CHAPTER 10 THE SUMMER THEY NEVER FINISHED
Eli did not mention Preston’s new offer the next day.
Clara did not mention his sentence in the office.
I don’t know what I’m doing now.
Instead they worked.
There was comfort in tasks.
The front trim was painted. The computer system was replaced. Clara uploaded three hundred inventory records before lunch and discovered that Aunt June had somehow entered one title twice under two different spellings for eleven years.
At two, Eli asked her to ride with him to an estate sale outside town.
“Why?”
“Books.”
“That is not enough information.”
“Retired English professor. Family called June in spring. They’re selling the library now.”
“Do we have money for inventory?”
“Maybe.”
“I dislike maybe.”
“I know.”
Twenty minutes later Clara sat in Eli’s truck driving north on County Road 8.
The road followed Cypress Creek.
She recognized it immediately.
So did he.
Neither said anything.
Honeysuckle thinned behind them into soybean fields, pine woods, and old farmhouses with barns leaning toward the road.
Clara watched the creek appear between trees.
“Do you still go out there?” she asked.
“To the creek?”
“Yes.”
“Sometimes.”
“The picnic place?”
He glanced at her.
“Sometimes.”
She looked out the window.
At twenty-two, the creek had seemed like the edge of the world. They spent summer evenings there planning a life they had assumed would happen.
A house.
His workshop.
Her editing novels from a home office.
Children, eventually.
Church on Sundays.
Dinner with June on Wednesdays.
Ordinary things.
They had spoken about ordinary life as if it were a treasure.
Then Clara had become afraid that ordinary meant small.
The estate sale occupied a sprawling brick house beneath oak trees.
Inside, every wall seemed covered with books.
Clara forgot the creek within five minutes.
“Oh,” she whispered.
Eli smiled. “Thought you’d react that way.”
The owner’s daughter, Helen Price, led them through rooms filled with literature, history, theology, biography, poetry, and shelves of signed academic books.
“My father taught forty-two years,” she said. “He bought more books than furniture.”
“I respect his priorities,” Clara said.
They spent three hours evaluating titles.
Clara selected carefully. Classic editions suitable for the reading room. Regional history. Several theology volumes. Children’s literature studies. A nearly complete set of a respected Civil War series.
Eli carried boxes to the truck.
At one point Helen watched him leave the room and smiled at Clara.
“Good husband.”
Clara nearly dropped a book.
“He’s not my husband.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine.”
“Boyfriend?”
“No.”
Helen looked toward the doorway.
“Hmm.”
Clara knew that sound.
“Please don’t.”
Helen laughed.
They negotiated a fair price for twelve boxes.
On the drive back, Eli said, “Helen asked if you were my wife.”
Clara turned. “She told you?”
“She asked me first.”
“What did you say?”
“The truth.”
“Which truth?”
“That you weren’t.”
Clara looked at the road.
He added, “I did not provide a historical appendix.”
She laughed.
The road curved near the old picnic turnoff.
Eli slowed.
“Want to stop?”
Clara should have said no.
“Yes.”
They parked beneath sycamores and walked a narrow path to the creek.
The water ran clear over flat stones. The bank had changed little, though the old picnic table was gone.
Clara stood where she thought they had once sat.
“You proposed over there,” she said.
Eli pointed. “Closer to that tree.”
“You remember exactly?”
“Yes.”
“Of course you do.”
They walked along the bank.
A dragonfly skimmed the water.
Clara tucked her hands into her pockets.
“We planned an entire life in one summer.”
“We had been dating five years.”
“Still.”
“We liked planning.”
“You liked planning. I liked lists.”
“Important distinction.”
They reached a flat rock where the creek widened.
Clara sat.
Eli remained standing.
“What happened after I left?” she asked.
He looked at her.
“You know some of it.”
“I know you started the business. Your father died. Anna got married and divorced. I know June stayed close to you.”
“What do you want to know?”
“The part you don’t tell people.”
Eli sat beside her.
For a while he watched the water.
