Free The Widow's Son by Thomas Shawver

son.”
    Josie appeared then, quietly suggesting that the two of us take our discussion downstairs. This took some of the flame out of Alice’s eyes and, after asking Josie to tell Emery I would return shortly, we headed down the stairs.
    I’d barely stepped off the last step when Alice snatched me by the collar and stuck her face in mine.
    “I told you a month ago that Annie is not to see Mark,” she hissed, squeezing the back of my shirt as if it were a noose.
    “Then I suggest you tell your son to cancel his trip to Aspen.”
    This went over as well as you’d expect, leading to a stamping of feet, gnashing of teeth, and everything else short of a dagger in my ribs.
    Finally, she calmed down enough for me to get a word in without setting off another eruption.
    “You, of all people, know how headstrong my daughter is, Alice. Even if I wanted to interfere—and I don’t—she’d never listen to me. Why do you suddenly hate her?”
    Alice released her grip and turned away. Her shoulders heaved and the next thing I heard was an anguished cry. She turned back to me with a look of utter despair.
    Impulsively, I took her in my arms and, using her childhood nickname, asked, “What is it, Pigeon? Really? We’ve been friends far too long for this to come between us.”
    “You know I could never hate Annie. I’m happy for what she’s been able to overcome.”
    “Then what is it? Is it me?”
    She sighed heavily. “In a way, yes.” Then, as if coming to a momentous decision, she said, “I don’t suppose you’ve forgotten our last night together.”
    “When? You mean before I returned to Camp Lejeune? That was nearly a quarter century ago.”
    “Yes.”
    “Vaguely,” I replied. Then, scanning my memory bank further, I said, “It was my last day of holiday leave. I recall our parting was rather bittersweet.”
    A slow flush crossed her face and her eyes turned hard.
    “That’s one way of putting it,” she said. “Your Christmas present to me was to say you intended to marry someone else.”
    I searched her expression for a hint of where she was going with this. I’d thought the matter had been settled long ago. She and my late wife, Carol, had even become friends.
    “Yeah. We were both pretty miserable that night.”
    “Not as miserable as I was.”
    “It had been a long time coming, Pidge.”
    “Would you please not call me that anymore?”
    “Sorry. But as I recall, you’d been seeing Tim. Our affair was over by then.”
    Alice looked up at me slyly.
    “Not entirely,” she said.
    No doubt you’ve already guessed where she was going with this. But you can’t imagine the shock I felt. Suddenly, the years peeled away and I recalled us sitting before a log fire on the veranda of her father’s penthouse apartment. A heavy snowstorm had turned the shopping district into a Norman Rockwell postcard. A hundred feet below us, the Spanish-tiled buildings were silhouetted in brightly colored Christmas lights and the sidewalks bustled with thousands of holiday shoppers.
    I’d put off giving her the news of my engagement until my final night in Kansas City and I had brought along a couple of bottles of wine for Dutch courage. Alice and I had been hurling recriminations concerning each other’s infidelities throughout the week, but that evening, probably because she sensed what was in the air, it had been like old times when we were just kids who happened to be good friends.
    Finally, I put all doubts to rest by telling her of my intent to marry Carol, the daughter of a British colonel I’d met at Camp Lejeune. After an awkward silence, we shared old stories and munched popcorn between voluminous sips of Pinot Noir. It had gone as well as I’d hoped, but when the time came for me to depart, our favorite song, Simply Red’s “
Holding Back the Years
,” came on the radio.
    As has been previously noted, Alice hid a remarkably passionate nature under that wholesome peaches-and-cream exterior. My head was