Chapter 22: Ring

My mother's house in Erie has a green porch with a swing nobody has sat on since 1998.

It had snowed all afternoon, the heavy lake-effect kind, and the whole street was blue and quiet under it.

Jude stood in her kitchen in a borrowed apron, holding a wooden spoon.

"Stir from the bottom," my mother told him. "Not the top. The top lies."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Do not call me ma'am in this house. Call me Mrs. Doyle until I say otherwise."

"Yes, Mrs. Doyle."

I leaned on the doorframe and watched the best-looking man in America stir a pot of chicken soup with a look of total terror.

He had stood on a stage in front of fifteen thousand people three days ago.

My mother had made him cry into a dish towel by saying, over a bowl of soup, that she had seen the video.

"You were very kind to my daughter on that stage," she had told him.

"I was trying."

"I know you were. Don't stop."

That was the whole speech.

He had nodded, and he'd gone red to the ears.

Now she tasted the soup off the spoon, narrowed her eyes at it, and said, "Fine."

His shoulders came down.

"Maggie Ann," she said, not turning around. "Take the boy outside. He's making the kitchen nervous."

On the porch, the air was so cold it hurt my teeth.

The swing creaked under our weight, and he pulled my coat around us both.

I looked at the street.

The snow was coming down in slow, fat flakes, and every porch light on the block was lit.

"I grew up here," I said. "I fell off my bike on that corner.

I got my first kiss behind the garage, from a boy who tasted like grape soda."

"I'd like to find that boy."

"No."

"Just a short conversation."

"He sells insurance now. He's fine."

He smiled at the snow.

Then he stood up.

He took a small box out of his coat pocket, a worn gray velvet box with a split corner.

My heart stopped.

"Jude."

"Hold on. I had a speech."

"Don't."

"I had a speech, and I can't remember it."

He went down on one knee on my mother's porch, in the snow.

"Stevie told me your ring size. I swore her to secrecy, and she lasted nine hours."

He opened the box.