Page 15 of Just One More Thing

Something in that rhythm eases my shoulders down from where they’ve been living near my ears.

“You walk this early often?” Willard asks.

“I needed air,” I admit.

“Air’s good.”

Silence settles between us. Willard seems like the kind of man who doesn’t treat quiet as something that needs fixing.

We sit there while the town keeps happening around us. Boats idle out. A flagpole tings. A buoy dings. A man jogs by with the grim determination of someone who hates jogging but hates himself more if he doesn’t. Mrs. Kravitz passes with coffee in one hand and purpose in the other.

Willard watches none of it.

He watches Chip.

After a while he says, “I hear you thinking.”

That pulls a reluctant smile out of me. “That loud, huh?”

“Mmm.”

I pick at the seam of my latte sleeve. “I always am.”

He nods once and tosses another peanut. “You thinking about something that already happened, or something you’re afraid might?”

Well. Hate that he nailed it. “Both.”

Willard gives that same calm little nod he’s given everything else. “Sometimes,” he says, “the past feels safer. It’s already done disappointing us.”

I peel off a piece of cardboard. “What if the past is the disappointing part?”

“Then you learned something.” He tosses another peanut. “Or you’re about to.”

I stare down the path toward the lighthouse and the rocky jetty. “You ever mess something up so badly you just…” I make a useless little motion with my free hand. “Left it there?”

Willard doesn’t answer right away. He holds a peanut between his finger and thumb while Chip inches closer.

“Yes,” he says at last.

“Did you fix it?”

He shakes his head once. “No.”

My fingers go still on the sleeve. “Oh.”

“But I lived,” he adds gently. “And I loved. And I learned the difference between what was broken and what was just unfinished.”

I clear my throat and take a sip of latte so I have something else to do with my mouth besides admit that hit a little too close for comfort.

“Unfinished has a way of calling,” he continues. “Broken usually doesn’t.”

Chip scampers closer, climbing onto Willard’s shoe and taking the peanut from between his fingers.

I look down the shell path again. “What if you waited too long?”

Willard lets out a soft little chuckle. “People always think there’s a clock on these things.”

“There isn’t?”