bent to line her abandoned leather mules in a row with the other shoes on the mat beside the entry table. Who knew retirement would turn him into a neat freak? So not his style.
“Worm farm, LucyMyLight.”
The nickname he’d started using when they dated in college had never seemed aggravating before. But it felt as uncomfortable as a fiberglass sweater today. She blamed it on the barbed letter.
He took her hand as he had so often over the years and tugged her toward the kitchen. She slumped into the chair he pulled out for her, then forced her posture into a neutral, unreadable position. The man was pouring her a cup of coffee, eyebrows still dancing, and launching into a personal infomercial about worm farms. Now was not the time to collapse.
“I think this is it, Lucy. The thing I can get passionate about.” He slid her treble-clef mug toward her and lowered himself into the chair opposite hers. The pale beige brew in his nondescript coffee mug looked more like anemic chocolate milk rather than the Costa Rican mahogany that filled hers.
Charlie, Charlie, Charlie. “You want to raise bait? Fishing bait?”
“Now, see? That’s the common misperception—that worm farms are only good for producing night crawlers. Which, honestly, is reason enough by itself. I think anyone would admit that.”
She held the coffee under her nose. Too hot to drink. The aroma helped her mood about as much as a photograph of an antidepressant.
“A high-tech worm farm can produce—”
Had he just used high-tech and worm farm in the same sentence? His words squirmed in the air between them.
“—and soil enrichment, because of their . . . you know . . . feces.”
Collapses hold to no schedules. She pushed her coffee out of the way and laid her head on the table like a toddler falling asleep in her SpaghettiOs.
“Lucy! What’s wrong? Is it your heart?”
Her heart? She was not that old. And, sure, heart attacks knew no age limits. But really? His first thought was her heart? “No. Yes.” Her words disappeared into the tabletop. The scent of oranges cocooned around her. He’d bought the off-brand furniture polish again.
His chair legs scraped the ceramic tile. “I’ll get a baby aspirin.” She heard his footsteps pounding toward the powder room. Who knew he could move so fast?
She lifted her head long enough to say, “I’m not having a heart attack.”
“Stroke?”
Such a helpful man. “No. Close, but no.” She propped her elbows on the table and cupped her forehead in both hands. Her skull still seemed two sizes too small.
“Look, do I call 9-1-1 or not?” Charlie’s voice shifted from panic mode to irritation.
“Not. They can’t do anything about this.”
She knew without opening her eyes that he’d set the portable phone back in its base. A moment later, she felt his hand rubbing her upper back, tentatively, as if unsure if touching her would make it worse. “Lucy . . .”
The only warmth left in her lay across her shoulders, under his hand. “I lost my passion.”
“For . . . me?”
How could he think that after all these years? She sat back and leaned her head against his Ed Asnerness. She could hear his traditional mid-afternoon popcorn digesting. “I lost my job,” she said, choking on the words. “They cut the program.”
He stepped away without warning. Her head lolled. It surprised her she had the fortitude to right herself.
“They can’t cut the program.” His voice revealed the fierce protectiveness she’d come to count on, one that sometimes got in the way, truth be told.
“Closed session meeting last night sealed it.” Her coffee burned its way down her esophagus.
“Is that even legal? To schedule a school board meeting on the night of your spring concert?”
“I don’t know if it was legal, but I’m convinced it was intentional. The whole community showed up at the concert, not the meeting. It’s a wonder they had a quorum for the vote. Not that a small thing like regulations could stop a wrecking ball like Evelyn Schindler.”
“That’s one—”
“Watch your language.”
“—driven school board president.”
Lucy’s sigh started at her toes and worked its way upward. “A skilled manipulator of thought.”
“Or lack of it.”
She almost smiled at his assessment. Would have, if it hadn’t been such a tragedy. “When I think of what they were plotting while my students were singing their hearts out . . .”
“I wasn’t the only grown man shedding—what do you call it?—tender tears. Your students’ music moved us. In a good way. Your best concert ever, LucyMyLight.”
Strains of the concert’s high points replayed in her bulging brain, soothing and aching at the same time. “My last ever, Charlie. My last ever.”
The day the music died.
Chapter 2
2
Want to go for a walk?” Charlie sounded like a new dad trying to figure out how to make his toddler stop crying.
“No.”
“Retail therapy?”
Lucy considered aiming her mouthful of coffee just slightly his direction. She swallowed. “Retail therapy? Where did you even learn that term?”
“Live . . . with Kelly and Michael.”
“You watch too much daytime TV.”
“Nothing else to do. I only watch while I’m loading the dishwasher.”
In a second-fragment, she flew through an image of his typical day since taking early retirement from the paper mill a year ago. Retiring. The word sat like lethargic rocks in her stomach. Some cultural advances should never have become a staple of the American dream, in her opinion. Like red donkeys versus blue elephants—or was it the other way around?—she and Charlie might forever disagree on that point. He’d been on a countdown toward retirement since his first day at the mill thirty-five years ago. She’d resisted all discussion of stepping away from the passion that secondarily happened to provide her a paycheck—steering young people toward an appreciation for music. I love you, but worms are not a passion, Charlie.
He disappeared from the kitchen for a minute and returned with a bottle of ibuprofen. Like announcing a cure for cancer, he plopped the bottle on the table in front of her. “You’d probably appreciate a couple of these, huh?”
He’s a good man. He’s such a good man. I should be grateful to have
