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“The reunion of a first love is seldom easy. Especially one that was burned as badly as yours. I just can’t believe you ran away.” Lenora held back a slight chuckle, and it made me smile for the first time since seeing him.
“I have never ran so fast in my life.” I sat down next to Gilbert on the couch and scratched behind his ear.
Lenora began laughing and settled quickly as I heard someone else speaking. “Lettie, Teddy wants to talk to you. Love you. I’ll see you for dinner on Tuesday.”
Lenora, Teddy, and I had a tradition of Tuesday dinners together as a family. I looked forward to them, and even Gilbert was invited.
“Love you too,” I said back to her as I heard the two of them rustle with the phone, handing it off to one another.
“Lettie?” Teddy’s gruff voice came over the phone, loud, booming, and raspy.
“Hi, Teddy,” I replied.
He cleared his throat and continued, “Lettie, I know you don’t want to talk about this, but I am going to say it, because you need to hear it.”
I sucked in a deep breath. Teddy and Lenora were always full of life lessons. Lenora was sweet and gentle in her way of giving them to you, while Teddy was blunt and to the point. I couldn’t imagine what this one would be, but I had a feeling it was Tuck-related.
Maybe something about second chances and that it was what God would want. Maybe something about putting myself in Tuck’s shoes, or the fact that we may never know why he left the way he did, but that we could move past it and start over. Maybe Teddy was going to tell me that Tuck and I were meant for each other and that we were being pulled together by some fated universe, so I would be wise not to argue with it too much.
I exhaled slowly, preparing myself for the pep talk from Teddy. “Yeah?”
“Lettie, hon, you havegotto persuade Henry Pearson to neuter his dog. I think this is the second one Duke has gotten pregnant, and the shelter is going to be overflowing with puppies if he keeps it up. Now, I know he says it wasn’t Duke, but I have a hankering we’re going to see a lot of lab in Debbie’s puppies.”
I closed my eyes.
Or, maybe he just wanted me to chop off Duke’s balls.
TWENTY-THREE
2017
TUCK
I wentto the hardware store after my encounter with Lettie. I was wearing a baseball cap and a pair of sunglasses as though I were a celebrity attempting to be incognito in this small town, but regardless, it didn’t work. You couldn’t get anything past the people of Aveline, and I’d seen no less than five people who couldn’t wait to come up and shake my hand or give me a hug.
“Nice to have you back, Tuck,” said Rosie, the woman who owned the floral shop and had frequented the bakery when I’d worked there.
“Thank you for your service,” Poe Miller had said as he shook my hand with great strength. “Beau was happy to hear you were safe when I told him you were coming back.”
I’d rubbed my leg involuntarily, something I barely noticed I did whenever someone said the word “safe.”
It was a trigger of sorts, that word. It often brought flashbacks of those few moments when the medics had found us and began reassuring us that we were on our way to safety. For several minutes after the accident, that’s all I’d heard.
“You’re safe. You’re safe now.”
I grabbed the things I needed to begin working on the house, along with a small space heater until I could get a new furnace up and running, but none of that would matter today because I needed to start with the roof. Re-roofing a house was probably the last thing I wanted to do in the middle of winter in Aveline, but I didn’t have much of a choice.
I headed to Peach Street, my truck filled with black shingles, and for the first time since arriving yesterday, I noticed all of the Christmas decor around the town. Garland and banners hung in every shop window surrounded by lights and paper snowflakes taped to the walls. I’d forgotten it was almost Christmas. It wouldn’t be long until the town had its traditional tree-decorating ceremony and there would be carolers on every corner. Or at least, that’s how it had been over a decade ago when I’d been in Aveline for Christmas.
Aveline didn’t do anything small. There were celebrations for everything you could think of, and a holiday never went unnoticed. One of the members of the town council would send out a “get to know your neighbor” card anytime someone new moved to town. There was a section on the card that specifically asked which holidays the family celebrated, and if it were different from the ones we already had traditions for, they would add in a celebration so those newcomers would know they were among family in Aveline.
There were monthly birthday breakfasts to celebrate the townspeople, and coming up, there would be the Aveline Tree Time. In the middle of town next to the gazebo, there was a large pine tree. Every year on December first, the entire town would gather around the center and take part in decorating the tree. The Baking Tin would provide hot chocolate and pastries, and Rosie’s flower shop would set up an area for the kids to write to Santa Claus, complete with an old mailbox that sent the letters directly to the North Pole.
I’d often thought about what it would have been like to take Lettie to the tree decorating ceremony. There had been times when Christmas had rolled by while I was somewhere hot, thinking about the cold of Aveline. I’d wondered what Lettie would have brought to decorate the tree with. Would she have had an ornament she would bring each year? Would she have sat with the little kids and helped them write a letter? Would she have found the whole thing silly and unnecessary?
I’d never actually thought that last part would be true. Lettie had always fit in like she’d been here forever, and it was obvious now that it was because shehadalways belonged in Aveline. At the time, that summer together, I hadn’t realized it was possible. A girl like Lettie didn’t stumble into a small town and want to stay. Most of the time, they’d come in, chuckle at the quaintness of it all, and blow through town as fast as they could, but Lettie never left.
I pulled into the drive at Peach Street, and when I looked at the pitch of the roof for the second time, I felt a twinge of pain in my leg. It was a lot steeper than I remembered from the day before, and looking up at it, I wasn’t sure how I was going to manage re-roofing the entire house. There were shingles falling, and the gutters were peeling off the side. A year ago, I would have gotten up there with no problem and fixed the entire roof in a day, but now, well, now I couldn’t even figure out how I was going to get up onto a ladder with my leg in the state that it was in.
