Past, Present And A Future. Janice Carter

elaborate and after he left, the talk turned to food, restaurants and changes in Twin Falls. On safer ground, Clare began to relax and enjoy the evening.

      But two hours later, her relief that the dinner had transpired without serious reference to the past evaporated. The laughter, topical chitchat and catch-up on their current lives had merely been embellishment to her false sense of security, Clare realized. Standing on the sidewalk outside Serendipity—and acknowledging the irony of its name, under the circumstances—Clare was painfully aware of the huge gap between the teenaged Gil Harper she’d adored and his present self. Someone she knew not at all.

      Outside the restaurant after dinner, Laura and Dave lingered for a few seconds, reminding them of the time to be at the church the next day. “Sure you don’t want a lift back?” Laura asked anxiously, reading all too clearly, Clare thought, the state of her mind.

      “My hotel’s just a few blocks away,” Clare was saying when Gil piped up.

      “I’ll walk her back,” he said to Laura and before Clare could find an excuse, he clasped a hand under her elbow and gently turned her in the direction of the Falls View Hotel, four blocks away. “I insist,” he added.

      Her first impulse was to shake loose of his grasp, but she was worried the move would seem too inappropriate. She reminded herself that he was simply being polite, a trait she recalled from the adolescent Gil Harper, only the present day Gil Harper seemed nothing like the teenage one she’d adored.

      “You’re deep in thought,” he commented, breaking the silence.

      More like deep in history, she thought, but only made an innocuous remark about the evening.

      “Yes,” he agreed, “the food was great, too. A far cry from the diner we used to hang out at after school. Remember it?”

      As if she could forget. Harvey’s Diner was where her history with Gil had begun. Just two blocks away from Twin Falls High, the small family-owned snack bar had been, along with the town’s pool hall, one of the few places that tolerated the teenage crowd.

      But she refused to be drawn in to reminiscing. “I do. The best hamburgers and fries in town.” As if that had been its only claim to memory.

      He didn’t pursue the point. Conversation ceased then and all that Clare heard were the hollow echoes of their shoes on the sidewalk and the voice in her mind, urging her to say something—anything—to break the strained silence. Yet there was a time when silence between them had been companionable. A bond, rather than an indicator of the way their lives had diverged. Oddly, the thought saddened her.

      They were approaching the old movie theater—its facade rebricked and updated—as the audience exited, spilling onto the sidewalk ahead of them. Gil slowed down, letting Clare take the lead through the knots of people. Someone jostled against her and when she turned to her right, Clare saw a thin, middle-aged woman staring at her in astonishment. On the verge of apologizing Clare was met with a glare so hateful that she froze in her tracks. A couple strolled between her and the woman and by the time they’d passed, the woman had been swallowed up in the crowd.

      “What is it?” Gil asked, coming up beside her. “Why did you stop?”

      “I don’t really know,” she said, still scanning the place where the woman had been seconds ago. “I bumped into some woman and when I turned to apologize, she glared at me as if I’d done something unbelievably rude.”

      “What did she look like?”

      “In her forties and skinny. Brown hair. She was looking at me as if she knew me,” Clare said.

      Gil stretched his neck to look over the crowd. He turned back to her. “Maybe it was someone you knew from before.”

      From before. A curious expression, Clare thought, looking at Gil. Just as I once knew you—from before. Or thought I did.

      “More likely someone who didn’t like my book,” she said, laughing it off. She resumed walking, eager to remove herself from his gaze. She tried to keep a distance ahead of him but her heels were no match for his effortless stride.

      He caught up to her as she turned onto the side street where her hotel was situated. Clear of Main Street and with fewer shops, the street was much darker. It ran along the river, fenced off by a guardrail and gentle embankment to its edge. On the opposite side rose the steep dark cliffs that snaked around the bend in the river to the falls at its head. Two brilliant spotlights aimed at the falls illuminated their flow down the cliffs.

      “I don’t recall those lights when I lived here,” Gil said.

      “No,” Clare said, slowing to take in their nighttime splendor. “They were installed a few years ago,” she said. “A porter at the hotel told me some drunk driver missed the bend in the road and went over the top. They put up the fence afterward.”

      “Remember how we used to make jokes about what this place might have been called if the falls weren’t here? Like Rivertown?”

      “Yes,” she said, laughing suddenly at the memory flash. “Laura and I came up with River Crossing and River Forge, but our favorite was Nowhere U.S.A., getting away from the river theme. If the falls weren’t here, we decided we’d have to rename most of the town. The high school, this hotel, at least one of the restaurants in town at the time, as well as a couple of the streets.”

      “Not to mention the town’s first shopping mall.”

      “Really a strip plaza,” she said.

      “Right.” He grinned down at her.

      In that unguarded instant, their eyes connected, sharing a memory. It was as if the intervening years hadn’t happened at all. She was still seventeen and in love. Clare looked away first. She shivered, bunching her shoulders beneath the trench coat she’d brought for the weekend. “It’s getting chilly,” she mumbled, “and we have an early morning.”

      “Not too early,” he said, his voice as low as hers.

      Was he suggesting something, she wondered, or simply correcting her? Whichever, she decided not to respond.

      “Look,” he went on, “I’m assuming you feel as uncomfortable about the christening as I do. But obviously, we don’t want to spoil the day for Laura and Dave. Can we agree on some kind of truce for tomorrow?”

      Clare kept her face impassive. “I wasn’t aware that we were involved in some kind of feud. Do we need to agree on neutrality when indifference is really what we’re feeling?”

      There was a second of confusion in his face, quickly followed by understanding. He took a step back, looking as if she’d struck him.

      “We’re both adults,” she said, trying to soften the bluntness of her remark. “And we’ve both managed to put the past behind us. Do we need to say more?”

      “Apparently not,” he replied, his voice almost a whisper. “Good night then, Clare.” He turned his back on her and strode briskly toward Main Street.

      Clare waited until he disappeared around the corner before she summoned the energy to move. In spite of her belief that what she’d said was perfectly true, she felt mean and ashamed. What is it about Gil Harper, that prompts such behavior in you? she asked herself.

      She pushed open the front door of the hotel, crossing the deserted lobby on her way to her room. She didn’t realize there was a phone message for her until she reached across the nightstand to turn out the lamp.

      “Welcome back to Twin Falls, Clare. This is Lisa Stuart, your former English teacher at Twin Falls High. I missed your book signing today but heard via the grapevine that you might be in town a couple more days. I wondered if you’d be interested in visiting the school and giving a short talk to my senior lit class. I hate to impose on what must be a busy schedule, but some of my students have already read your latest novel and we’d all be thrilled to have you visit. If not, then perhaps the two of us could get together over coffee. I’d love to see you and hear all