Page 221 of Just One More Thing

The town keeps celebrating around us.

People laugh. Somebody raises a toast. Wayne is teaching somebody’s grandmother a dance move nobody over sixty should attempt. Someone starts another story that’ll be told here for twenty years.

With her in my arms, home stops being a place and starts being her.

EPILOGUE

WALT AND WILLARD

Walt made two last cups of coffee before he locked the door.

He carried them across The Green.

Willard was on his bench, one hand resting on his knee while Chip sprawled underneath him, directly below the brass plate with Ida’s name on it.

Walt handed him a cup and sat down.

They watched Emory glance down at the ring on her hand like she still couldn’t quite believe it was there. Then she smiled up at Jake. The smile that had been getting harder and harder for her to hide all summer.

Jake said something to her, and she tucked herself closer against him.

Walt took a sip of his coffee. “Well,” he said, “I’d say that ended nicely.”

That got the faintest smile out of Willard.

“You think they know?” Walt asked.

Willard tilted his head. “Jake might suspect.”

“And Emory?”

“Emory suspects everybody.”

“That is true.”

Willard tossed a peanut into the grass.

Chip didn’t move.

“Ida would have loved today,” Willard said after a while.

Walt nodded. “Pat too.”

They sat with that for a moment, the names of their loves settling between them.

Chip woke up, stretched, and scampered out from under the bench to retrieve the peanut that had been waiting for him in the grass.

“You ever feel bad about it?” Walt asked.

“About what?”

“The nudging.”

Willard considered that, then looked back toward Jake and Emory dancing in the middle of The Green.

“No,” Willard said.

Walt nodded. “Me neither.”