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“You know, it’s difficult, when you’ve grown so familiar, to remember to take care of each other the way you did when you were falling in love. I’m good when Jack is sick. I can sort of determine what he needs and give it to him. I don’t even have to ask.”

“That’s real love. When you don’t have to ask.”

“Sometimes. And the rest of the time, you
must
ask: you have to talk, you have to communicate, even when you can’t figure out which words to use. That’s what I’m not good at. I don’t know how to say what I’m feeling.”

“You’re doing a pretty good job of it right now.”

“With you.”

“Why do you think that is?”

“I don’t have anything to lose.”

“Right, you know you’ve got me.”

I laugh, because what he’s said makes me nervous. “You’re kidding.”

“I’m not kidding. You’ve got me.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I see a lot of women—I’m seeing one now, she’s very nice—but the truth is, none of them comes close to you.”

“I’m sorry.” And I am. I wish Pete had someone he was crazy about.

Pete laughs. “That’s okay. It’s just unrequited love. It happens all the time, and people survive it.”

“I want you to be happy.”

“I am happy.”

“No, I mean, you should have…”

“What you have?”

“No, what I have might not be right for you. But you should have love.”

“Why?”

“Because it makes life very sweet. God, that’s a lame answer—I don’t know why. Maybe you should have love so somebody takes good care of you and you won’t get old and be alone.”

“Ah, so love protects you from all of that.”

I say nothing for a few seconds, then, “I guess it can’t.”

“So you see my problem.”

“It’s not exactly a problem.”

“Love doesn’t fix anything. People give up. People go. It’s not an insurance policy against pain.”

“It’s a commitment to a life. To a way of life—you guarantee to that person that you will be with them no matter what.”

Pete looks at me. “You’re beautiful. You always were, and you still are.”

“You’re crazy. We are in the middle of a very serious conversation where some pretty hefty revelations are occurring, and you’re just saying that to throw me off point.”

“You get better, you know that?”

“No, I don’t know that at all.” I’m not fishing for compliments, but I don’t mind hearing that I’m not an old hag. There are days I’d stand on Shawnee Avenue in Big Stone Gap, waving a twenty-dollar bill for someone, anyone, to tell me I still look good. There are days even Fleeta won’t take the bait.

“Why do you think I go to Italy so much? The women are ageless. There are sexy sixty-five-year-old women there.”

“Married?”

He laughs. “Some.”

“Not the women too!”

“I have news for you. The men of Italy get a bad rap as lotharios, but the women have their minds on romance just as much.”

“I guess it’s in the DNA.”

“Evidently.”

We ride in silence for a while, because I’m afraid of where this conversation might go. My husband hasn’t been feeling well, and I don’t need guilt on top of all the other disparate feelings of loss and despair that I’ve been juggling. I don’t need to flirt with Pete just to prove I’m not old, and I don’t need to flirt with him to keep our secret attraction going. It brightens that corner of my heart like soft lamplight.

“Ave Maria?”

“Yeah?”

“I want you to call me if you ever need me.”

“Of course I will.”

“I’m serious. If you ever need to get to your father quickly, or if there’s something I can do for Etta or Jack, will you let me know?”

“That sounds so serious. You’re scaring me.”

“I don’t mean to. I sold my company, and the buyer was very generous. I’m under contract as a consultant to them for five years. That’s how I have access to the plane.”

“Are you telling me you’re rich?”

“Very.”

“Oh my God. Congratulations!”

“When the five years are up, I’m going to go back to school and teach, I think.”

“Great.”

“I love the whole lecture thing.”

“You’re so good at it.”

“So I don’t want you to hesitate if you need anything. Promise?”

“I promise.”

Pete drives the Jeep up to the terminal at the Lonesome Pine Airport. What a perfect name for a place to say good-bye to loved ones. He gets out and pulls his bag out of the back. I get out to hug him.

“Thank you.” We hold each other closely for a long time. I should not have chemistry with anyone besides my husband, but I do, and here he is. I stand in the wonder of it all for a moment, liking the feeling so much I don’t want it to end. Women, no matter how old they are, need to feel desirable, if only because it puts us in a better mood to face the less romantic drudgery of life. As Pete holds me, I feel immortal, as though the end is nowhere in sight. I like this feeling; it means I still have something to offer. A brisk winter wind kicks up, catching the open passenger door. It starts to slam shut and whaps me on the ass. God’s revenge for my thoughts and sin, or maybe just a reminder
not
to.

