“Yeah!”

“That’s great!” he said again.

“Yeah.”

“That’s great!” he said again, trying to come up with something else to say.

“Yeah!”

“That’s great!” he said again, overly enthusiastically.

“Yeah!”

“You look great!” he said, happy to have finally come up with something else to say.

“Naw!” protested Sandrine.

“You look great!”

“Thanks.”

“You do. You look so great!”

“Thanks, Jimmy,” said Sandrine, a little put off by Jimmy’s enthusiasm.

“So pretty. So pretty.”

“Okay, thanks,” she said, putting an end to the ridiculous exchange—because Jimmy was starting to creep her out with all his compliments.

Jimmy smiled at Sandrine and admired her loveliness for a moment and then said, “Here, have a seat,” and he pulled the other chair at his table out and offered it to her.

Sandrine protested. “Oh, no, Jimmy, I can’t—”

“Aw, come on,” interrupted Jimmy, “I haven’t seen you in … well, months.”

“Yeah—”

“And months.”

“Yeah.” Sandrine was well aware that she hadn’t seen Jimmy in months and knew that she owed him an explanation. But she really didn’t want to have to give him one right then.

“And months and months and months and months and months and months and months.”

Jimmy wanted to make sure Sandrine knew exactly how many months it had been since he had seen her: nine.

“Yeah,” said Sandrine contritely.

“How does that happen—live in the same part of the world as someone and never see ’em?”

Sandrine shrugged and said, “I don’t know,” even though she knew full well how to live in the same little corner of the world as someone and never see them: duck and cover and run. Which she did any time she saw him anywhere.

And—she stopped going to the places he went. She started going to a different church—St. Thomas’s in Fort Kent instead of St. Mary’s. She went to a different grocery store—the Hannaford’s in Caribou instead of Paradis’s in Fort Kent.

Jimmy was aware that he was making Sandrine uncomfortable. But that was okay. He was owed an explanation. And he decided to make her more uncomfortable. And so he said with a smile, “I mean, I haven’t seen you since that night before that morning when I woke up and you were just gone.”

This was a cryptic way of saying that he hadn’t seen her since she left.

It took Sandrine a second to decipher what Jimmy was saying. And when she did, she knew she needed to sit down and explain why she had slipped out on him after he had fallen asleep on that spring night a little less than a year ago.

Fortunately, the table Jimmy had chosen was tucked away in the corner—but still had a good view of the front, so she’d be able to see if anyone she knew was coming her way before they saw her. Because she really could not have anyone see her there with Jimmy.

As Sandrine sat down, a pained look came over her face. “Listen, Jimmy,” she began. But before she could say anything else, a waitress breezed over to the table and interrupted her. “Look at you two, tucked away in the corner over here! Lucky I found ya! Are the man and his lovely lady ready for another round?”