Chapter 24
KNOX
Lily Bankhurst was five years old and she had opinions about pie.
She was sitting at the counter at Maple’s Diner on a Thursday afternoon, her small hands wrapped around a fork, her small face serious with the business of eating apple pie with ice cream on top.
The ice cream was starting to melt and she was not bothering to eat quickly, just watching it pool around the cinnamon-sugar crust and then eating another bite.
She had her father’s quiet eyes and her mother’s stubbornness, which meant she was the kind of person who would get exactly what she wanted from life simply by virtue of refusing to settle for less.
Banks was sitting one stool over, drinking coffee and looking at his daughter like she was the only thing in the world that mattered.
He looked tired. The kind of tired that came from parenting alone, from making all the decisions, from carrying the weight of another person’s life.
But his eyes were soft when he looked at Lily.
I came in at 2:47 p.m.
Practice had ended early. Beckham had called it at 2:30 p.m. because half the team had gotten called away for some kind of local radio interview that Maddox was doing about the team’s first season—talking about how Frostbite Falls had come together to build something that mattered.
I had not been called away. I was not the kind of player who got interviewed.
I was the guy who stood on the sidelines and watched other people do the work.
I sat down on the stool next to Lily without asking permission.
This was new. Three weeks ago, I would not have done this.
Three weeks ago, I would have sat at the opposite end of the counter and tried to make myself small.
But I had learned, over the past three weeks, that Maple was still there, that she had not disappeared, that she had decided to let me back in.
So I sat next to Lily because that was what a man who was trying to be present did.
Lily looked at me.
She was not shy. She had her father’s quiet demeanor but not my hesitation.
She said, “Are you my dad’s friend?”
I said, “Yeah.”
Lily said, “My dad talks about you sometimes. He says you’re teaching him how to not be so sad all the time.”
Banks flushed red.
I said, “Lily.”
Lily paid no attention to her father’s discomfort.
She continued eating her pie.
I did not look at Banks.
I was looking at the small girl with her serious expression and her fork and her ice cream-covered mouth.
I understood that children asked questions that had layers, questions that seemed simple on the surface but went down deep, questions that made you think about things you were not ready to think about.
Lily said, “Are you Maple’s boyfriend?”
I said, “Working on it.”
The answer came easily. I had said it before.
I had been saying it for three weeks. It was the truth and it was also the hope.
I was working on being the kind of boyfriend who was worth having.
I was working on being the kind of man who could be trusted with the kind of love that Maple had to offer.
Lily considered this.
She was only five but she had the particular wisdom of a child who had lost a mother, who understood loss at a cellular level, who knew what it meant to miss someone.
She said, “How do you work on a boyfriend. Is it like how daddy works on being sad. Does that mean you’re learning too?”
I did not answer the question directly.
I had learned not to answer children’s questions directly.
Children asked questions that seemed to be about one thing but were really about something else.
Lily was asking whether I was changing, whether I was learning, whether I was the kind of man who could grow into something better than I had been.
Lily said, “My teacher likes pie too. You should tell my dad. He needs a girlfriend. He’s lonely.”
Banks made a sound that was halfway between a laugh and a groan.
I said, “Lily, that is not appropriate.”
Lily said, “But it’s true. You’re always sad. And Maple is nice. And she likes pie. And Mr.—” She looked at me. “What’s your name?”
I said, “Knox.”
Lily said, “Mr. Knox likes Maple. So maybe Maple could like you. And then you wouldn’t be sad anymore.”
Maple was behind the counter, three feet away, arranging pie slices on a plate.
I did not look at her directly, but I could see her in my peripheral vision, and I could see the moment she realized what Lily had said, could see her mouth trying not to smile, could see her pressing her lips together like she was trying not to laugh out loud in her own diner.
She mouthed something at Banks.
I thought it was: I’m sorry.
From the rest of the diner, Hudson Vance started to laugh.
Then Wilder, who was sitting at a booth near the window.
Then Beckham, who had come back after his radio interview and was sitting in the back booth with coffee and a slice of pie.
