“Yeah, she’s going strong. Same as always. The team is really good this year, so that makes her happy.” Ginger owned the local minor-league baseball team, the Calcasset Claws. She’d moved to town twenty-five years ago, after her husband died, to join Nick’s mom and dad, and much of the rest of the family had followed. “My folks downsized after they retired. They have a townhouse in Rockland. They’re playing a lot of tennis.”
“Ah,” she said. “My mother has discovered swimming.” They took a few steps in silence. “How about you? Are you happy?” He had gone to Boston and New York for school—undergrad, master’s—but he’d been back here ever since, according to the social media posts from him that trickled through her line of sight from time to time, most of which were about travel, and about a wife and then no wife.
“Pretty happy, yeah,” he said. “I like what I do. It’s not easy, but it’s got some purpose to it.”
Laurie looked up to see a car driving alongside them with its window down. A girl in the passenger seat, maybe fourteen, looked up from her phone. “Hi, Mr. Cooper!” she called out with a wave. “Thank you!”
“You’re welcome, Angela. Hey, Anna Beth.” He waved.
“Hey, Nick, thanks again!” The woman in the driver’s seat called across, and the car drove off.
“Boy, did you pay them to come along right then?” Laurie asked.
He laughed. “That’s Angela and her mom. Angela had an assignment for a summer class; she had to find out something she didn’t know about one of her heroes. I spent a little time this morning walking her through the fine points of some of our better databases. And believe me, it’s not easy to give a tenth-grader who idolizes Beyoncé any information she doesn’t already have.”
“Did she find anything?”
“I don’t know. She said she’d come back when she was done and fill me in. I’m on tenterhooks.”
Laurie shook her head. “It freaks me out that there are so many people here now that I don’t know. I’m sure I lost out on a ton of hot gossip.”
“Well, let’s see. I told you how the team is doing. The community theater did The Music Man this year, it was a hit. They even rounded up a passable barbershop quartet.”
“Did you play Marian the librarian?”
“Cute. What else…we have a new T.J. Maxx on the edge of town that has Calcasset’s third escalator.” He held up three fingers, and she laughed.
“Amazing, I’ll have to go ride it up and down sometime.”
“We have a baseball coach at the high school who used to pitch for the Yankees.”
Laurie turned to him. “How did that happen?”
“His fiancée lives here. Do you remember Evvie Ashton? She was younger than we were, lived with her dad?”
“I don’t. I’ve clearly forgotten everything I ever knew.”
“You should have come back more.”
Laurie sighed. “I know. At some point, I started talking to Dot and June on the phone all the time and I just stopped visiting. Everybody else kind of faded.” She smiled. “You are the exception, of course. I’m very happy to see you.”
He put a hand on his belly. “Well, I am honored. I’m happy to see you too.” He rubbed his chin. “Should I ask you about the wedding? I did hear about the wedding.”
“Everyone knows everything,” she sighed.
“Unintended consequences of an overly connected society,” he said.
“Unintended consequences of my mother having Facebook. Does that service do anything other than trick you into disclosing things you could have just kept secret?”
“In my experience, it will also remind you that eight years ago, you took a really great picture with someone you were married to but aren’t anymore. Of course, you don’t have to say anything about the wedding if it’s particularly sensitive.”
“It’s not particularly sensitive, but that is a conversation that we should definitely have somewhere other than walking past this sign that says PLEASE CURB YOUR DOG.”
He put his hand on her elbow as a car pulled out of a driveway in front of them, and then they continued. “Fair enough. So you’re working hard over at Dot’s?”
“Yeah, with Junie. We hired this guy to come over, and he’s picking through all her stuff, and after we decide what to keep and what might sell, his people will clean out the rest.”