The Store My Husband Thought Was His
The Woman In The Cream Coat
I found Fred at the supplier booth first. I want that on the record, because I am proud of it. Even after the world had already tilted, I did my job. I found Fred, I explained the mess with the truck, he made two calls, and he promised me the load would be redirected and on my dock by three. I shook his hand. I thanked him. I was turning to leave when I heard a laugh I knew better than my own.
Wade’s laugh. The big one, the one he used on customers, the one that filled a room and made everyone want to be near him.
I turned, and there he was, forty feet away by a booth selling hog panels and portable corrals, standing with Kayla.
I moved without deciding to. I stepped behind the end of a tall display of stock tanks so I could see and not be seen, and I want to tell you I felt like a spy, but the truth is I felt like a woman standing at the edge of her own life looking in through a window.
She was young. Younger than I had let myself picture. Mid-twenties, in that cream jacket, her hair loose, and she was leaning into Wade the way you lean into someone who is yours. He bought her a lemonade from the concession stand. He bought her a little pronghorn made of horseshoes from a welder’s booth, a fifteen-dollar trinket, and she squealed and kissed his cheek and he beamed like a boy. He had not beamed at me in years. I had told myself that was just what a long marriage was, that the beaming wears off and the loyalty stays. I stood behind the stock tanks and I understood that the beaming had not worn off. It had just moved.
They drifted toward the food area, where the fair board had set up long tables and folding chairs under the metal roof and a church group was selling barbecue plates for the 4-H. Wade got them two plates. He pulled out a chair for her. He tucked her cream jacket over the back of it. And when a girl from the church group, a teenager in an apron, came by with a pitcher of sweet tea, she smiled at the two of them and asked, “Can I get your wife a refill, sir?”
Wade smiled back.
He said, “Yes, thank you.”
He did not correct her. He did not even blink. He let a child call that young woman his wife, and he said thank you, and Kayla ducked her head and smiled into her plate like a bride.