PART 5 — The Summer Before the Fork
The nurse had stepped out, leaving the three of us in a soft, lopsided triangle around Caroline’s bed.
The air smelled faintly of lavender lotion and something cleaner underneath, like the way churches smell after the pews have been polished.
Caroline reached for the glass of water on the tray table, her hand trembling. Jack moved to help, but I was closer. I steadied the glass in her hand, felt the cool condensation on my fingers.
“Do you remember the summer before you left?” she asked.
I nodded. “I remember everything and nothing. Depends which day you ask me.”
“Start with the bridge,” she said.
Jack sat back, folding his hands like a man settling in for a story.
It was July of ’69. The moon landing was still weeks away, but every radio and television was already talking about it like it was a parade we were all marching in. I was twenty-three, just back from basic training, counting down the weeks before the Army sent me wherever it pleased.
Caroline was twenty, working mornings at the library and evenings at the diner. She smelled like books and bacon grease in equal measure. We’d meet on the bridge over the Scioto after her shift, the one that swayed when a truck went by.
That night, the river was low, its banks cracked like dry skin. I’d parked my ’58 Ford just off the gravel, headlights pointed toward the water.
“You’re going to miss all this,” she’d said, climbing onto the hood beside me. Her dress was pale blue, the hem brushing her knees.
“I’ll miss you more,” I’d answered, meaning it so hard it almost hurt.
She’d laughed then—low, like she didn’t want the river to hear—and leaned back on her hands. “You always say things like that. Do you mean them?”
I’d turned toward her, the metal of the hood warm under my palms. “Every word.”
But even as I said it, I could feel the pull—duty, distance, the quiet truth that promises don’t stop the world from spinning.
We’d stayed there until the air cooled enough to make her shiver. I gave her my jacket, the sleeves too long on her, the smell of gasoline and cedar hanging between us.
When I walked her home that night, she paused at the end of her driveway, looking at the lit windows of her parents’ house. “Sometimes I wish we could just drive away,” she’d said. “Not far. Just enough so no one could find us for a while.”
I’d laughed, because I didn’t know how else to answer, and kissed her instead. I’ve thought about that moment a thousand times since—how easy it would have been to say, Let’s go now. But I didn’t.
Back in the hospice room, Caroline’s eyes were half-closed, but I could tell she was still listening.
“You remember the jacket?” I asked her.
Her lips curved slightly. “I kept it in the cedar chest until the lining tore. Couldn’t bring myself to fix it. Or throw it away.”
Jack looked between us. “You two sound like a pair of teenagers,” he said, but there was no sting in it.
“We were,” I said. “That was the trouble.”
Caroline shifted against the pillows, her breathing uneven. “Tell him about the fair,” she said.
I hesitated. The fair was the night I’d realized we were running out of time.
The Pickaway County Fairgrounds in August smell like a hundred things at once—fried dough, diesel from the tractor pulls, hay, and the sweet sharpness of funnel cake sugar floating in the dust.
We’d walked past the game booths, her hand swinging in mine. She wanted cotton candy, but the man running the stand was arguing with a boy about change, so we kept going.
Near the barn, the 4-H kids were showing dairy cows. Caroline stopped at the fence, resting her chin on her crossed arms. “My uncle had a cow named Dolly,” she’d said. “She hated me. Tried to kick me every time I milked her.”
I’d laughed. “Smart cow.”
“You would take her side.”
We’d wandered to the grandstand just as the demolition derby started. Engines roared, metal clanged, and the crowd hollered like it was church. Caroline loved it—grinning, eyes wide, the kind of joy you can’t fake.
Halfway through, I’d leaned over to tell her something, but stopped when I saw her looking at me instead of the cars. There was something in her eyes—something I didn’t understand then, or maybe I did but wasn’t brave enough to name.
Later, when we were leaving, she’d pulled me toward the Ferris wheel. From the top, the whole fair spread out below us—lights blinking, people moving like slow currents, the night sky above and the smell of dust and popcorn in the air.
“This is what I’ll remember,” she’d said.
I’d looked at her, trying to memorize her face in that light, the way her hair moved in the breeze. “What about me?” I’d asked.
“You,” she’d said, “I’ll never be able to forget, even if I try.”
In the hospice room, the silence after that memory felt full, like the space between two notes in a song.
Jack was leaning forward now, elbows on his knees. “She told me about the Ferris wheel,” he said. “Said it was the only time she wasn’t afraid of falling.”
Caroline’s eyes fluttered open. “That’s because I wasn’t alone.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “You weren’t alone then. You’re not alone now.”
She reached for my hand again, and I gave it to her. Her grip was weaker than before, but the warmth was still there.
“You know what I remember most about that summer?” she asked.
I shook my head.
“You never once told me goodbye. Even the night before you left.”
I looked down. “I thought if I didn’t say it, maybe it wouldn’t be true.”
Her lips curved again, this time into something softer. “That’s how you kept me, Tom. You never said goodbye.”
Jack stood then, moving to the window. I could see his reflection in the glass—his jaw tight, his eyes fixed on something beyond the trees.
I stayed in the chair, my hand in hers, holding on to what I could.
