She skirted around them both and walked to the sedan parked at the curb. “Enjoy your walk,” she said, dismissing him with the perfunctoriness of the school bell signaling the end of a class.
“See you, Bryony,” Cal said, the words coming out with a wistful sigh he hoped she had not heard.
“Bye, Cal,” she said.
Cal smiled as Bryony opened her car door. Maybe he had a chance after all. She had called him Cal.
BRYONY PLANTS HERSELF ON PURPOSE
At seven o’clock in the evening, Bryony sat down to watch a movie, a hot cup of tea cradled in her palms. She tried to settle into the cushions, but her legs were cramped, tense. She turned off the television, put the tea on the kitchen table, and slipped on her jacket. Maybe a walk would help.
Cal’s appearance on the street earlier in the evening had startled her, and she had yet to settle down. He expressed interest, invited her for coffee, and she did what she had been doing for the past seven months of retreat and recovery. She shut down her feelings like a reflex.
Supernatural messages from the tip jar aside, how could Bryony believe someone like Cal Forster would be attracted to someone like her? Life seeped out of his every pore. What could he possibly see in her? Bryony closed her front door and walked out into the cool night air.
The yards in her neighborhood were narrow, the houses close together. Pansies and mums in purple, gold, rust, white, and maroon burst from window boxes or pots placed on steps. One eager neighbor had secured a cornstalk and a scarecrow to the porch post. She passed a few gourd displays, but no pumpkins yet. Bryony would buy one as soon as she could. She loved to carve faces, put candles inside, and watch them glow. She shoved her hands deep in her pockets and walked faster.
Maybe loneliness drove Cal to reach out. Mitch’s introduction of her had not conveyed a resounding endorsement. He made her sound like a loser. Her brother had been berating her for months about her job change, but she had no regrets. If she were honest with herself, she should have quit Metcalf a long time ago.
For the past ten years or so, she had nursed a hollow feeling in her gut, boredom maybe, or feeling like she was missing out on some important life experience, but she had been too scared to try something new. Bryony should be grateful Charity’s purchase of the firm gave the push needed to walk away from a job which had become routine to the point of being mindless instead of mindful, stress-enhancing rather than stress-relieving.
She stopped before stepping off a curb to cross a street, and waited until a car passed. A child looked at her through the passenger side window. Cute kid. Bryony crossed the street, aware of the car make and model. Way too expensive for her taste and budget.
Could she work for minimum wage at BeanHereNow until she retired? Probably, but it would not be a prudent decision. In addition to knowing a higher wage was a practical goal, she needed to create something of her own. She thought about the child in the car back there. She remembered when Lillian’s children were young, the thrill of their sounds when she made them laugh. Tears came as she considered grieving the children and grandchildren she would never have. Too late for that. Maybe it was too late for most of what could have been.
A breeze lifted Bryony’s hair and fluffed it about her eyes and nose. She reached into her pocket to extract a cloth band, gathered her hair, and fastened it away from her face.
She did mourn knowing she would never be a mother, but this energy swirling around in her gut, this urge to foster her own dream, seemed more like a dormant power than an irretrievable lost opportunity.
Maybe there was something she needed to do in the world.
But if so, what was it?
She didn’t dream of being a librarian like Paul. She couldn’t see herself opening her own tax service, which would have been the obvious next step. She loved working with Lillian. When she had learned the rudiments of cooking and baking in middle school, a door had opened, a gateway leading to sources of hidden power, almost like being in an office supply store, but with texture and aromas—and come to think of it—altogether different.
Office supplies anchored her. Kitchen supplies set her free.
Stopping at the edge of a field, she noticed for the first time how far she had come. She had walked clear out of town, past the car body repair place and the little Baptist church, past the development where the high-priced houses hid down a winding lane.
The air smelled more fertile here. Bryony took a deep breath, pulling the scent of dirt and corn and soy and hay into the bottom of her lungs, and exhaled slowly.
Why, when considering her options for the future, did Mr. Cal Forster come to mind? His mix of whimsy and male presence appealed to her, but any man in her life might fall for a younger face with a hotter body. She couldn’t afford the risk again. In fact, she did not need a man at all. She needed a relationship with a goal, a purpose, something meaningful to her.
Growing older allows you to deliver on dreams you only discover because you lived long enough to dream them. Bryony had written that down on the inside cover of her checkbook while waiting to board the plane back to Ohio. In her mind’s eye, she could still see the man who said it, and the woman leaning on his arm.
