Then I watched Vanessa go inside to help her unpack.
Last month was our eighteenth anniversary. Irvin’s and mine.
Vanessa brought us a pie.
She knocked on our back door on a Saturday morning. I was working that Saturday, the way I always do every other week. Irvin answered.
She didn’t come in. She just handed him the pie through the door.
“Happy anniversary,” she said. “Tell Janet I made it myself. Fourth try. Don’t tell her about the first three.”
That night, Irvin and I sat on our back patio under the string lights he finally hung up for me after eighteen years of asking. We ate Vanessa’s pie off the same plates we got as wedding gifts.
It was good. A little too much cinnamon. But good.
“Can I ask you something?” Irvin said.
“Sure.”
“That day at the barbecue. When you walked through the gate with the box.” He took a bite of pie. “Were you scared?”
