Part 5
The ticket confirmation arrived in Valerie’s email at 3:29 a.m., crisp and irreversible. She stared at it for several minutes, waiting for panic to harden into regret. Instead, she felt a strange, exhausted calm, the kind that comes after a decision has finally outrun fear.
She slept through her alarm for the first time in years.
By noon, Megan had sent three texts asking if Valerie was alive. Valerie called from the kitchen, where coffee had gone cold in the mug and Diane’s letters lay spread over the table like evidence from a trial.
“I bought a ticket,” Valerie said.
Megan went silent for so long Valerie checked the screen.
“To Wisconsin?” Megan asked.
“To her town.”
“When?”
“Friday.”
Megan exhaled. “Good.”
“I haven’t gone yet. Don’t congratulate me for purchasing transportation.”
“I’m congratulating the part of you that clicked buy.”
Valerie looked at the stack of letters. “That part of me may be deranged.”
“Probably. Keep her.”
They met once more before the trip. Megan insisted on helping Valerie pack, which meant she sat on the bed and offered opinions while Valerie rejected most of them. The strict black dress felt appropriate for a cemetery but too severe for travel. The navy cardigan was sensible. The walking shoes looked unforgivable but necessary. Megan slipped a packet of tissues into the suitcase without comment.
“You should call Jack before you go,” Megan said.
“No.”
“He might want to know.”
“That is precisely why I’m not telling him.”
Megan frowned. “You’re still trying to control how people react.”
Valerie folded a blouse with unnecessary precision. “And you are still trying to become my therapist.”
“No, I’m trying to become less of a disaster. You’re just nearby.”
Before Valerie left, Megan surprised her by hugging her. The embrace was awkward at first. Valerie held her arms out for a second too long before letting them settle around Megan’s shoulders. The girl smelled of vanilla shampoo and nervous sweat.
“If my mother calls Saturday,” Megan said into her coat, “I’m answering by myself.”
Valerie pulled back. “Use your notes.”
“I will.”
“Do not over-explain.”
“I won’t.”
“If she criticizes your body, end the call.”
Megan gave her a wobbly smile. “Listen to you, setting boundaries through me.”
Valerie pretended not to hear that.
On Friday morning, the train slid north under a low gray sky. Valerie sat by the window with Diane’s last letter in her purse and a paper cup of coffee cooling on the tray. She had expected the ride to feel ceremonial. Instead, it felt ordinary. A baby cried three rows back. A man across the aisle ate a tuna sandwich at 9:15 a.m. Two college students argued softly about whether Madison or Minneapolis had better music venues.
Across from Valerie sat a young couple traveling with one enormous backpack and the delighted exhaustion of people newly married. The bride still had traces of glitter near her hairline. Her husband, a gentle-looking man with round glasses, kept offering her pretzels from a bag she kept refusing and then accepting.
“We’re doing the cheap honeymoon first,” the bride told Valerie after they had exchanged enough train-small-talk to become temporary friends. “Real one later, when we recover from paying for the wedding.”
“That sounds practical,” Valerie said.
“It sounds broke,” the groom corrected, and his wife swatted his arm.
They were going to a cabin near the river, not far from the town where Diane had lived. When Valerie mentioned she needed a place to stay, the bride brightened.
“Oh, stay at Bennett House if they have a room. It’s this old inn with blue shutters. My mom’s obsessed with it. The owner’s wife used to make blackberry muffins people fought over.”
Valerie’s hand tightened around her cup.
“Bennett House,” she repeated.
“Yeah. It’s sweet. Kind of creaky, but in a good way.”
Valerie wrote the name down although she already knew she would never forget it.
By the time she stepped off the train, late-afternoon light had turned the station windows gold. A taxi took her through a town smaller and prettier than she wanted it to be. There were brick storefronts, a hardware store with seed packets in the window, a white church on a hill, and streets that sloped toward a river flashing silver between bare trees.
Bennett House stood at the corner of Maple and Third, three stories of cream clapboard with blue shutters and a wraparound porch. The sign swung gently in the wind. Valerie sat in the taxi for several seconds after it stopped.
“Ma’am?” the driver said.
“Yes. Sorry.”
The lobby smelled of wood polish, coffee, and something sweet cooling somewhere out of sight. A woman at the desk gave Valerie a room on the second floor, apologized for the radiator knocking at night, and handed her an actual brass key instead of a card.
Valerie almost asked whether Jack was there.
She did not.
Her room was small, with a quilt folded at the foot of the bed and windows facing the street. The radiator hissed. The wallpaper had faded roses on it. Valerie set her suitcase down, washed her face, and called the cemetery office before she could invent errands to postpone it.
Speaking Diane’s full name aloud hurt more than she expected.
“Diane Bennett,” she said to the woman on the phone. “Date of burial would have been April two years ago.”
The woman found the record and gave directions with the kind efficiency of someone accustomed to grief in practical forms. Section C, near the old maple. The cemetery office closed at five, but the grounds stayed open until dusk.
Valerie hung up and sat on the edge of the bed.
She had rehearsed speeches on the train. I forgive you. I am sorry. I was wrong. I loved him first. I missed you. Each sentence seemed either too small or too selfish. Diane was beyond explanations. The only person Valerie could still impress was herself, and even that audience had become skeptical.
At 4:20, she put on the black dress and navy cardigan. The dress hung looser than she remembered. She had lost weight without meaning to, partly from worry and partly because eating alone made meals feel optional. She brushed her hair, applied lipstick, removed it, applied it again.
Flowers, she decided, could be bought near the cemetery.
She took her purse and room key, then stepped into the hall. Somewhere downstairs, dishes clinked. A man laughed, low and familiar enough to make her stop with one hand on the banister.
Don’t be ridiculous, she told herself.
She descended carefully. At the bottom of the stairs, the front door opened inward, pushed by a man carrying a toolbox in one hand and a coil of blue tape in the other. He wore a brown jacket over a checked shirt. His hair was mostly silver now, thinner at the crown, and his face had deep lines around the mouth.
He stepped aside to let her pass.
Then he looked at her.
The toolbox hit the floor with a soft, heavy thud.
“Valerie?”
His voice moved through forty years as if they had been a curtain, not a wall.
Valerie’s hand closed around the banister. For a moment, she could not speak. The lobby, the woman at the desk, the smell of coffee, the little brass key in her palm — everything seemed to tilt toward the man standing by the door.
Jack Bennett took one step forward, then stopped, as if he no longer trusted himself to know whether she would welcome him. “Val,” he said, softer this time. “Is it really you…”
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