Chapter 25

Well, I'd done the unpleasant stuff, and I'd done the business stuff, and I'd stuffed my face. What next? I found myself at loose ends and couldn't come up with a way to tie 'em. I tossed my trash and set the tray where it belonged, and walked outside. I stood at the fence behind McDonald's, looking out over what used to be the Beach, but not really seeing it. My mind wasn't far away ... it wasn't much of anywhere.

I shook myself and walked back to the Blazer. I couldn't stand around McDonald's all day, so I might as well drive around. Maybe I'd come up with something useful to do, or at least someplace to go where I wouldn't be in everyone's way. And as I pulled out of the slot I realized what I could do.

I headed back east over the freeway and turned south on Carlisle. I turned east when I came to Comanche, but almost immediately cut off to the right on Shephard Road and parked next to Cardwell Park. It was a place for memories. There was a Saturday during the month between Cecelia's proposal and our wedding when she'd come knocking on my door and invited me out for a walk. I remembered it so well because it was one of the first instances I'd seen something of the joyous heart behind Cecelia's natural formality. I would have expected her to call first – she'd always called before when she wanted to see me – but that day she just showed up at my door, and led me out into the spring sunshine.

We'd sat on the bench around the tree that is the most obvious feature of the park, and talked about how we wanted to do our wedding. Neither of us had wished for anything flashy or expensive; while we both had money – she more than me – and didn't mind spending it when we thought it worthwhile, we'd be just as married if Tyrone did the ceremony after the sermon as we would if we spent thousands of dollars on a special event. And neither of us cared much for all the plastic silliness – at least it seemed silly to us – of the standard wedding. Cecelia loved her clothes then, as she does now, but wedding dresses weren't on her list of clothes she loved. And I had to admit that the usual wedding dress just wouldn't flatter her – they don't design 'em for her figure.

We didn't settle everything just then, though we had the major points in place after half an hour or so. And then she'd kissed me, and looked deep into my eyes, and we'd walked some more.

I stood looking at that bench, weathered as it was, and remembered the days when we were so excited about the coming wedding. It seems to me sometimes that we've been married forever, and certainly 11 years isn't trivial – especially not when half of all marriages wind up coming apart. We don't know a lot of people who've been married as long as we have. But the fact is that we haven't been married all that long, and the days when we were looking forward to the wedding rather than back on it are more recent than our emotions recognize.

It was a nice day, and I'd left my jacket in the Blazer. We'd had a long and wet monsoon season, but fall was coming on slowly, and while this wasn't one of them, not yet anyway, there'd been days that felt more like summer. I took another look at the bench, which no one else knew had any cosmic significance, and turned west on Cherokee Road. This took me very quickly to Carlisle, and I walked on south. We'd followed the same route that day when Cecelia had come for me. I knew what I was doing – taking that stereotypical stroll down memory lane. I grinned at myself as I walked.

I crossed Carlisle at Candelaria and kept going south. It wasn't long before I came to Claremont, where there's another McDonald's in the corner of a shopping center – which wasn't there when Cecelia and I had walked here. I couldn't remember, now, what had been there – actually, yes I could. It had been an empty lot, the whole shopping center had been, with a single strand of wire rope, drooping between thigh-high posts, serving as a half-baked fence. On the other side of Claremont was a Wal-Mart – the new building further back from Carlisle than the old one had been. I could remember when the Wal-Mart on Eubank had been the only one in town that was open 24 hours, but now they all were, even the one on Academy which wasn't a Supercenter. Cecelia and I had gone into the old building that day and gotten something to drink – and since I was walking in my old footsteps I did the same, making it a point as I strolled through the parking lot to walk where I remembered the front doors had been back then. My memory probably wasn't quite accurate, though the new building was only a year old, or maybe two. I might still think of the place up against the Vontrigger Hills in Fenner Valley as John Fraze's place, even though he'd moved to Goffs in 1976 or thereabouts, but memory is tricky – it can't remember exactly where you put the keys 20 minutes ago.

I got a Coke, which cost more than it had in 1995, and headed back up Carlisle. At Montgomery I crossed with the walk signal, and then cut across Carlisle, which dead ends just a quarter mile or so further on, and north of Montgomery is more in the nature of a big driveway than a street. The parking lot I was in now was where I'd once parked, back when I was single and drove an old beat up Chevy pickup. I'd kept that pickup for years, and had just gotten rid of it during the summer, after we got back from Oklahoma. I loved that truck, but with a family it was just better all around to have passenger as well as cargo space. Someone was parked in "my" space now, someone who drove a silver PT Cruiser. I'd moved out of the apartments on my wedding day back in 95, and though I'd passed by many times since then I'd only been on the property two or three times. I went on across the parking lot and down the sidewalk between two buildings, looking at where I'd lived. The place didn't look much different from the outside – it looked like they'd repainted it sometime in the intervening years, but the color was much the same as I remembered it, as were the little patches of grass and the groups of flowers. The name on the sign out front was different, but the apartments themselves seemed to be one of the few things that were, outwardly at least, about the way they were when I'd come to town.

I crossed Montgomery with the signal again, and walked on down to Comanche, crossed that street, and was shortly at the Blazer. I unlocked the door, got in, and drove toward home.

At home Cecelia was in our bedroom running her sewing machine. It sits in a corner of our bedroom, by the window where she can get natural light. I looked over her shoulder and saw that from the fabric it looked like a blouse. I like shirts with color – plaid fabrics in red and black and purple and yellow and whatnot. To me a plain cowboy shirt isn't worth the trouble of giving it away. But while Cecelia likes color, generally it's in the embroidery, and in her skirts and pants. She usually likes plain colors for blouses.

This one was a delicate lavender kind of color – probably they called it lilac or something like that, though a purple lilac is generally darker than this fabric was. I've found that while certain colors look better with Cecelia's skin than others, none of them look bad. I don't know how that works. Some people just can't wear certain colors, not and look good, but Cecelia makes everything look good, and it's not just my bias in her favor, I don't think. Even when I was just her PI, and thought her singularly unattractive, I never had anything to quarrel with when it came to her clothes. They always looked fantastic, even if at first I thought she didn't.

Cecelia was concentrated on her sewing, so I just put my hand on her shoulder for a moment, and then bent down and kissed that shoulder, and headed for the kitchen. In the refrigerator I found a Coke, and a plate of lasagna with plastic wrap over it. I pulled out the plate, and looked in the freezer, and sure enough there was a wrapped package with "Lasagna" on it in Cecelia's distinctive spiky writing, using some sort of marker. She must have made it while I was out, for I'd been gone most of the day.

I stuck the plate in the oven and turned the heat on its lowest setting, to warm the lasagna. I could have nuked it, but when you microwave something the flavor suffers. I don't know what it is, but nuking food just isn't the same as actually cooking or warming it. I often do use the microwave, but less so now that I've been married for so long. I'm addicted to good home cooking.