What We Remember. Michael Thomas Ford

and the scent of his aftershave no longer lingered. It was her room now, and hers alone. Yes, it had been a long time.

      “But not long enough, Daniel,” Ada said. “Not long enough.”

      CHAPTER 12

      1982

      Ada nodded her head, listening to Evelyn Burnham’s description of the last Garden Club meeting, but out of the corner of her eye she was watching her husband as he talked to Bess Kunkel. Soon to be Bess Derry. She couldn’t believe A.J. was actually going to marry the woman, but at least that meant she would be off the market. Not that that would ever stop her, Ada thought.

      “The dahlias are absolutely huge this year,” Evelyn said. “And the roses, oh, you should see the roses. The Mary Pickford I put in two years ago is just gorgeous.”

      “Do you remember when we were in high school and we found out Bess was stuffing her bra?” Ada said, interrupting Evelyn’s rambling account of her garden’s progress.

      Evelyn stopped talking and thought. “You know, I do!” she said. “It was in Mister Reagan’s history class. She raised her hand to answer a question, and Bobby Dugan saw the tissues sticking out.” She laughed. “That was a laugh riot.”

      Ada jerked her head toward Bess. “I think she might still be at it,” she said, pulling a face and feigning surprise.

      Evelyn glanced over, then turned to Ada, laughing. “You’re terrible,” she said. “But I agree that those do not look like the ones God gave her.”

      Satisfied to have drawn Evelyn into a dissection of Bess’s faults, Ada continued on. “I don’t remember her being a blonde either,” she said. “And I think her roots will back me up on that.”

      Again Evelyn laughed, and again Ada felt pleased with herself. Two in a row, she congratulated herself. She sipped her gin and tonic and stretched out on the chaise. A mosquito landed on her exposed arm, and she slapped it away. “Damn bugs,” she said. “You’d think A.J. would have set out some citronella candles.”

      They were in the Derrys’ backyard, a wide expanse of grass that, like most of their properties, bordered on wilder fields on the edges of the forest that surrounded Cold Falls on its westernmost side. A.J. had built a barbeque pit, and it was around this that the guests sat. Several picnic tables nearby were loaded with food. Ada’s contribution was a green Jell-O salad in the shape of a fish. She had filled the mold halfway and let it set before adding a can of fruit cocktail and the remaining gelatin, so that when the fish was turned out of the mold and set on a plate it appeared to be filled with something it had eaten. Ada was thrilled with the effect and had added it to the assortment of salads and baked dishes with no small amount of pleasure. It was, she thought, one of the most ghastly things she had ever seen at a potluck.

      Bess, however, was thrilled with it. She had exclaimed over it for several minutes, assuring Ada that it was one of the cleverest things she’d ever seen and demanding to be told how it had been done. “Those cherries look just like little bugs!” she cried, shaking with laughter.

      Daniel had quickly abandoned Ada for the fire pit, where he and the other men were helping A.J. with the all-important cooking of the meat. It never ceased to amaze Ada that men who couldn’t be counted on to boil water or fend for themselves with a refrigerator full of food at their disposal could suddenly transform into master chefs at the merest whiff of lighter fluid. But she didn’t mind, especially if it meant she got to sit with a drink and wait for dinner to be ready.

      But now she was annoyed. Bess had broken the husbands-only-at-the-pit rule. While Ada and the other ladies sat a respectable distance from the smoke, Bess was right there in the middle of the men, laughing at their jokes and drinking beer straight from the bottle. Once or twice she’d even pushed the cook aside to take over grill duty, and no one seemed to mind.

      “I don’t know what A.J. sees in her,” Ada said. “Rebecca would roll over in her grave if she saw this.”

      “Are you sure you’re not just sore because Daniel dated her before he dated you?” asked Olivia Peabody, who was seated to Ada’s right and, like most of the women present, had attended the same high school as Ada and Dan.

      There were several muted laughs, which Ada ignored. “I’d forgotten all about that,” she said. “Did he really go with her?”

      “Oh, you know he did,” said Anne Wiley who, Ada now recalled, she had never really liked. “Don’t you remember how mad you got when Daniel told you that he couldn’t give you his class ring to wear because he’d lost it, but then it turned out he’d given it to Bess when they were going out and was too shy to ask for it back?”

      “She did give it back, though,” Evelyn said. “I remember. It was right before prom. She gave it back and Daniel gave it to you, but you refused to wear it because Bess had.”

      Ada nodded. The story was true; she had refused to wear the ring. She’d even broken up with Dan over it, for about forty-eight hours, forgiving him just in time for him to take her to the spring formal. But she never had worn the ring, and she’d never asked him what he’d done with it. She supposed it was in a box somewhere along with his letterman jacket and his various awards.

      “You can’t still be mad at her over that,” said Anne. “Heavens, that was more than twenty years ago. You got Daniel. What more do you want?”

      “Oh, I’m just teasing,” Ada said, laughing a little too loudly. “I’m glad she and A.J. are getting married.”

      And she really was glad, but not because she was happy that A.J. and Bess had found one another. She didn’t for one second believe that Bess could replace A.J.’s late wife in any way. Rebecca had been a wonderful woman, beautiful and kind and full of life. That she had died so suddenly and so horribly—murdered by an intruder—was unforgivable. Ada loved her daughter, Nancy, almost as much as she did her own children. Although Dan disapproved, she was happy that Nancy and James were dating.

      Then Bess had returned to Cold Falls, after leaving it nearly twenty years before, claiming to have landed a modeling contract in New York. No one had heard from—or of—her since, and Ada had almost forgotten about her. Then one day she had run into Bess at the supermarket. It had taken a moment for her to remember the striking woman appraising the melons, but when Bess had turned to her and smiled, Ada had recognized her instantly. She’d greeted Bess coolly but Bess, seeming not to notice Ada’s lack of enthusiasm over their meeting, had acted as if they were old friends. Ada had listened politely as Bess filled her in on her life over the past two decades: only minor success as a model, a marriage to a handsome man with a gambling problem, a foray into nursing, a divorce, and now a return to the city of her childhood.

      And then there was Nate. Nate, who if he resembled his father at all confirmed Bess’s claims regarding the man’s beauty. Tall and dark, he was as quiet as Bess was loud, as if somehow—thankfully, Ada thought—the father’s genetics had battled Bess’s and won. Ada liked him immediately and forgave him his parentage because he seemed equally as embarrassed by his mother as Ada was. For his sake she had invited the two of them to dinner, hoping that Nate and James—who were about the same age—might become friends.

      Regrettably, that had not happened. The boys simply had very little in common, and after a few perfunctory remarks about music and video games they had lapsed into typical teenage silence. Daniel and Bess, however, had chatted endlessly. Ada had endured it, with steadily mounting irritation, until finally she’d reminded Dan that he had to be at the station early the next morning.

      They’d had words that evening, with Ada accusing Dan of making her uncomfortable with all of his talk about high school. He, predictably, had been bewildered, asking her why she had invited Bess over in the first place if she didn’t want to be reminded of those years. Unreasonably, she had refused to discuss the situation any further, which only made Dan more confused and her more angry. They’d gone to bed not speaking, the first time in their entire marriage that they’d done so, although in the morning Ada had pretended that nothing was