“Jack’s going to be fine,” Pete reassures me.

I think it’s odd that Pete brings up Jack in this moment, but maybe he uses Jack to keep his feelings for me in check. God knows I do. “I hope so.”

“Jack asked me something, and I think you should know.”

“What is it?” My mind begins to race. Did I say something at Christmas dinner to Pete that was flirtatious—something that might have made Jack suspicious enough to confront Pete? Did I stay too long at the window, watching them chop wood, deciding whether I married the right guy? Did I fuss with my hair too much on Christmas morning, a tip-off that I wanted to look my best?

Pete looks at me. “Are you okay?”

“Fine. Fine,” I tell him. “What did Jack ask you?” I might as well hear the bad news now, I decide.

“Jack said if anything ever happened to him, he wants me to take care of you and Etta. I promised him I would.”

I can’t speak. Pete leans down and kisses me quickly on the lips, as if to seal inside me whatever words I might have spoken. He turns and walks into the terminal, waving before he goes out the far set of glass doors to the runway.

I climb back into the Jeep. My hands are shaking so badly, I can hardly turn the key. I can’t believe my husband told Pete to look out for me. I hope this doesn’t mean Jack knows something about his health that he won’t tell me. I begin to cry. The tears come quickly. Months of tears. My heart feels as though it’s breaking. I don’t want to live in a world without my husband. I have to stop this bad turn of events from happening. I must.

I went to work after I dropped Pete off at the airport, but I don’t remember the ride back to Big Stone Gap, what I ate for lunch, or any of the prescriptions I filled today. All I could think about was Jack and what he said to Pete. It threw me into an emotional tailspin. I’d do some work and then sit and panic. I was short with customers and Fleeta (so unlike me). I left a message for Jack on his cell phone, but he hasn’t called me back. That’s not unusual. Most of the time he doesn’t even have it on.

I can’t blame my emotional meltdown (let’s call it a state of instant anxiety, like a long panic attack) on the Change, the empty nest, or my situation with Iva Lou. I’m afraid of losing Jack, and I don’t know how to handle it. I’m also afraid that he doesn’t tell me everything because I react so poorly. He doesn’t tell me bad news, and I know this for certain because he has never delivered any in the twenty years we’ve been married. I’m the realist, even though it appears on the surface that he is. He is much better at avoiding confrontation than I am. Well, let’s face it, we both avoid confrontation, which may be one reason we’re still together. So many arguments dissolved because we simply neglected them. Jack doesn’t hold a grudge, and I’ve learned how not to from him.

Papa called earlier to ask when I’d be home for dinner. I don’t know where the time went. Fleeta closed the café an hour ago, and the last customer just left with her insulin.

I lock up the back and then make my rounds through the Pharmacy, shutting off lights and turning on the security alarms. It seems silly to have them—after all, we’re on Main Street, and a patrol car goes by regularly—but I was advised we needed them when robberies of pharmacies became regular in this part of the country. We have our share of coal miners on medication for black lung, and a popular painkiller is a drug called OxyContin. Some genius got his hands on it and turned it into a component of a street drug called “hillbilly heroin.” Eddie Carleton advised me not to carry it, so I don’t. I’ve never had a robbery here, and now that the word is out that I don’t carry OxyContin, I doubt I ever will.

I step outside and lock the main entrance. I take a moment to look up and down Main Street. The road is never-ending: you can see its expanse for a few miles, like a path in a storybook to some magic land. To the west, Main Street runs up Poplar Hill and disappears down the other side of the mountain; to the east, it curves in a long, lazy C shape, out to the flats of the Southern section.

Main Street makes Big Stone Gap feel like a pit stop, a place on the way to somewhere and not a final destination. Maybe that’s a holdover from the railroad days, when we were a designated stop on the way to the big city of Bristol, Tennessee. Some days, even though I love it, I find it odd that I’m still here. There were so many opportunities over the years to pick up and move somewhere else. I thought I had a sense of adventure, but here I am, deep into middle age, and I’ve never wandered far from the place I was born. Yes, I’ve traveled, but I never went away long enough to have my mail forwarded. I always returned home and stayed right here, in the middle.

