Later

39

As I was preparing to leave (politeness had resurfaced and I didn’t neglect to tell him thank you), the professor asked me if his wife had said anything else. Besides about where the rings were, that was.

By the time you’re thirteen I think you’ve forgotten most of the things that have happened to you when you’re six—I mean, that’s more than half your life ago!—but I didn’t have any trouble remembering that day. I could have told him how Mrs. Burkett threw shade about my green turkey but figured that wouldn’t interest him. He wanted to know if she’d said anything about him, not what she’d said to me.

“You were hugging my mom and she said you were going to burn her hair with your cigarette. And you did. Guess you quit smoking, huh?”

“I allow myself three a day. I suppose I could have more, I’m not going to be cut down in my youth, but three is all I seem to want. Did she say anything else?”

“Um, that you’d be having lunch with some woman in a month or two. Her name might have been Debbie or Diana, something like that—”

“Dolores? Was it Dolores Magowan?” He was looking at me with new eyes, and all at once I wished we’d had this part of our conversation to start with. It would have gone a long way toward establishing my credibility.

“It might have been.”

He shook his head. “Mona always thought I had eyes for that woman, God knows why.”

“She said something about rubbing sheep-dip into her hands—”

“Lanolin,” he said. “For her swollen joints. I’ll be damned.”

“There was one other thing, too. About how you always missed the back loop on your pants. I think she said ‘Who’ll do that now?’ ”

“My God,” he said softly. “Oh my God. Jamie.”

“Oh, and she kissed you. On the cheek.”

It was just a little kiss, and years ago, but that sealed the deal. Because he also wanted to believe, I guess. If not in everything, in her. In that kiss. That she had been there.

I left while I was ahead.