“I was angry enough to leave town too,” he said. “Went to Raleigh for six months. Worked for a commercial cabinet company. Hated it.”
“Why?”
“Everything was disposable. Cheap materials made to look expensive. Tear it out in ten years and do it again.”
“That would bother you.”
“It did.”
“So you came back.”
“My dad had a heart attack. I came home to help.”
Clara remembered hearing about his father’s death through June months later. By then she and Eli had not spoken.
“I should have called.”
“Yes.”
The word hurt because it was true.
“I’m sorry.”
“He would have liked that you did.”
Clara looked at him.
“Your father didn’t hate me?”
“No.”
“I assumed he did.”
“He was disappointed. Different thing.”
“He loved you.”
“Yes.”
Eli picked up a small stone and turned it in his fingers.
“After he died, I took over his workshop. It was just me and one employee. Then two. Then more.”
“You built what you wanted.”
“Part of it.”
Clara heard the unspoken rest.
“And the house?” she asked.
“What house?”
“The one you drew.”
He looked at the creek.
“I built it.”
Clara’s breath caught.
“What?”
“Not the exact plan. A version.”
“When?”
“Seven years ago.”
“You built our house?”
“No.” His voice was firm. “I built my house.”
She felt foolish.
“Right.”
“But it has the wide porch.”
Clara looked at him again.
“And two trees?”
“One survived. Deer destroyed the other.”
She smiled.
“Do you live there?”
“Yes.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
The creek moved around stones.
Clara looked down at her hands.
“I thought you would be married by thirty.”
“So did my mother.”
“She tried?”
“For years.”
Clara laughed.
Eli smiled.
Then his expression grew serious.
“I was close once.”
Clara looked at him.
“Her name was Rebecca. We dated almost two years.”
“What happened?”
“She wanted to move to Nashville. I didn’t.”
The irony was immediate.
Clara knew he saw it too.
“Did you ask her to stay?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I had learned that asking someone to stay when they wanted to go doesn’t create a life. It creates a debt.”
Clara absorbed the sentence.
“Did you love her?”
“Yes.”
The answer hurt more than she expected.
Eli continued, “Not the way I loved you. But yes.”
Clara stared at the water.
“I don’t know if that makes me feel better.”
“It wasn’t meant to.”
“I know.”
A breeze moved through the leaves.
Clara picked up a stone and tossed it into the creek.
“I never came close.”
“To marriage?”
She shook her head.
“Dated. A few serious relationships. Nothing that reached that point.”
“Why?”
“I told myself work.”
“And the real reason?”
She smiled without humor.
“You make honesty exhausting.”
“I know.”
Clara looked at him.
“Because every time somebody got close enough to matter, I started measuring the exits.”
Eli said nothing.
“I thought that meant they weren’t right for me,” she continued. “Maybe sometimes they weren’t. But sometimes I think I was afraid of repeating what I did to us.”
“You didn’t ruin love forever, Clara.”
“No. But I taught myself to run early.”
He looked at her for a long time.
“Can you unlearn that?”
She swallowed.
“I don’t know.”
Eli nodded.
The honesty between them did not feel romantic.
It felt more important than romance.
They stayed until the sun lowered.
On the walk back to the truck, Clara stopped beneath a sycamore.
“Eli.”
He turned.
“I am sorry I did not call when your father died.”
He looked at her.
“I forgive you.”
The words came simply.
No speech.
No demand.
Clara blinked back tears.
“You had every right to hold that against me.”
“I did for a while.”
“What changed?”
“June.”
“Of course.”
“She told me bitterness charges rent and never pays it.”
Clara laughed through tears.
“She had sayings for everything.”
“Most of them were probably stolen from somebody older.”
They walked on.
When they reached the truck, Eli opened the passenger door for her.
Clara paused.
“This summer feels unfinished,” she said.
He knew exactly what she meant.
“The old one?”
“Yes.”
Eli rested one hand on the door.
“Maybe it was supposed to end.”
Clara looked at him.
He continued, “That doesn’t mean another one can’t begin.”
He closed the door after she got in.
On the ride back to town, Clara did not make a list.