A Boy To Remember

When the silence became uncomfortable, Alex said, “So, do you have aspirations beyond the state senate?”

“We all have aspirations, don’t we? But for now I’m content. I’m working on a few projects that I believe will benefit both the citizens of Fox Creek and the Greenfielders. Just need to acquire more funding.”

“Well, I’m sure you’ll succeed.” Alex nodded at the box. “I have to be on my way now. Can I carry this?”

“Probably, but why should you? I’m the jack-of-all-trades around here. Is your car out front?”

“Yes, but I think I’d better stop and pay.”

“Oh, sure. Pop would appreciate that.”

Alex reached out a hand almost as if she would touch Daniel’s arm, but immediately pulled back. “He’s okay, isn’t he? Your dad, I mean. He seems a bit frail.”

Daniel’s face clouded with an emotion that could only be pain. “I don’t suppose there’s any reason not to tell you, at least not now that certain decisions have been made. Pop’s ill, Alex. He has bone cancer. Even a bone marrow transplant won’t help him now.”

Her heart clutched in her chest. “I’m sorry, Daniel. This must be so hard.”

“It is. He’s got some time left. A few months, so the doctors tell him. That’s why I’m here and why I took hiatus from my senate job this month. I’m helping him clear out inventory so the building can be put up for sale. Once that’s done I figure he might take a short trip, see some of America he never had a chance to visit before.”

“Will you go with him?”

“I can’t. I wish Mom were still alive, but his sister has agreed to go. They get along well. And I’ll stay in touch with them every day.”

“Why doesn’t he try to sell the business?” Realizing she might be crossing a line between concern and poking her nose into someone else’s family matters, Alex amended, “What I’m trying to say is, this store has been here for decades. It’s a shame to see it close and the building be turned over to some other establishment. This town would miss Chandler’s Hardware.”

“You just said it, Alex. This store is Chandler’s. That’s why people keep coming back. If it changed hands, I think the big-box stores around Cleveland would get our local customers.” Daniel sighed. “I think Pop’s right. It’s been a good run, but it’s time to close it up.” He picked up the box. “You stop at the register and I’ll meet you outside.”

Alex paid her bill. She tried to keep her voice cheerful, but she could no longer ignore the lines etched in Gus’s face, the signs of the pain he must be enduring every day. And that cane, propped against the counter like some bleak reminder that everyone’s future had an ending.

“You have a great day now, sweetheart,” Gus said when she was ready to leave. “It was great seeing you again.”

“Same here, Gus. I’m sure I’ll be back a time or two before I return to Chicago.”

Marveling at the way Gus kept his spirits up around other people, she went outside, motioned to her Honda CR-V and beeped the hatch open in back.

Daniel slid the box into the cargo area. “Nice seeing you,” he said when he’d closed the door.

“Again, Daniel, I’m so sorry.”

“Thanks.” He paused while she went to the driver’s side and got in. “Oh, Alex, before you go...”

“Yes?”

“Would you like to get together while you’re in town? Maybe take in a movie?”

Was she reading his question correctly? Was he suggesting they take up where they left off eighteen years ago? Didn’t he remember she was a widow? “Are you asking me on a date, Daniel?”

He grinned. “And if I were, what would you say?”

I would say that my racing heart couldn’t take an entire evening with you. She cleared her throat. “Considering the recent events in my life...” and a few significant ones from the past “...I’d have to say no.”

He leaned his forearm on the top of her car. “Okay, then. I’m not asking you on a date. We’d just be two friends going out for the evening to catch up on time lost. What would you say to that?”

She smiled. “Still no, but thanks anyway.”

“You know where I am if you change your mind. Either here, at Pop’s house or at the theater. People can always use friends, Alex, and you and I were tight once, as I recall.”

That was the way he remembered that night under the dock, the last night of the summer? They’d been two hormone-driven teenagers who couldn’t keep their hands to themselves. He’d had a few beers. She’d had one powerful one. And to inexperienced Alexis Foster, Daniel had been much more than a friend. He’d been the brightest star in her summer, maybe in her entire life, and he’d just reduced the most important emotions she’d ever experienced to the word tight. He might have been talking about teammates on a sports roster.

She put her car in gear before she said something much too meaningful for this moment. “Maybe I’ll see you around, Daniel.”

“That would suit me fine. I’ll be looking for you.”

* * *

“WOW, COULD YOU have made it sound any worse?”

Daniel didn’t even realize he was speaking out loud until his father said, “What’s that, son? Couldn’t quite get that.”

He tried to put his asinine comment about being tight with Alex from his mind as he walked to the counter. He hadn’t been talking to his best friend from high school, for heaven’s sake. He’d been crazy about Alex.

“Nothing important, Pop,” he said. “I was just giving myself a personal evaluation.”

Gus chuckled. “How’d you do?”

“I failed.”

“I doubt that.” Gus continued flipping through the day’s invoices. “She’s a pretty one, that Alexis Foster,” he said.

“It’s Alexis Pope,” Daniel said.

“Oh, of course. I always remember her coming in here with her daddy. I don’t usually keep up with the social news around here, but her marriage was something of a surprise. She married a colleague of her father’s, much older man. And I remember your mother commented that they didn’t have a big hullabaloo of a wedding like you’d think for a Foster girl.”

“Strange you or Mom never mentioned that marriage to me. I even asked about Alex a couple of times.”

“I guess it slipped our minds,” Gus said. “Or we didn’t think you’d be interested. Besides, the wedding seemed downplayed to me.”

That was odd, Daniel thought. Most girls wanted big weddings, didn’t they? Why did Alex make up her mind and tie the knot within weeks?

“What else did you hear, Pop?”

“Not much, but a few months back, a customer mentioned that the doctor had died. A shame. That pretty lady won’t wither long on the vine, though. Some lucky man will snap her up.”

Daniel thought of one man who had tried and failed. Back then he’d been a struggling college kid who earned tip money by catering to the people who had it. Maybe Alex had appreciated his charm, but she sure tossed him aside when something better came along. All the charm in the world couldn’t compete with a successful doctor on his way up the ladder.

Going back to his inventory of the warehouse, Daniel continued on this train of thought. Besides having his heart ripped out and stomped on, he had been disappointed in Alex. He hadn’t pegged her as the kind of girl who would marry for money or prestige. Meeting her again after so long, she still didn’t seem that way. Sure, she was classy and cultured and could hold her own in any crowd, but there was still some of that shy, eager small-town girl who had shown up at Birch Shore that day. So why had she married the much older doctor?

Maybe Daniel had pegged Alex wrong. Maybe he’d pegged himself wrong, too. Maybe he hadn’t been as charming as he’d thought back then. Maybe she’d seen something in him that summer that made her rethink her interest after they parted.