Wes read it twice. Then he put it down on the tablecloth and put his face in his hands, the way he had last night on the end of the twin bed, and his shoulders shook, and his mother came around the table and stood behind him and put her arms around his neck and her cheek against his shaggy hair, the way she had not done since he was a boy, and held on.
"She looked up," he said into his hands. "She looked up every Saturday. I'm the one who never did."
"I know, sweetheart."
"She wrote me a bridge, Ma. Three years ago. She wrote me the bridge."
"Then you'd better go and play it for her," said Barbara Callahan, and straightened up, and wiped her eyes briskly with the cuff of her cranberry cardigan, and went to the hall closet, and came back with his worn brown leather jacket and her own good wool scarf, the red one, and held them out to him. "Hal will have her at the station by noon. The next train to New Haven is twelve-forty. I called and asked. Your car is under four feet of snow, and you have moved approximately none of it, so Hal's son-in-law is coming over with his truck and a plow blade to dig you out, because I called him too, while you were standing in the yard like a lamppost." She tucked the scarf around his neck. "You won't catch her at the station. Don't try. You'll end up in a ditch in Darien. Go to New Haven. Find out where a baker goes on the day after Thanksgiving. And Wesley."
"Yes, Ma."
She picked up the green velvet box from the table and pressed it into his hand and folded his fingers over it, exactly as she had done to Delia's an hour before.
"Don't give it to her today," she said. "Today she wouldn't believe you. Give it to her when she will."
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