Free Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You by Alice Munro Page A

in the drive. It was Loretta Bird who got out, all importance, and on the driver’s side another woman got out, more sedately. She was wearing sunglasses.
    â€œThis is a lady looking for the man that flies the plane,” Loretta Bird said. “I heard her inquire in the hotel coffee shop where I was having a Coke and I brought her out.”
    â€œI’m sorry to bother you,” the lady said. “I’m Alice Kelling, Mr. Watters’ fiancée.”
    This Alice Kelling had on a pair of brown and white checked slacks and a yellow top. Her bust looked to me rather low and bumpy. She had a worried face. Her hair had had a permanent, but had grown out, and she wore a yellow band to keep it off her face. Nothing in the least pretty or even young-looking about her. But you could tell from how she talked she was from the city, or educated, or both.
    Dr. Peebles stood up and introduced himself and his wife and me and asked her to be seated.
    â€œHe’s up in the air right now, but you’re welcome tosit and wait. He gets his water here and he hasn’t been yet. He’ll probably take his break about five.”
    â€œThat is him, then?” said Alice Kelling, wrinkling and straining at the sky.
    â€œHe’s not in the habit of running out on you, taking a different name?” Dr. Peebles laughed. He was the one, not his wife, to offer iced tea. Then she sent me into the kitchen to fix it. She smiled. She was wearing sunglasses too.
    â€œHe never mentioned his fiancée,” she said.
    I loved fixing iced tea with lots of ice and slices of lemon in tall glasses. I ought to have mentioned before, Dr. Peebles was an abstainer, at least around the house, or I wouldn’t have been allowed to take the place. I had to fix a glass for Loretta Bird too, though it galled me, and when I went out she had settled in my lawn chair, leaving me the steps.
    â€œI knew you was a nurse when I first heard you in that coffee shop.”
    â€œHow would you know a thing like that?”
    â€œI get my hunches about people. Was that how you met him, nursing?”
    â€œChris? Well yes. Yes, it was.”
    â€œOh, were you overseas?” said Mrs. Peebles.
    â€œNo, it was before he went overseas. I nursed him when he was stationed at Centralia and had a ruptured appendix. We got engaged and then he went overseas. My, this is refreshing, after a long drive.”
    â€œHe’ll be glad to see you,” Dr. Peebles said. “It’s a rackety kind of life, isn’t it, not staying one place long enough to really make friends.”
    â€œYouse’ve had a long engagement,” Loretta Bird said.
    Alice Kelling passed that over. “I was going to get a room at the hotel, but when I was offered directions I came on out. Do you think I could phone them?”
    â€œNo need,” Dr. Peebles said. “You’re five miles away from him if you stay at the hotel. Here, you’re right acrossthe road. Stay with us. We’ve got rooms on rooms, look at this big house.”
    Asking people to stay, just like that, is certainly a country thing, and maybe seemed natural to him now, but not to Mrs. Peebles, from the way she said, oh yes, we have plenty of room. Or to Alice Kelling, who kept protesting, but let herself be worn down. I got the feeling it was a temptation to her, to be that close. I was trying for a look at her ring. Her nails were painted red, her fingers were freckled and wrinkled. It was a tiny stone. Muriel Lowe’s cousin had one twice as big.
    Chris came to get his water, late in the afternoon just as Dr. Peebles had predicted. He must have recognized the car from a way off. He came smiling.
    â€œHere I am chasing after you to see what you’re up to,” called Alice Kelling. She got up and went to meet him and they kissed, just touched, in front of us.
    â€œYou’re going to spend a lot on gas that way,” Chris said.
    Dr. Peebles invited