A Match Made in Dry Creek. Janet Tronstad

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      Doris June looked down and saw a frail-looking older woman. “Can I help you?”

      “I was wondering if your airline will give me my full frequent flyer miles since I started in Seattle.”

      “I’m sorry, but I’m not a flight attendant,” Doris June said as she looked down at her clothes. Maybe navy and white wasn’t the best thing to wear today. “There’s a flight attendant by the door as we leave though.”

      Doris June offered a hand to the older woman to help her stand.

      “Why, thank you, dear,” the woman said as she stood. “You’d make a lovely flight attendant, you know.”

      Doris June smiled. There was nothing wrong with being seen as someone who helped others. She hoped her mother would be as grateful for a little assistance as this other older woman was.

      Doris June knew where the luggage-claim area was and she knew the area outside the terminal doors where she always met her mother. Her mother had promised she would have someone come with her to the airport. Billings was too far away from Dry Creek for Doris June to feel comfortable with her mother making the trip alone, especially at night. With her possible confusion, she might take a wrong turn and get lost.

      Not that Doris June would mind waiting for her mother, but she knew her mother would be distressed if she wasn’t at the airport when she had said she would be. Her mother liked to be very precise about things like that.

      Doris June was surprised when her mother had quickly agreed to have someone come with her to the airport. It showed how fragile her mother had become. Usually, her mother insisted on doing everything herself.

      Doris June stacked her two suitcases on a rolling cart and had them with her when she spotted her mother outside the terminal door. She walked through the wide door and hugged her mother.

      Doris June tried to keep the anxiety out of her eyes as she gave her mother a once over. To her relief, her mother didn’t look like she’d lost weight and her eyes were clear of the confused look Doris June had feared she’d see. Maybe all of her worrying had been unnecessary, Doris June hoped.

      “We’re parked in the lot over there.” Her mother pointed vaguely to the right as she seemed to develop a sudden fascination with Doris June’s suitcases. “That green’s a nice color. Easy to spot on the luggage carousel. They look heavy, but that won’t be a problem. Curt said he’d keep an eye out for us and bring the pickup around front when he sees you’ve come out of the airport.”

      Doris June froze. Her mother knew that Curt was the last person Doris June ever wanted to see again. Her mother couldn’t have forgotten what had happened, could she?

      Maybe her mother really was getting senile, Doris June thought as she looked up. She hadn’t really believed it was possible until now. But that was the Nelson pickup all right. She recognized it because it was what Charley always drove to church when Doris June visited Dry Creek. Curt never came on those days. Doris June felt they had a truce of sorts. She avoided him and he avoided her. He would never violate that by expecting her to ride with him from Billings to Dry Creek. Her mother must be wrong. “Don’t you mean it’s Charley who came with you?”

      “Oh, no, dear. Charley doesn’t drive long distances anymore. The road from his ranch to Dry Creek is as far as he usually goes.”

      It was a warm spring night, but Doris June felt cold.

      “Isn’t Charley’s grandson—what’s his name? Ben—isn’t he about the age when he can drive?”

      The pickup was turning into the lane and making its way toward them.

      “Ben’s only got his learner’s permit.”

      The pickup was still coming toward them. “Maybe I could find a cab.”

      “Don’t be silly,” her mother said as she waved at the pickup. “That would cost a fortune.”

      Doris June nodded. She needed to think more logically. There was a solution. “I could get a rental car though.”

      A car passed the pickup and the light from its headlights let Doris June see through the windshield of the pickup. She could tell it was Curt at the wheel. She hadn’t seen the man for twenty-five years, but she’d know his face in her sleep. Not that she ever saw him in her dreams, of course. She might have glimpsed him a time or two in her nightmares, but that was all. She was completely over him.

      Curt wished he was anyone else. It might be night out, but Doris June was standing under a security light and he saw the dismay on her face before she turned to say something to her mother. She had obviously just heard who had driven her mother to the airport to pick her up. When you’ve been childhood playmates with someone, you learn to read their body language. And Doris June was holding herself so stiff she looked like she would break.

      It was because of this very thing that he’d asked Mrs. Hargrove to take his pickup and go to Billings. Mrs. Hargrove had been a rancher’s wife and Curt had been sure the older woman would remember how to drive a pickup with a stick shift, but she had looked so confused when she asked which pedal was the clutch that he hadn’t dared encourage her to drive. He’d gone over to the café and offered to pay Linda and tend her place in her absence if she would only drive in with Mrs. Hargrove for him. Linda had shown little remorse as she let him down, even when he offered to sweeten the deal with an extra fifty-dollar bill.

      So here he was pulling up to the curb beside Doris June and her suitcases. She had changed since the last time he’d stopped to pick her up twenty-five years ago. Back then, she’d thrown an old flowered duffel bag in the back and given him a knee-bending kiss before climbing into the passenger side of the old Ford pickup his father used to have for hauling small amounts of feed around.

      Curt had been granted the use of that pickup when he turned sixteen and he had planned to drive it to Las Vegas with no hesitation. As he recalled, he hadn’t even known the thing had no insurance. Not that something like that would have stopped him and Doris June back then. They were in love and impatient to be married. Practical concerns like insurance and finishing high school hadn’t entered into their minds.

      Curt could still remember the intensity of the feeling though it had been twenty-five years ago. The only time he had come close to that overwhelming feeling of love was the first time he’d held his son in his arms.

      Curt couldn’t help but wonder if Doris June remembered the feeling like he did. He swore they could have lived on that feeling for the rest of their lives if things hadn’t gone so bad so fast.

      After he’d hit the stop sign while trying to steal another kiss from Doris June, everything had changed. The only part of it that he had ever been able to make right was to pay for the repairs to the fender of his dad’s pickup. He had sent the money home from the first pay he had received in the army. He knew his father might not use the money to fix the fender, but Curt felt good knowing he had paid for it anyway. He only wished the other problems of that accident had been as easy to resolve.

      “Curt was kind enough to drive me in to get you,” Mrs. Hargrove chirped as Curt stepped down from the cab of the pickup and walked around the front of his vehicle. He wondered what made the older woman try so hard to be cheerful. The Mrs. Hargrove he knew never put on an act and he couldn’t help feeling that her upbeat voice was forced.

      “I could have rented СКАЧАТЬ