It's Never too Late

“She’s going to lose me my scholarship.”

“I don’t think so. But if it happens, it happens. You’ll survive.”

He wanted to argue. But couldn’t. Because she was right. The problem was, he wasn’t satisfied with just surviving anymore.

“She loves you, Mark.”

It didn’t matter.

Love passed. And all that was left was the disappointment. And the moving on.

“I think she’d marry you if you asked her to.”

Pushing away from the table, Mark yanked open the refrigerator door, grabbed the carton of milk and drank out of the container. Nonnie’s frown be damned. He was what he was. An uneducated country boy from the hills of West Virginia.

“You love her, too.”

“Don’t you ever shut up?” He didn’t raise his voice. Couldn’t even raise enough muster to sound angry. He was what he was. Tired.

“You need me to ask her?”

“You sold the house.”

“She told you.”

He chuckled, failing to keep the bitterness inside of him. “Funny how she can tell me your secrets but manage to keep her own so well hidden.”

“I sold the house over a month ago and told her the day I did it.”

And the fact that Addy had withheld such an important piece of information from him was supposed to make him feel better? Endear her to him?

“I asked her not to tell you and she abided by my wishes. Until today. She told me you knew.”

Didn’t surprise him.

“She fits us, Markie-boy.”

“She does not fit me.” Mark sat back in his chair. He had to leave for his one class that day, and then go on to work. “Course she fits you. You’re just steamed ’cause she lied to you. And I don’t blame you. But don’t be so cussedly holy that you lose the best thing that ever came your way.”

Pushing out of his chair, he paced into the living room and back again. Twice and then a third time. “She’s a damned lawyer, Nonnie! She’s got more education than I’ll ever have. Even if I don’t lose the scholarship.”

“There’s more than one kind of learning, Markie-boy. She’s got one, you got another. You fit. Just like I said. Seems to me, you two need each other.”

It seemed to Mark that Ella had been right. Schooling changed people. Those with it moved on, leaving those without it feeling as though they’d never be good enough.

He couldn’t spend the rest of his years feeling that way.

Not after a lifetime of it.

He wasn’t the town drunk’s dropout son anymore. And he couldn’t be any woman’s backwoods kept man.

Most of all he wasn’t going to be the poor fool who was lied to. No matter what Nonnie wanted.

* * *

ADDY WAS ON CAMPUS midmorning on Thursday, dropping off Wednesday’s assignment, when her cell phone vibrated in her bag.

Greg Richards was calling.