Page 138 of Just One More Thing

I used to carry this thing anytime I needed something to hold so I didn’t have to hold the truth.

Apparently we’re back there.

Wonderful.

A full circle emotional relapse. But hydrated.

My feet carry me toward The Green with far more confidence than my brain has displayed in the last twenty-four hours. The bench comes into view beneath the big oak.

Willard’s there. Of course. Peanut bag resting beside his leg. One ankle crossed over the other like the man has made an art form out of not hurrying.

Chip sits at his feet, clutching a peanut between his tiny paws with the focus of someone who has never once questioned his place in the universe.

French Fry is perched on the back of the bench. He turns his head when he sees me.

I stop walking. “Don’t start.”

French Fry opens his beak.

“I mean it.”

He lets out one sharp, rude squawk, then launches himself toward the dock, probably to commit a misdemeanor near a sandwich.

Willard glances up. He pats the bench beside him. I sit. For a minute, neither of us says anything.

That’s one of the things I love about him. He doesn’t rush to fill silence like it’s rude. He just lets it exist. Lets you decide whether you came for conversation or just need somewhere to set your thoughts down for a while.

The bench is warm where the sun hits it and cool beneath the oak shade. Ida’s plaque catches the light near my knee, polished smooth by weather and time and, I suspect, Willard’s hand.

He hands Chip another peanut. Chip abandons the one he already has to grab the new one.

“You look happy,” he says. And because Willard has never wasted time circling a point, there it is.

I stare out at the water. “I do?” I ask.

“You do.”

I take a sip from my bkr to buy time, which would probably work better if I didn’t know he could outwait me by roughly a century.

“Yes,” I admit finally. “I am.” The truth settles into my chest so cleanly it almost knocks the breath out of me.

I am.

I’m happy.

“That usually scares people more than they expect,” he says.

I curl both hands around my bkr. “Does it?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Great.”

He tosses another peanut toward Chip. “Folks prepare for sorrow, difficulties, and loss. They make plans for those.” He pauses. “Most people don’t know what to do when something good walks up and sits down.”

I look at him then, but he’s watching Chip. “It was different this time.”

He doesn’t ask different from what. He doesn’t have to.