New Husband. Old One Gone novel · Chapter 30 of 32

Chapter 30: The Real Question

"So ask me," I said.

Sawyer looked around the tent.

Forty folding chairs. The colonel eating sheet cake. Granddad asleep in his lawn chair with his mouth open.

"Not here," he said. "Not with icing on your hands."

"Then when?"

"Saturday. Sundown. Granddad's dock." He held out his palm. "And I need that back till then."

I looked at his hand.

Then at the brass hex nut on my finger.

"No."

"Ro."

"It's mine. I've had it since I was eight. You can't have it."

"I'm going to give it back."

"When?"

"Saturday."

"Why do you need it?"

"I can't tell you. That's the whole point of Saturday."

I made him wait a long time.

Then I worked it off over my knuckle, where it had never once stuck, and dropped it in his hand.

"If you lose it, Pickard, I'll put you in the river in your good boots again."

"I'd expect nothing less."

For nine days my finger felt naked.

I kept reaching for the nut with my thumb.

Mama noticed on the second day and didn't ask.

On Saturday she came into my room at the house at five in the afternoon, carrying a yellow sundress on a hanger.

"Put this on."

"Why?"

"Because I'm your mother and I said so."

"Mama, do you know something?"

"I know you're not getting engaged in work jeans twice."

I put it on.

At a quarter to eight I walked across the yard and through the gap in the hedge to the Pickard dock.

The sun was going down red over the river.

Granddad was on his porch in his lawn chair with the radio playing low, for once.

On our porch, behind me, I heard the screen door squeak.

I didn't have to turn around to know Mama was on the swing with Daddy's old binoculars.

Sawyer stood at the end of the dock.

He'd cut his hair. A real barber this time.

He had on a white shirt with the sleeves rolled, and his hands were shaking.

Somebody had strung bare bulbs down both rails of the dock. Yellow ribbon on every piling.

The dock bell hung from the post at the end, with a new clapper.

I walked out to him.

"You hung the bulbs," I said.

"The crew hung the bulbs. I stood here and threw up a little."

"Pickard."

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