Instead, he turned around with the hat in his hands.
His expression had changed.
The gentle, grandfatherly look I’d known for years was gone.
In its place was something far more determined.
Then he said something that made me realize my visit had taken a turn I never expected.
The Last Cutting
Arlen Voss put his hat on slowly, the way he did everything, like a man setting down something that might break.
“Karen,” he said. “Stay where you are. Finish your pie.”
“Arlen, I didn’t come to ask you for ”
“I know what you came for. You came with a rhubarb pie and your husband’s name in your mouth, and you didn’t ask me for one thing.” He opened the screen door. “That’s why I’m going to get my truck.”
I sat at his kitchen table, alone, with two slices of pie and a clock that ticked above the stove. The kitchen smelled of coffee and Murphy’s oil soap. A calendar from the feed store hung on the wall, still turned to August, and I understood that Arlen’s wife, Dorothy, who had died two winters back, had always been the one who turned the pages.
