Chapter 75
— Chapter 75 —
Eddie makes pasta salad again. This time I bring a thermos of mulled cider. It’s cold, but he’s got a thick wool blanket we wrap around our shoulders while we sit on Deans Bridge, watching a great blue heron perched on a log by the side of the river. She hooks her neck to preen her wings with her long yellow beak.
“She must have just come back,” I say, holding my thermos cup with both hands, trying to keep my fingers warm.
Eddie takes off his hand-knit mittens and passes them to me. I’m sure his mom made them. They’re huge on my hands, but already warm.
The heron stands on one leg, using the other to scratch her chin, her feather crown rising as she dips her head. Eddie is just as mesmerized as I am. I think about how easy it is to love the people who are good for us—how nice it is for things to be easy sometimes. I can picture Eddie in my little store in Maine, helping me carry a bookshelf out to a customer’s station wagon, how we would walk the beach together at the end of the day and search for blue sea glass. He could work for the local fire department, or even just come stay with me whenever he has time. I’d find a pair of rocking chairs for the back porch. We’d sit outside on crisp Sunday afternoons, watching geese fly overhead, whittling spoons out of basswood, talking about what we’ll make for dinner. If we don’t close the doors between us and someday our stars line up, it seems like a life we’d both enjoy.
“I wonder if she’ll stay here, or keep flying north,” Eddie says as the heron stands on both feet again, shaking her feathers back into place.
I grin. “We’re so sappy.”
“We are. Extremely sappy.” He leans over and kisses me.
I cup his face in my mittened hands.
“It’s okay if you keep going north,” Eddie says. “Maybe I’ll come up to see you.”
And I say, “I hope you do.”