That summer had been our beginning and our fork in the road. We’d chosen—or maybe life had chosen for us—and here we were, decades later, circling back to the same bridge, the same fair, the same unspoken goodbye.
I didn’t know if there’d be another chance to speak, but I knew one thing for certain: I wasn’t leaving this time until the words she needed were said.
PART 6 — The Night Watch
By evening, the light in Caroline’s room had turned the color of weak tea.
The nurse dimmed the lamps, left the oxygen humming, and whispered something to Jack before slipping out.
Caroline was asleep—or something close to it—her breaths shallow, her mouth parted just enough for the sound to escape.
I sat by her bed until the stiffness in my knees warned me I’d have to stand or I’d need help to do it later.
Jack came back from the cafeteria with two paper cups of coffee.
“Vending machine special,” he said, handing me one.
I took it. “You trying to keep me awake or finish me off?”
He smiled faintly. “Maybe both.”
We stepped into the hallway, the soft carpet swallowing our steps, and followed it to the hospice lounge—a small room with mismatched chairs, a table stacked with puzzles, and a TV mounted high in the corner, sound turned down to a whisper.
No one else was there.
Jack sat across from me at the table. He cradled his coffee, turning the cup in his hands like he was reading it.
“She’s fading faster than I thought,” he said.
I didn’t answer right away. The truth was, I’d seen this before—once with my wife, twice with old friends at the VA hospital. The way the body folds inward when it’s tired of carrying itself.
“She’s still here,” I said finally. “That’s what matters now.”
He looked up. “I keep thinking about what happens after. I don’t mean the funeral. I mean… us.”
That caught me. “You think there’s going to be an ‘us’?”
He shrugged, but it wasn’t casual. “She wanted us to meet. Wanted me to know you. I’m not sure if that’s supposed to be the start of something or just a footnote.”
I leaned back in my chair, letting the hum of the vending machine fill the pause. “I’ve never been good at starting things. And I’ve been worse at keeping them.”
“Daniel,” he said.
I stiffened. “What about him?”
“He’s your son. And I’m your… something. Maybe your son too. I don’t know. But if you keep us in separate boxes, you’ll never stop thinking one doesn’t belong.”
It was strange, hearing him talk like that. Not an accusation—more like a map he was offering me.
“I don’t know how to explain fifty-four years to you,” I said.
“You don’t have to,” he replied. “You just have to show up for whatever’s left.”
We sat there a while, two men with the same lines in our faces, trying not to look like we noticed.
“You ever wonder what you missed?” I asked him.
“All the time,” he said. “But I also wonder what I might have lost if you had been there. My dad was a good man. I wouldn’t trade that.”
That landed heavy, but it was honest.
“I’m not here to rewrite anything,” I told him. “I just… I don’t want to disappear again.”
“Then don’t,” he said simply.
The TV in the corner was showing a baseball game. The camera panned to a father and son in the stands, the boy with a glove too big for his hand. Neither of us spoke for a while.
Finally, Jack said, “When she’s gone, I’m going to go through her things. If I find more letters—yours or hers—do you want them?”
“Yes,” I said without hesitation. “Even if they hurt.”
“They will,” he said.
We both laughed softly at that, though nothing about it was funny.
Near midnight, a nurse stuck her head in. “She’s awake again. Asking for you both.”
We walked back down the hall, slower this time.
When we stepped inside, Caroline was propped against her pillows, her eyes clearer than they’d been all day.
“You’ve been talking,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
“Yes,” Jack said, moving to her side. “About the past. About after.”
She looked at me. “Good. You can’t change the first one, but you can make the second better.”
I took her hand. It was cooler now, but she squeezed it with what strength she had left.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I told her.
Her lips curved. “You already did. But you came back.”
Jack pulled the chair closer. The three of us sat there, the clock on the wall marking each breath.
After a while, her eyes grew heavy again. “When I’m gone,” she murmured, “find the cedar chest. It’s all in there. You’ll know what to do.”
Jack glanced at me. I nodded.
She drifted off again, her hand still in mine.
Back in the lounge, neither of us reached for the coffee that had gone cold.
“I’ll go with you,” Jack said.
“To the chest?”
“Yes. We’ll open it together. No secrets.”
I thought about that—about what might be inside, about the weight of years sealed in wood. “All right,” I said.
We sat in silence until the night nurse passed by, humming under her breath. The sound reminded me of the bridge over the Scioto, when the water ran low and the wind sang through the girders.
“You can stay here tonight,” Jack said. “There’s a cot in the family room.”
I shook my head. “I’ll sit in the chair by her bed. If she wakes again, I want to be there.”
He studied me for a moment, then nodded. “Okay.”
We walked back together, the hall dim and hushed, the kind of quiet that feels like it’s holding something in its hands.
Caroline was still sleeping. I settled into the chair, pulled a blanket over my knees. Jack lingered at the doorway for a moment before heading to his own room down the hall.
The oxygen hummed. The clock ticked. Somewhere in the building, a phone rang once and stopped.
I sat there, watching her breathe, and thought about the words she’d said: You can’t change the first one, but you can make the second better.
I decided that if the second half of my life had to start here, in this chair, with this woman I had loved in a hundred ways, then so be it.
When her hand twitched in her sleep, I reached out and held it until dawn began to soften the edges of the room.
