Page 36 of Dear Henry, Love Edith
“No. Usually I grab a bite on the way home, but tonight I went over to see a friend about... something.”
She brushed her bangs to the side and the wrinkles along her forehead smoothed out. “Good. I made some chicken and rice casserole. It’s ready if you’re hungry.”
“Starving.”
Edith dished out two servings and they sat together at the kitchen island. Other than the scraping of their forks, they ate in silence, shooting each other the occasional polite smile. “This is really good,” Henry said.
“Thank you.”
Silence again. Henry wasn’t used to sharing a meal with someone like this. Whenever he and Angela ate together, he chewed and Angela talked.
Angela.Henry wished he could swallow his guilt as easily as the casserole. He hadn’t given her one second’s thought. No, wait. That wasn’t right. He had given her one second’s thought, and in that one second, he berated himself for not ending things with her already, then decided it was easier on his conscience if he didn’t give her any more thought.
Edith wiped a napkin across her lips. “So that woman I’ve seen you with a few times. Is she your girlfriend?”
Henry sputtered on his water. Was Edith a mind reader?He cleared his throat. “Uh... no. No.No.I wouldn’t have kissed you or started pretending we were—” he motioned his hand back and forth between them—“you know, if she and I were still...” He flopped his hand in the opposite direction, as if Angela were the refrigerator.
He really needed to set aside some time to have that conversation he’d been avoiding with Angela, didn’t he?
Henry picked at his last bite of chicken. “We’ve dated on and off the past couple of years. Her parents own a farm near here. After people started using their barn for weddings, Angela started her own wedding photography business. It didn’t take long for it to take off. She’s good at what she does. But as she got busier and busier, we began connecting less and less.” And the fact that Henry hadn’t minded one bit should have been a giant red flag.
“I’m sorry.” Edith poked her fork at the few remaining grains of rice on her plate. “Breakups are tough.”
Henry stood and dumped the rest of his scraps in the garbage. “What about you?” he asked, desperate to change the subject. “Clearly you have something special going on with Steve.”
“Ha. That was part of the reason I came out here for the summer and why I’m looking forward to leaving at the end of it. Ever since my husband died, I haven’t wanted to form any new attachments. I just want to be me, living my life on my own terms for once. No ties. No connections. No—”
“Steve?”
Edith let out a breath of laughter. “Definitely no Steve.” She took her plate to the sink. “You know, growing up, he wasn’t a bad kid. He was a couple years behind me in school.I think he always had a bit of a crush on me. But unfortunately for him, the only crush I ever had was on his older brother.”
She rinsed her plate, then began filling the sink with water. “To be honest, Steve never showed his face much in all the time I was married to Brian. It wasn’t until Brian got sick and was near the end that it suddenly felt like Steve and I were around each other all the time. I can’t say he ever crossed the line, but I started to notice how he’d find little ways to be touching me. You know—a shoulder squeeze here, maybe a little back rub there—things like that. And if he wasn’t touching me, it felt like he was always watching me.”
Edith paused. “Am I talking too much?” She reached for Henry’s plate. “Sometimes I get carried away. Here, let me wash.”
Henry kept the plate. “How about I wash and you finish the story.” He could use something to do with his hands right now, besides thinking of ways to use them on Steve. “And don’t worry,” he said to lighten the mood, “I’ll let you know when you’re talking too much.”
Edith wrinkled her nose at him and looked so adorable that Henry plunged his hands into the sink water just to keep from pulling her close. “So what happened?” Henry asked after he’d washed off their plates.
“Huh? Oh.” Edith’s face remained somber as she grabbed a towel to start drying. “Well, eventually my husband died. We knew it was coming. He’d been sick for a while. Cancer,” she explained.
“I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.” Edith became quiet. For a long minuteHenry didn’t think she planned to say any more. But then with a wave of her hand, she said, “Anyway. After Brian was gone, Steve kept finding reasons to come over to the house. He’d bring by dinner. He’d take out the garbage. One evening I came home and found him cleaning out the gutters. It was all nice things, and I really did appreciate the way he was trying to help out, but at the same time, it was too much.”
She opened a cabinet and returned the dried plates. “Before long he was there all the time. And if he wasn’t there, then he was calling all the time. It was like we were married. And that’s when I realized, after everything I’d gone through with Brian—all the struggles, all the heartache—the last thing I wanted was get tied down in another marriage. Not when I was free to do as I pleased for the first time in my life.”
Henry worked hard to keep his face impassive. He drained the sink, then toweled his hands dry as he leaned back against the counter. “So you decided to go to South Africa.”
“I decided to go to South Africa. It’s somewhere I’ve wanted to go for a long time. Especially this particular area of South Africa. Once I connected with an organization that was taking on volunteers, well, one thing led to another, and that became the plan.” Edith hung her towel back on the stove. “But as you can see, Steve is not a big fan of the plan.”
Yeah, well, neither was Henry. It was all he could do not to crush her to his chest and beg her to forget all about the plan. But then he’d be as bad as Steve.
Henry cleared his throat and shifted his weight. “Well, I’m proud of you, Edith. It takes a lot of guts to do what you’re doing.” He swallowed the words threatening to spill out and instead said, “Don’t let anyone hold you back.”
“I’m trying not to,” she said quietly, holding his gaze. She suddenly narrowed her eyes and crinkled her nose. “What is it with you two?”
“What do you mean?”