Not much has changed here since I was a girl—at least not on the surface, in the facade of the buildings that face each other up and down Main Street. Most of them are empty now, and though our locals do everything they can to attract new business back into the abandoned buildings, they haven’t had much success. Most folks around here do their shopping over in Kingsport, and then there’s the Wal-Mart on the outskirts of town that stocks everything from prom gowns to potato chips. Our old friend Zackie Wakin, who charmed Elizabeth Taylor when she came to town, and owned Zackie’s Bargain Store—Clothes for the Entire Family, passed away a few years back. I often wonder how his business would have fared against the big corporations had he lived. I like to think that he was a visionary, an entrepreneur before his time. His fully loaded shop sold everything from half slips to blenders. Sound familiar? He was Wal-Mart before there was Wal-Mart. Big chains are tough on small towns, though. Once Wal-Mart moved in, it just about discouraged anyone from trying to put a small store back on Main Street. I miss the charm of the old shops. Then again, I still manage one.

Mulligan’s Mutual survives somehow. We keep our prices as low as we can, and we count on customer loyalty. Fleeta’s Café helps. There aren’t a lot of places to get a good meal, and Fleeta serves hearty, delicious local cuisine. She’s a good baker, so some customers just come for pie and coffee. This chaps Fleeta because she’s in the café business to make money—those who come and “set all day” over an endless cup of coffee annoy her.

The sun slides behind Poplar Hill, the color of an orange Dream-sicle. I treasure the sunsets in winter, because they’re the only shot of color we see for months. As I stand here in the cold, I try to remember what summer feels like, and I almost can’t. That’s mountain life for you. The hills are so vast and everlasting, you can’t imagine that one day they’ll turn from putty gray to bright green again. When the days are short and dark, it doesn’t seem possible.

I play my Italian-language tapes on the way home. I practice as much as I can. I want to speak Italian with Papa and Giacomina, even as they want to practice their English.

The sky is coal black, with a smattering of freckly pink stars that glimmer in the far distance. I park the Jeep next to the house. Fleeta baked a blueberry pie for my company, and I juggle it with my purse and paperwork as I climb the stairs to our front door. I push the door open and hear laughter coming from the kitchen. It’s the sweetest sound, the one I miss the most when it’s just Jack and me. There has to be a way to make the laughter stay.

“What’s for dinner?” I ask as I put the pie on the counter. Papa and Giacomina are busy at the stove.

“Tonight I cook!” Papa announces grandly. He is stirring fresh garlic cloves in butter over low heat, in my largest skillet, until they glisten.

“It smells so good!”

Theodore, in jeans and a sweater, comes into the kitchen. His hair is wet. “I took a shower. I had to wash away the effects of the halls of academia.”

“Oh no, you didn’t like the board of directors?”

“No, I liked them. I loathe academia.”

“For someone who made his living as a teacher for so many years…”

“I know, I know. I have no patience for bureaucracy of any kind. Well, let’s face it, I don’t have patience for anything much anymore, period. I went from crotchety to curmudgeon on my last birthday. In a few more years, I’ll be really testy. Look out.”

“What happened at the meeting?”

“I was installed on the board, we voted on some tenure decisions, and then we had lunch.”

“Sounds entirely pleasant.”

“It was. By the way, something really interesting came up, and I thought of you and Jack.”

“I am not directing another musical. I am done with the theater!”

“No, no, it’s nothing like that. There’s a wonderful playwright named Donald Philip Stoneman who lives in Aberdeen, Scotland, with his wife, Rosalind. She’s an actress—a good one, I hear. Anyhow, they’re empty-nesters too: three children, two girls and a boy who have moved on with their lives and families. Evidently, the University of Virginia has tried to lure him over to teach, as he’s a distinguished man of letters. He’s finally said yes, but he wanted to be in the mountains, so instead of the main campus in Charlottesville, he chose Wise, Virginia. This is great news for the theater department. He and his wife are hoping to do a house swap—all they need is someone from around here to agree to six weeks in Aberdeen while they come to Wise so he can direct a production.”