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.