The whole diner started to laugh. The particular kind of laughter that came from a small town watching two people try to figure out their lives.
The kind of laughter that was not mean but was not kind either—it was just the laughter of people who understood what was happening and could not help but acknowledge it.
Banks put his head in his hands.
Lily looked around like she could not understand what was funny.
She had said something true, something simple, something that made sense in the way that children’s logic made sense—you are sad, she is nice, I likes her, so you should be together—and the adults were treating it like she had said something profound.
I almost smiled.
I caught the smile before it happened. I pressed it down.
I looked away from the small girl and the father who was mortified and the woman behind the counter who was trying not to laugh, and I understood that this moment was the kind of moment that mattered, the kind of moment that stayed with a person, the kind of moment when a five-year-old girl accidentally spoke a truth that everybody knew but nobody wanted to say out loud.
Lily turned back to her pie.
She said, “It’s good pie. Are you going to try it.”
I said, “Maybe.”
Lily said, “You should. Everything’s better with Maple’s pie. That’s what my dad says. That’s why he comes here all the time. Because the pie is good and because he likes seeing Maple.”
Banks said, very quietly, “Lily.”
Lily said, “What. I’m helping.”
Maple came around the counter.
She set down a slice of pie in front of me.
She did not look at me directly. She looked at Lily, and her expression was soft in a way that it had been before the secret, before the lying, before the three days of silence.
She looked at Lily like the small girl had just given her a gift without knowing it.
She said, “Lily, you are very wise. Your dad is very lucky to have you.”
Lily said, “I know.”
She went back to eating her pie.
I sat at the counter and I ate the pie that Maple had set in front of me.
I was not registering the taste—not the sweetness or the cinnamon or the particular ache that came from eating Maple’s pie and knowing that every flavor in it was something she had made, something she had baked, something she was giving to me like it meant something.
I was watching Banks.
Banks finished his coffee at 3:15 p.m. He stood up and he put his hand on Lily’s shoulder and he looked at Maple for a long moment—a long moment—and then he looked away, and his expression changed into something that looked like envy, like longing, like a man who understood that he had had something good once and had lost it and was now watching other people have the thing that he used to have.
I watched the whole thing happen.
I understood what was going on. I understood that Banks had loved Jenna with the kind of love that was rare, the kind of love that did not come around twice in a life.
I understood that Banks was watching me and Maple and recognizing something that he had lost. I understood that the small girl sitting at the counter had just accidentally set in motion something that was going to change the landscape of the town.
Lily would ask her teacher about pie. The teacher would talk to Banks. The teacher’s name I did not yet know. I just knew, from watching Banks watch Maple, that something in his life was about to start moving again, and I was glad of it.
Maple saw it too.
She watched Banks look at her with envy and she chose not to say anything about it. She just smiled at Lily and she waved at Banks and she went back to the kitchen.
Banks left at 3:16 p.m.
The pie was gone by 3:18 p.m.
I had eaten it without registering the taste, without thinking about sweetness or cinnamon or the particular ache that came from eating Maple’s pie and knowing that every flavor in it was something she had made.
The diner settled back down. Hudson left at 3:20 p.m. Wilder left at 3:22 p.m. By 3:25 p.m., it was back to quiet, back to the sound of the coffee maker and the register and the small conversations that happened in a diner in the afternoon when the lunch rush was over and the dinner rush had not yet begun.
I sat at the counter.
I was alone in the way that men were alone when they were present but not participating.
Maple was behind the register, counting down the drawer, preparing to close for the evening lull that happened between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m.
She said, “You can go if you want. I don’t need you to sit there.”
I said, “I know.”
I stayed anyway.
I sat at the counter and I ate the pie and I understood that Lily Bankhurst, five years old, had just pushed Banks toward asking Maple on a date, that Banks had seen me sitting next to Lily and had understood that I was the man who got to have what Banks wanted, that the small girl had accidentally created a moment of profound clarity in a diner on a Thursday afternoon.
I understood something else too.