2. Andrea
— ? —
Andrea
The farmers market is my happy place.
Every Saturday morning for the past four years, I’ve wandered these stalls with a canvas bag over my shoulder and absolutely no plan.
I buy whatever looks good: peaches so ripe they bruise at a glance, tomatoes still warm from the vine, bread that smells like childhood.
Kirk laughs at me for it, says I buy with my heart instead of my head, but I always catch him eating my impulse purchases straight from the bag on the drive home.
Today I’m here for peaches. The good kind, the ones from the orchard up in Henderson, the ones that make Kirk groan when he bites into them.
I’m reaching for a particularly perfect specimen when a voice calls my name.
“Andrea? Andrea Burke?”
I turn, and the world tilts.
Clarence Wright is standing three feet away from me, grinning as if he’s just won the lottery.
He’s taller than I remember, broader through the shoulders, his boyish face matured into a face that belongs in a cologne ad.
He’s wearing a linen shirt with the sleeves rolled up and jeans that probably cost more than my first car.
“Oh my God, it is you!” He closes the distance between us in two long strides and pulls me into a hug before I can react. “Andrea! It’s been years!”
He lifts me off my feet, spinning me once, the way he always used to when we were kids playing at being adults. The movement is so familiar, so unexpectedly nostalgic, that I laugh despite my shock.
“Clarence!” I manage when he sets me down. “What are you doing here?”
“I moved back to town a few months ago. Some project downtown. Boring architecture stuff, you don’t want to hear about it.” He’s still holding my shoulders, beaming at me. “God, you look incredible. How long has it been? Eight years?”
“Eight years, give or take.” I step back, needing space to think. “I had no idea you were back.”
“Your mother-in-law didn’t tell you?” He says it casually, an afterthought, and my blood freezes. “She’s the one who told me where to find you.”
“My mother-in-law?”
“Yeah, Ethel? Graham? She called me a few weeks ago. Said you’d been having a hard time, could use some old friends reconnecting.
” He cups my face in his hands, his touch warm and familiar and completely platonic, the way it’s always been.
“Said you might be at the market this morning. So here I am!”
The pieces click into place with horrible, mechanical precision.
Ethel. My schedule. This “coincidence.”
I pull away from Clarence’s hands as gently as I can, my mind racing. Ethel planned this. Tracked my movements. Staged a scene.
But for what?
“Andrea? You okay? You’ve gone pale.”
“I’m fine.” I force a smile. “Just surprised. How did Ethel even know to contact you?”
Clarence shrugs. “Country club connections, I think? She mentioned knowing my family from way back. Anyway, she seemed really concerned about you. Said Kirk was traveling a lot, that you might be lonely.” He pauses, frowning slightly. “Are things okay with you two? Last I heard you were solid.”
“We’re great.” I need to end this conversation. Need to get away from here. “Kirk’s just in Seattle for work. Back in a few days.”
“Oh, good. Good.” Clarence relaxes. “I was worried. She made it sound - well, never mind what she made it sound like. You know how those society types exaggerate.”
I know exactly how Ethel operates, and “exaggerate” isn’t the word I’d use.
“I should really get going,” I say, backing toward my car. “It was so good to see you, Clarence, really-”
“Wait, wait, let me walk you!” He falls into step beside me, oblivious to my discomfort. “We should catch up properly. Grab dinner. I want to hear everything: your job, your life, what you’ve been up to for eight years.”
He walks me all the way to my car, chattering the whole time about his work and his apartment and the neighborhood coffee shop that makes terrible espresso. I respond on autopilot, making appropriate noises while my brain screams get away, get away, this is wrong.
At my car, he hugs me again. Kisses my cheek in farewell. It’s the kind of casual affection that would mean nothing between old friends.
It’s also the kind of casual affection that could be made to look like anything at all.
“I’ll text you!” Clarence calls as I climb into the driver’s seat. “We’ll set it up!”
I drive away with my hands shaking on the wheel, watching him wave in the rearview mirror until he disappears.
Two blocks from the market, I pull into a gas station and call Melissa.
“Miss me already?”
“Ethel sent someone to the farmers market.” My voice comes out higher than usual. “A college friend. Clarence Wright. She called him weeks ago, Mel. She gave him my Saturday schedule. She told him I was lonely and struggling and he should surprise me.”
Silence on the line. Then, carefully: “Okay. Walk me through it. Every detail.”
I walk her through it. The hug. The spin. The kiss on the cheek in the parking lot, with my hands full of peaches and my guard all the way down.
“That woman does not do favors,” Melissa says slowly.
“She does investments. So what’s the return on reuniting you with a handsome man in a public place while your husband is out of-” She stops.
I hear her arrive where I’ve already been standing for ten minutes.
“Andrea. Call Kirk. Right now. Get ahead of it.”
“And say what? ‘Hi honey, I hugged an old friend at the market and I have a bad feeling’? He’ll think I’m paranoid about his mother again. We just spent a year in therapy retiring that fight.”
“Then say exactly that. Paranoid and ahead beats innocent and behind.”
“He lands in three days. I’m telling him about the baby in three days, Mel.
Face to face, the way we promised, everything honest and in person.
” I watch a man across the lot fill his tank, ordinary as a Tuesday.
“I’m not letting Ethel turn my biggest news into a phone call about her.
Whatever she’s doing, it can wait seventy-two hours. ”
“Andrea.”
“Three days. He comes home, I put his hand on my stomach, and then we deal with his mother together. Like a team.”
Melissa exhales, long and unhappy. “For the record, I hate this plan.”
“Noted.”
“Three days,” she says. “Okay. What’s the worst she can do in three days?”
I’m halfway home when my phone buzzes.
Unknown number.
I pull over to check it, some primitive instinct insisting this matters, and the screen fills with an image that drops my stomach through the floor.
Me and Clarence, captured from across the parking lot. His lips pressed to my cheek, his hands on my waist, my eyes closed. The angle is perfect. Intimate rather than friendly. Romantic rather than casual.
A lover’s greeting. A secret assignation.
Proof of a thing that does not exist.
Below the photo, a single line of text: Does Kirk know about your old friend?