Bryony headed toward home calmer, more in charge. Whatever form this dream, this purpose, would take, the seed of inspiration had been planted. She was sure of that. And she would shield this tiny possibility from anyone who might stomp on it. Because he was a man, Cal Forster, as interesting as he was, could crush her dream before it broke the surface of her own awareness. Every other man in her life had done just that.
How could she expect him to be any different?
CAL CONNECTS AT BEANHERENOW
Showered, shaved, and dressed for the day, Cal discovered the foil bag in the freezer he thought contained coffee was, in fact, full of dark chocolate chips. For a moment, he considered tossing a handful into his mouth, but knew he could not get through the morning without liquid caffeine.
He didn’t have time to pick up a bag of beans and make a pot at home. The urn in the teacher’s lounge looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in years. Fast food drive-throughs out by Walmart were options, but their coffee tasted like sludge from the bottom of a pan used to strip paint off metal parts. He had never tasted the sludge, but he’d been in close enough proximity while working a summer job in high school. Bad coffee always took him back to every awful hour spent sweating through his shirt, his nose full of dirt and sludge smell. Cal jogged around the block with Bailey, put the dog back in the house, threw his briefcase in the back seat, and headed for town.
Arriving at BeanHereNow an hour before he needed to be at school, Cal started fifth in line behind a tall woman with a large poncho. Bryony stood behind the service counter, again wearing a crisp oxford shirt, pink this time, with a navy skirt and a flowered apron. Wisps of hair escaped the band holding back her hair. Her cheeks were flushed as she smiled and chatted to the customers, always moving, taking orders, filling them, collecting payment.
When he was third in line, their eyes met, and he smiled and waved hello. She seemed startled to see him at first, but raised her hand in recognition before returning her attention to the person next in line.
Another woman—her natural hair pulled away from her face with a colorful scarf—bussed and wiped tables. She and Bryony seemed to manage to keep things moving, but Cal could see where an extra pair of hands might change the pace to a friendlier, relaxed atmosphere.
The woman in line directly in front of him walked away holding her cup of coffee. Cal stepped up to the counter.
“Hi, Cal,” Bryony said. She seemed confident, assured, in her element.
“Hello, Bryony,” he said. “With this counter between us, no chance of me tripping on something and lunging at you like an ax murderer.” The quip brought a wide grin to his own face.
Her countenance remained the same. “What can I get for you?”
“Um, I’ll have a latte with a bagel.”
“The milk frother broke ten minutes ago,” she said. “We’re offering coffee the old-fashioned way this morning.”
“Old-fashioned works,” he said. “And a bagel, plain.”
When Bryony reached up for the bagel, he could see the muscles in her calves. Was she a runner?
She handed his bagel to him, collected a cup of coffee, ran his credit card, and dismissed him to greet the next person in line with the same warm smile and cheerful, “Hello.”
Cal found an empty table and sipped his coffee, watching Bryony in his peripheral vision. She paid no special attention to his side of the room. He stopped looking for her to notice him and surveyed the rest of the shop.
Five tables with empty chairs were covered with used cups and napkins. The clutter reminded him of Leslie, the way her kitchen table would pile up over the course of the week with unsorted mail here, a few peppermint candies there, a stack of newspapers, unused plastic utensils still wrapped in cellophane, fast food napkins. He could never bear the way she tolerated disorganization. When he tried to help, she would playfully slap his hands, telling him to stop, calling him OCD.
Wanting to live with beauty and order in his life was not a mental disorder. People in general function better when they don’t have to look for something every time they want to leave their house. How many times were Leslie and he late for a concert to accommodate a last minute search for her purse, or her keys, or her glasses? One time the lost item was her other shoe. As he recalled, she never found it.
His cell phone rang, and he looked at the number displayed, unknown to him, but with a Cleveland area code. He answered with, “Hello?” and prepared to hang up if the caller launched into selling something.
“Cal?” The voice sounded familiar and not altogether unappealing, a deep, feminine invitation.
“This is Cal,” he answered, in line with his determination to never say “Yes” to unknown callers, a safety measure to ward off scammers.
“It’s Susie. Remember me?”
“Susie, of course.” He’d forgotten to put her number in his contact list, and he did that now as they exchanged pleasantries.
