I’ve tried not to. I know it’s not right. I can’t change my heart, Sally. I just can’t.”
“Nate, I just don’t know if there’s a future for us or not.”
“I hope so,” said Nate.
Sally wanted so much to say, “I do, too,” but she could not. It was too soon, by far. It wasn’t right.
“All I know,” she said, “is that I couldn’t start life again with a man who couldn’t respect that my priority right now is to bury my husband. I have arrangements to make and details to see to, starting tomorrow.”
“I’d like to help,” said Nate.
“How would that look?”
“I know you are right,” he said. “It’s just difficult.”
Sally’s voice softened. “You think this is easy for me? We have to hold ourselves together and do what’s right. We owe that to ourselves.”
“Yes, and to my kids.”
“Yes, and for our community. We owe it to our neighbors not to bring scandal down upon our little town. I owe it to Joe, too. I know I would disappoint him if we got into a relationship right now. We have to act with integrity, Nate. If we don’t, there would be no chance at all of building a life together.”
They walked together for a while in silence.
Sally broke the spell. “So, I don’t think we should see each other right now or be seen together. We have to go our own ways, even more so now than ever. It hurts me to say this, but don’t call me or email me, or text me, or try to communicate in any other way. We’ve just got to break it off, and now.”
“I didn’t know there was anything to break off.”
“Don’t play semantic games with me, Nate. You know what I mean.”
“I do, Sally.”
“If you love me,” she said, “you’ll do this.”
Nate felt a thrill through his whole body. She had never mentioned that word before.
“I do love you, Sally,” he said. “You know that.”
“And you know how I feel about you.”
“No, I don’t. You’ve never said.”
“I can’t say right now for all of the reasons we have been discussing.”
So, she did love him!
“I can wait for now.”
Sally brushed her hand over his and then quickly walked ahead and joined another group walking up to Main Street.
Mayor Lou and Hope walked alongside Rock and Magdalena.
“Rock and I have been talking,” said Magdalena. “We’d like to invite you two to ride in the Grand Marshal’s car with us.”
“Oh, I couldn’t do that,” said Lou.
“We mean that we’d like to share the car, with all four of us sharing the Grand Marshal’s title.”
Lou couldn’t speak. He’d never had anything offered to him before, especially something that he felt strongly was rightfully his anyway! His feelings were all jumbled.
“Lou isn’t good at this sort of thing, so I’ll just say for the two of us that this is a very generous offer on your part and we accept!” said Hope.
“Good!” said Rock. “We don’t want anything at someone else’s expense and we don’t want it to be either one community or the other.”
“We’re bound together by our common humanity,” said Magdalena.
Now, Lou knew what to say. “Sounds like a good slogan for my next election campaign!”
“That’s Lou’s way of saying, ‘Yes, thanks’!” said his wife.
“Who gets the front seat?” Mayor Lou joked.
“Lou,” said Hope. “Shut up!”
“We’ll get together later,” Magdalena said to Hope with a half-smile. The two women hugged.
Chapter 19
Sally left the crowd that was moving toward Main Street and headed down to the corner of Newman and Main, where the diner stood dark and starkly empty. She was profoundly shaken by the frank and honest conversation that Nate and she had just a few moments ago. She reached for her keys and opened the door. The faint smells of breakfast were still in the air from the morning’s events.
She drew in her breath sharply. Some things had been moved around since she had locked the doors on her way out. Tables and chairs had been re-arranged. In fact, there were more tables and chairs than there had been when she left. She looked out the large windows and noticed that the seating arrangement outside had been enlarged and re-arranged too. She had missed that on her way in because she had been thinking of her conversation with Nate.
She walked slowly through the diner as if she were seeing it for the first time. Her heart quickened. Joe must be home!
“Joe?” she called out. “Joe! Are you home?”
Her calls were met by silence.
She walked up to his apartment above the diner.
She knocked on the door. No answer.
She tried the door. It was locked.
“No Joe!” she said to herself aloud. It startled her. In the silence, it seemed that the voice had come from someone else.
She went back downstairs and into the kitchen. The place was immaculately clean, more so than the hurried job she had done earlier.
A note on the top of the freezer read, “Food in fridge and in storage shed.” It was in the same handwriting as the note that had said, “Carry on.”
She heard the front door open with its familiar loud and then softer squeak of the hinges. Maybe it really was Joe. Maybe he was home after all. She peered around the corner of the kitchen, half afraid to look.
It was Carmelita.
“I saw your car here and the lights on and thought I would come and see what was up,” she said.
“You mean, you thought maybe Joe was home?”
“I was hoping so. Otherwise, I’m going to have to change my BOLO to a missing persons bulletin on him this evening.”
“Well, it seems like a good idea to me.”
“Let’s go upstairs and see if he’s taken clothes and his toothbrush and such.”
“Can
