“Have you seen Jack Nelson around?” Granny inquired, in what was an awkward, yet not uncharacteristic, segue.
Nora rolled her eyes. “Well, I certainly didn’t run into him on the walk between the kitchen and the living room, where I was sitting the last time you chose to drop his name into our conversation.”
“I just think it might be nice for you to see him after all this time,” Granny shrugged.
Nora could hide her irritation no longer. “Mama, I came here because I needed to get away and deal with what my husband has done, not because I wanted to subject myself to you shoving my high school sweetheart down my throat.”
“And what a sweetheart he is,” Granny nodded.
“Enough, Mama,” Nora rolled her eyes.
The phone rang, and Granny moved slowly to answer it. Nora clinched her fists under the table, praying that her mother had not crossed the line and secretly invited Jack over for dessert. If she could get out of town without having to explain the current state of her life to anyone from her past, she would consider it a successful trip.
On her last night in town, Nora slept in the bedroom where as a teenager she used to lie awake at night thinking about Jack Nelson, and, much to her dismay, she found herself in the same spot, a woman in her fifties, doing the exact same thing.
On the day she was to leave Hope Hull, Nora thought about writing down Jack’s number but decided against it. As she piloted her rental car toward Memphis, she tried to shake old memories from the cobwebs of her mind. It had been so many years since she had thought about Jack that she was surprised by the vividness of the memories.
At the airport she found herself ready to go back to North Carolina, ready to face her husband and decide the future of their marriage. She walked through the airport, digging through her purse and looking for her cell phone, eager to hear her children’s voices. She rounded the corner, and, as if she had suddenly been transported from real life into a scene from a movie, a man rounded the corner from the opposite direction at the very same time, bumping into her and knocking her purse out of her hand. He immediately knelt down to pick it up, and, as he stood to apologize, he found himself powerless to do anything other than stare. “Nora Jean Miller?” he gulped after a moment.
“Jack?” Nora exclaimed.
Jack Nelson embraced Nora instantly. “It isn’t Miller anymore is it?” he smiled.
“No,” Nora smiled as she pulled away to stare at Jack. “It’s Cohen…Nora Cohen.”
“Nora Jean Cohen,” he nodded, not ready to admit he had already known that.
Hearing Jack say her name made Nora think of how many times she had doodled Nora Jean Nelson and how perfectly it seemed to roll of the tongue, as though it was meant to be.
They stared at each other for a moment, too much to say to know where to begin.
“Well, what in the world are you doing here?” Jack finally asked.
“I was visiting Mama,” Nora replied.
“Was,” Jack gulped.
“Yes,” Nora nodded. “It was a quick trip, or I would have called you.” Nora bit the side of her mouth as she heard the lie pour out.
“It’s been…well, forever, frankly,” Jack said after a moment. “I see your mama at church, and I try to check in on her every now and then, but…” Jack laughed nervously, “I don’t think she likes me very much.”
Nora laughed so naturally she snorted.
Jack smiled back at her. He would have recognized that laugh anywhere, and it put him totally at ease.
“Bless her heart,” Nora said, with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Almost forty years later, Mama still blames you. After all this time she holds on to the notion that if you had fought harder, protested more, I wouldn’t have run off with Randy.”
Jack hung his head. He would have been lying if he said that the questions of why he had not put up more of a fight for the woman he loved had not crossed his mind in the years after Nora left town. Instead, he had set her free, given her his blessing to chase after whatever it took to make her happy. He looked at her now, and he saw that same sweet girl who had walked away from him so many years earlier.
“We both know that in that moment, there was no changing my mind,” Nora smiled, seeming to read his thoughts. Her smile faded into a frown. “I mean, Randy Cohen was everything any woman could want, right?” she rolled her eyes.
Jack stared at her curiously, unable to take his eyes off of her. “Listen, I have to pick up my youngest daughter when her flight gets in from Nashville,” he said after a moment. “Do you have time for a cup of coffee? I’d love to catch up.”
His youngest daughter, Nora thought. He looked like a million dollars…age had been kind to him. Yes, Nora knew, he had to be happily married, and he had a youngest daughter, which meant there were other children. She had been right, his life was perfect. His life was perfect; hers wasn’t, and he wanted to discuss it over coffee. As Nora was about to politely refuse, saying she had to catch her flight home, she caught a glimpse of his left hand and noticed he wasn’t wearing a wedding band. “I’d love to,” she smiled.
“So, I guess I’ll start with the obvious, how have you been?” Jack asked as he and Nora sat down with their coffee.
“My husband had an affair,” Nora gulped before she could stop herself. She hung her head, both shocked and horrified by the words that had just escaped her lips.
“Oh, Nora, I’m sorry…I had no idea,” Jack sighed, silently cursing the man who could hurt the vision of beauty and grace sitting before him.
Nora was even more surprised to hear herself continue to discuss such a personal matter with a man she had not seen in what seemed like a lifetime. “I should have seen it coming. He’s been having some sort of mid-life crisis. First it was a Corvette, which my son wrecked, and then a younger woman whose presence in our lives seems to have sent the aforementioned son into a downward spiral of sorts.”
“So how many children do you have?” Jack asked, interested.
“Five,” Nora nodded.
Jack didn’t seem surprised. “You always wanted babies; I know you’re a wonderful mother.”
“I wish that was true,” Nora laughed nervously.
“I know you too well to believe that it isn’t,” Jack replied.
Nora took a long sip of her coffee. “Well, it isn’t for lack of trying, but I feel like I’ve failed in a lot of areas.”
