Read Online What Once We Loved by Jane Kirkpatrick - Free Book Online Page B

became friends that night. You even washed my hair. Remember?”
    Ruth nodded.
    “After that was when all the deaths came. That was the last night Jeremy put a quilt around my shoulders. But he didn't stay awake with me. You did. And I'm grateful, in case I never told you.”
    Ruth heard her set the tin down on the stoop and decided her own back could use a rest. She pressed crumbs on her finger, licked them clean, then sidled her way beside Mazy, setting her tin on top of hers. Crickets filled the night air.
    “I miss fireflies. Something they don't have here in the West,” Ruth said. She sighed. “I wish this hadn't come between us, but it has,” Ruth said. “I know Jumper's death wasn't your fault.”
    “Oh, Ruth. Thank you. For understanding. I am sorry beyond description.” Mazy touched Ruth's hand, felt the woman stiffen and pull back. Mazy brushed at her apron, picked at imaginary lint. She cleared her throat. “Funny thing is though,” Mazy continued, “I think I know now what Jeremy might have been feeling, watching people ready to head out into something new, something they thought would be better. There's something…seductive in anticipation, looking forward. Scary, yes. But a little like that crushed ice, all fresh and new looking scraped away from something old and familiar.” She picked up a pebble and threw it.
    “You're putting off the inevitable,” Ruth said finally. “Not wanting to accept what is.”
    She heard Mazy swallow, her voice develop a quiver. “Some of what is' I can accept. Everything bad that happens isn't my husband's fault. It's not always my fault either.” Ruth looked at Mazy and saw moonlight glistening on the wetness of her cheeks. “But I don't want to accept that our friendship has a strain on it that can't be buttressed. I mean, what kind of friendship can't endure a stone or two thrown against it. Won't it make it stronger in the end, like stitching up a tear in a quilt? It just gives it another…story.”
    Ruth grunted.
    “I can't accept that people come into our lives and then leave,” Mazy said. “I just can't.”
    “You may have to,” Ruth said.
    “Just say it's not forever. Tell me that you'll forgive me for having a mad bull around, for imposing myself on your place all this time, for not moving along the trail a little faster. I am so sorry,” she whispered then. “You know I am.”
    Ruth wished she could take them back to before it all happened, bring Jumper back, return to the safety of a relationship with Mazy. Maybe this was why she didn't have many friends. Keeping them rubbed her raw, took her inside places she didn't want to visit.
    “Can't we just pretend we're still good friends?” Mazy persisted.
    “I'm not sure what that would look like,” Ruth said. She picked up another pebble and threw it into the darkness, listened for its plop.
    “Just acting like you believe it's so, I guess,” Mazy said. “Maybe agree to answer my letters when I write—you wouldn't have to tell me all that's happening inside you, but around you. The daily things. Maybe let me tell you what's inside me. Let it be all right for me to hold you in my prayers.”
    “So you can convince yourself everything is all fixed?”
    “No. Because it's what friends do. Even over years and miles. Families,too. I guess it's what loving requires. Finding ways to close the spans that open when we least expect them.”
    The two women sat without speaking, a mooing cow, a coyotes howl, and the chatter of people in the cabin behind them filling the silence. The evening turned cooler, and Ruth heard Elizabeth saying that she needed to be leaving, then looking for something, wondering where she'd left it.
    “It'll be all right. It will, Ruth,” Mazy said.
    “Maybe. In time.”
    “We don't have time, do we?” Mazy said. Ruth heard a catch in her voice. “You're leaving, and we may never even see each other again, not ever. I don't know if I could live with it like this, you