he knows it all.”
“And you’re terrified for him.”
I got a crooked smile for that. “Yes. I can’t deny that. I’m terrified to have him leave into this huge, mostly cruel world.”
“Mostly cruel?”
I felt his pain, I did, but even jaded, I knew that there was a lot of good in the world. “Perhaps I’m not seeing the forest for the trees, as they say,” he said as he stared into the trees in the distance, his fingers gently tapping the glass of the table surface. The creases on his forehead were deep as he pondered, teeth gnawing his bottom lip.
His thoughts were seen plainly this way. Rick couldn’t hide his fears or his worries. “The trees being your heartbreak? I can’t say I blame you. I know about that.”
“Your boyfriend, yes. When someone tells you they love you then can just…walk away, it’s like nothing seems right any longer. There I was, holding my little boy in my arms as she turned her back and hurried out of the door. I thought I’d felt all the pain I was due, but that…”
