Chapter Ten

Kate left Peter struggling to get down from the treehouse and stepped through the fresh-cut grass, smiling. The vacant look on his boyish face when she left was priceless. Boyish but also rugged now with its two-day stubble.

She made her way to a pair of chipped white metal garden chairs set next to

a vine-covered gazebo in the corner of Peter's yard. The chilly metal felt good through her jeans. She stretched her legs, kicking off her shoes. The grass was cool, almost cold, but it felt good between her toes. Couldn't do that on the concrete outside her high-rise apartment in the Chicago Loop. She could only afford a low floor, so she couldn't even see Lake Michigan. Her view was of rows of anonymous windows in the next building and sky-crane-dotted

construction down the alley where there would be more anonymous windows

soon.

Not that she was there all that much. Mostly just to sleep and eat when she

wasn't working. She'd only been back to Golden Grove a couple of times and it

was already starting to seem like a completely different life.

She watched Peter make his way down from the treehouse quickly but

carefully, making sure his feet hit the rickety boards that served as the ladder.

He spotted Kate. “I thought you'd disappeared.”

She gave him a wave. “Right here. Want to join me?”

“In a minute. Let me clean this up first.” He began collecting the hammer and other tools he'd left on the ground and dumping them in a long wooden tool

box.

She noticed the cut muscles of his legs under the cargo shorts, and his carved

arms. Still lean, but now…She almost thought the word sexy and pushed it to the

side.

She crossed her legs at the ankles, looking around. She remembered this part

of his yard from when she was a girl. Although it had seemed bigger then.

Everything had seemed bigger then, she guessed. It was strange sitting here, like

she was inside some time capsule. Or, more accurately was on the outside looking in. A place she had been once but had left behind. It was a surprisingly

lonely feeling, as if she didn't belong anywhere anymore.

“Getting dark earlier,” Peter said. He had joined her, taking the chair opposite her, putting his arms on the rests on each side. He'd put on a navy-blue

jacket. His form was an orange outline in the last rays of the sun behind him, his glasses were mirrors hiding his eyes.

“It's not past your bedtime yet, is it?” she teased.

She assumed he was smiling when he spoke. “Not yet. And you're the one that always had to be home by eight-thirty, remember?”

She shook her head. “That was just because my parents wanted me to study

so I could be as good in school as Peter Clark.”

“Mmm. Is that why you stopped coming around as much in high school?”

“We had different crowds. You were science and cross-country. I was in the

art crowd, if there even was such a thing here.” That stung more than it should

have. “It was a long time ago, right?” she added, as if that somehow explained

everything.

“Seems like it.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, face closer.

“Sometimes, though, it seems like just yesterday.”

She nodded, not just to appear to agree with him, but because he was right.

Sitting here, their houses on either side. It felt like they could be ten again. She wasn't sure why it felt that way, but it did.

They talked. Talked until after dark, sitting on the metal chairs by the gazebo. She had forgotten how quiet it was here. No car horns or sirens echoing

down concrete canyons. Just a few crickets chirping and the occasional dog barking somewhere in the distance. A car crunching down a road a street or two

over.

Just the two of them, the night slowly hiding their features until all that were

left were silhouettes against a clear sky dotted with stars. The sun had long set, leaving them the light from the distant street lamps and a dim glow from the half-moon that was just rising above the trees behind Peter's house. She wasn't sure what time it was anymore, and she didn't care to check her watch. Certainly

past 8:30, but her parents would never know.

Peter was describing an incident with his chemistry club last year in such an

excited voice she couldn't help but smile. He seemed like the boy she

remembered, under the manly stubble. No pretensions. What you saw was what

you got.

It struck her that of all the dates she'd had with men back in Chicago, she'd

never talked as much with them as she had with Peter tonight. In the city, there