“No food in the house.” He smiled back at her. “And this way I get to see you, Marj.”
She rolled her eyes. “If things have got to the point where you look forward to flirting with a tired old bag like me, you’re doing something wrong.”
Doing something wrong. He bit his lower lip. He sometimes wondered about that himself. He was getting a lot closer to thirty than he cared to think about, and he was still single. He didn’t have a steady girl, and rarely even dated anymore since Jennifer had gone back to Boston three years earlier. He looked younger than his age—he got carded whenever he went over to Albany to hit the bars—and he kept himself in good shape by going to the YMCA three times a week. But he was beginning to wonder if time wasn’t running out on him somehow. All of his friends from high school were long married, raising kids, making mortgage payments, and settling into middle age.
Like she was reading his mind, Marjorie asked, “You still hear from Jennifer? You should of married that girl, Perry.”
“I haven’t heard from her in a while.” He replied with a shrug. Jennifer. “I don’t know, Marj. Maybe I should have.”
The thought had plagued him ever since Jennifer Donnelly had gone back to Boston. Maybe she brought up taking the job back there to get me to ask her to marry her, Perry thought again. She’d come to Lebanon straight out of college, teaching home economics at the local high school. She was a South Boston Irish girl, and he’d loved the way she said caah for car. Jennifer had worked her way through college, getting student loans and scrimping and saving. She’d come to Lebanon determined to pay off her student debt as quickly as she could. She told him that the cheap rents in Lebanon had been a major part of her decision to take the job at the high school.
They’d met right here, at this very counter. He’d been sitting here when she pulled up in a battered ten-year-old gray Honda Civic, and he’d almost gasped out loud when she got out of the car. Jennifer had thick dark hair worn short, a round face with an upturned nose, and the deepest emerald green eyes Perry had ever seen. She was short, not much past five feet, weighed one hundred pounds soaking wet, with a curvy body she liked to show off in tight jeans and tight sweaters. That day, she’d walked into the Yellow Bird with a broad smile on her face, sat down on the seat right beside him, and asked, “So, what’s good here?”
I should have asked her to marry me. Perry let out a sigh as he watched Marjorie wipe down the counter with a dirty sponge.
He and Jennifer had been together for three years from that first night at the Yellow Bird, when she’d ordered the chili cheeseburger and fries he’d recommended, and it was a good three years. Perry had stayed at her place a few nights a week; she’d come over to his once or twice as well. They’d rent movies or watch television. He’d read while she graded papers. Sometimes, they drove up to Senandaga to go out for a nice dinner at the Outback or the Olive Garden before heading to a movie. After the first year, they’d settled into a nice routine, and before long the question was popping up from everyone—his family, his coworkers, people he’d known his whole life: So, when you gonna do right by that girl and marry her?
But whenever Perry would start to hint about marriage, even tentatively, Jennifer would always change the subject. Then one day, over a dinner of lasagna and some red wine, she gave him a big smile. “It’s done, Perry,” she said. “I paid off the last of my student loans today. What a relief to have that off my back.”
“Well, that’s great, honey!” He reached over with his glass and tapped his to hers. “Congratulations.”
She cleared her throat. “And now that I’m done with that, Perry, I’m going back to Boston.”
He’d replayed that dinner conversation in his head at least a thousand times in the last four years. What did I do wrong? What did she want from me? She’d insisted that she wasn’t trying to force him into anything—but why hadn’t she brought it up any time before that night? He loved her, he loved being with her, and he knew she loved him, but her decision was final. “I’m going back to Boston,” she stubbornly said. “I’m not staying here.”
Why didn’t I offer to go with her? he asked himself again. I could have found work there—there are plenty of jobs there. I could have gotten on with the Boston police. Why was I afraid to leave Lebanon?
But she never asked me to go with her either.
After the school year ended, she packed her bags and kissed him good-bye. He’d watched her drive out of town, and out of his life.
His father still got mad about it if her name ever came up. “I’m not getting any younger, and I still don’t have any grandchildren,” he’d say every once in a while, smiling to make it seem as though he were teasing, but the set of his jaw and the tic in his cheek showed he meant it. Perry knew his dad was proud of him for following him into law enforcement—but a part of his dad worried that Perry was stuck in a rut.
“Well, Jennifer’s not losing any sleep over not marrying me,” Perry said. “That’s for sure.”
“You don’t know that, Perry,” Marjorie replied. “She could be sitting there every night hoping you’ll stop being stubborn and say the magic words to her.” She shuffled his glass over to the fountain and refilled it. “Just tell me to mind my own business and I’ll shut up.”
“It’s okay.” He took another drink and grinned at her. He liked Marjorie, always had—despite her kids. But you can’t blame her for her kids—she did the best she could. Her kids had been train wrecks. Marjorie’s oldest, a daughter, had run off to Manhattan when she was seventeen and hadn’t been heard from since. Frankie, her second, had been in Perry’s class at Lebanon High. Frankie was a wild kid, coming to school reeking of marijuana. He’d been killed driving drunk the summer after graduation. Darby, her youngest, had been on the same road as Frankie—but seemed to have straightened out after Frankie was killed. He got a job right out of school as a mechanic over at Mike’s Firestone, gotten married, and bought a house down in the Banks near Marjorie’s. Still, everybody knew that Darby gambled, and word at the sheriff’s office was that he was probably dealing in stolen cars. They had their eye on Darby Pequod.
“Marjorie’s always had a hard life,” his mother used to say, “but she never complains, bless her heart.” They’d gone to Lebanon High together and were friends. And when the cancer was eating his mother alive a few years back, Marjorie had come over every day with wrapped sandwiches from the Bird.
“So what’s gotten you so tired out today, Marj?” Perry asked her.
“First day of school over at the college.” The locals rarely called it Wilbourne. It was just “the college.”
“Yeah? A lot of students coming in?”
“In and out all afternoon, kept me hopping.”
For a moment, the face of that girl he’d pulled over appeared in Perry’s mind. What was her name? Barlow. Susan Barlow.
Marjorie sighed, but then she smiled. “Those girls are good tippers. I guess they had their welcome thing tonight, because it slowed way down after six thirty.” She stretched, pressing both hands into the small of her back. “Man, my back is hurting. Be glad when I get home and can soak in a hot bath.”
They both turned when the bell at the front door rang.
10
Virginia Marshall, Ph.D., was not in a good mood.
After leaving the welcome ceremony, she’d driven aimlessly around town with no real idea of where she was going or what she was doing, other than she didn’t want to go back to her apartment. Tonight was the last straw, she thought over and over again as she cruised the quiet streets. She was fed up, tired, and sorely tempted to march into Dean Gregory’s