Free Beyond Molasses Creek by Nicole Seitz

tempranillo-cabernet blend and beam, thinking, Now this is how you say you’re sorry, Ally. Vesey will forgive you one hundred percent before the gravy has a chance to settle on his plate .
    â€™Course with a meal this good, he might just fall in love in the meantime.
    Banish the thought, Ally! Get ahold of yourself. You are not trying to seduce that man; you are simply putting forth an olive branch to an old friend whom you wronged .
    I really should see a doctor about these hormones. I declare, sometimes I feel more like a teenager than a sixty-year-old woman.
    I adore these smaller shopping carts. Now this is progress. As a single woman, who wants to push around an enormous cart so that everyone will see how alone you are? My cart would be empty, barren, if I were pushing around the big one, but no, this one is overflowing. Someone looking at me might think I’m shopping for myself and a lover, and that would be all right with me . . . except for the fact that I haven’t had a lover since the last presidential election, and only then it was because I was in Italy and feeling a wee bit homesick. I met an American in Rome in Trevi Square. We both enjoyed watching artists paint the fountain en plein air . . .
    I unload my little cart and then, feeling I’ve done my responsible duty by directing the cart to the designated area, I settle into the car and head for home—well, Daddy’s home, not mine, but not really his anymore, come to think of it.
    I turn right and head back toward the intersection. Instead of staring at the new bridge, I watch a rainbow-colored umbrella with a black man selling newspapers and magazines up ahead. How quaint. I can’t imagine standing in this heat, but he’s making a living. Everyone needs to do that, right? Somebody two cars ahead of me stops and hands him money out the passenger window. Do I need a paper? Perhaps I do. I guess if I’m here for a while I really should see what’s happening in the Post and Courier . Give this man an honest dollar. I reach into my purse and move up a little closer. I roll down my window, ready to stop, but instead, my heart stops.
    It’s him! Could it be? No, Vesey doesn’t sell newspapers and magazines on the side of the road! Vesey is a, well, a farmer, a fisherman, a self-contained man. He fishes and grows his own food, for goodness’ sake! He, he . . . I dart my eyes away in case it is him and press my foot to the gas pedal. When I speed through the intersection, my car hits a bump in the road and I nearly go airborne.
    It can’t be Vesey, can it? Maybe some look-alike? Why would he need money? At his age, why in the world would he struggle like that working on the side of the road?
    My mind is scrambled. ’Course, there’s nothing wrong with making a living, Ally. ’Course, there’s nothing wrong with working on the side of the road. Don’t be such a snob. The sweetgrass basket makers do it every day, and there’s nothing wrong with hard work and selling your wares, is there?
    I look in the rearview mirror and see the man, perhaps Vesey, perhaps not, standing in what looks like army fatigues, in this heat, fishing hat pulled down over his head.
    Fishing hat. Vesey’s fishing hat.
    And his son was in Afghanistan. He didn’t come home.
    My goodness, Vesey is working on the side of the road, peddling fifty-cent newspapers in his son’s army uniform. I didn’t see this coming. I thought he was fairly well off living on Molasses Creek, dealing well with, well, everything better than this. Oh, why didn’t you ever leave this place for good, Vesey? You could have come with me. You could have. Should have .
    I’m not sure what’s up or down right now because guilt like quicksand’s pulling me down. Is it possible I don’t know this man at all anymore? Or is it possible he needs me even more than I imagined?
    I look in the mirror again but I can’t