Wendell and I began talking more during the weeks that followed.<\/p>\n
Not about anything extraordinary.<\/p>\n
We discussed the people in our group, the weather, and the small annoyances that seemed more manageable when someone else understood them.<\/p>\n
Sometimes he mentioned Ruth.<\/p>\n
He never spoke badly of her, and he never pretended that losing her had been easy.<\/p>\n
I respected that.<\/p>\n
I had loved Dwight for nearly forty years, and I wasn't looking for someone to replace him.<\/p>\n
I wasn't even sure I wanted another relationship.<\/p>\n
But I missed the ordinary parts of marriage.<\/p>\n
The sound of another person moving around the house.<\/p>\n
The question of what we should have for supper.<\/p>\n
Someone sitting beside me when a television program became ridiculous enough to laugh at.<\/p>\n
Grief had taken my husband.<\/p>\n
Loneliness had taken nearly everything else.<\/p>\n
Wendell didn't try to fix either problem.<\/p>\n
He just kept showing up.<\/p>\n
One afternoon, he mentioned the porch light outside my house.<\/p>\n
I had complained about it during one of our meetings, though I barely remembered saying anything about it.<\/p>\n
"It still doesn't work?" he asked.<\/p>\n
I looked toward the front window.<\/p>\n
"No. Dwight meant to repair it before he died."<\/p>\n
Wendell considered that for a moment.<\/p>\n
"Would you mind if I took a look?"<\/p>\n
I reminded him that the wiring might be the problem.<\/p>\n
He smiled.<\/p>\n
"I spent almost four decades working with electrical equipment. I think I can manage a porch light."<\/p>\n
That Saturday, he arrived with a toolbox.<\/p>\n
I offered him coffee.<\/p>\n
He accepted, then went outside to inspect the fixture.<\/p>\n
I watched through the window while he worked.<\/p>\n
He checked the wiring, replaced the damaged components, and tested the connection before climbing down from his ladder.<\/p>\n
A moment later, the porch was illuminated.<\/p>\n
I stepped outside and looked up at it.<\/p>\n
The light was ordinary.<\/p>\n
Nothing expensive.<\/p>\n
Nothing worth making a fuss about.<\/p>\n
Yet I stood there longer than necessary.<\/p>\n
For almost two years, that little corner of my house had remained dark.<\/p>\n
Now it was bright again.<\/p>\n
Wendell gathered his tools.<\/p>\n
"Everything all right, Winnie?"<\/p>\n
I turned toward him.<\/p>\n
"Get off that ladder before you hurt yourself. I'm making you dinner."<\/p>\n
He laughed.<\/p>\n
That evening, I cooked chicken-fried steak, mashed potatoes, and green beans.<\/p>\n
It was the sort of meal Dwight had always enjoyed.<\/p>\n
Wendell ate two helpings.<\/p>\n
Afterward, I started clearing the table, but he took the plates from my hands and carried them to the sink.<\/p>\n
I told him I could wash them.<\/p>\n
He told me he knew.<\/p>\n
Then he washed them anyway.<\/p>\n
The following Sunday, he returned for supper.<\/p>\n
After that, it became our habit.<\/p>\n
I cooked.<\/p>\n
He arrived.<\/p>\n
We ate, talked, and sometimes watched television until the evening grew late.<\/p>\n
There was nothing dramatic about it.<\/p>\n
That was what made it feel so good.<\/p>\n
I didn't have to dress up or pretend I was happier than I was.<\/p>\n
If my knees hurt, I said so.<\/p>\n
If I missed Dwight, I could talk about him without worrying that Wendell would feel threatened.<\/p>\n
He listened.<\/p>\n
Sometimes he asked questions.<\/p>\n
More often, he remembered things I had mentioned weeks earlier.<\/p>\n
I began to understand that his quietness wasn't indifference.<\/p>\n
He was simply a man who preferred to listen before he spoke.<\/p>\n
One Sunday evening, I was removing cornbread from the oven when my knees began hurting badly.<\/p>\n
I reached for the counter and leaned against it.<\/p>\n
Wendell noticed immediately.<\/p>\n
"Are you having trouble standing?"<\/p>\n
"I'm fine."<\/p>\n
He gave me a look that suggested he had heard that answer before.<\/p>\n
I sighed.<\/p>\n
"My knees are acting up. That's all."<\/p>\n
I tried to make a joke of it.<\/p>\n
"After all those years at the hospital, I suppose I'll end up in a wheelchair like my mother."<\/p>\n
He didn't laugh.<\/p>\n
Instead, he asked me about her.<\/p>\n
I told him that she had lived in our old farmhouse near Kaufman.<\/p>\n
She had refused to leave it, even when moving somewhere more convenient would have made life easier.<\/p>\n
"She was stubborn," I said. "Once she made up her mind, that was that."<\/p>\n
Wendell smiled.<\/p>\n
"Sounds like somebody I know."<\/p>\n
I ignored the remark.<\/p>\n
Then I told him about her kitchen.<\/p>\n
When I was six, she had painted the walls a color called buttercup yellow.<\/p>\n
The cabinets were white, and each door had a little glass knob.<\/p>\n
I remembered sunlight spreading across that room in the mornings.<\/p>\n
I remembered my mother standing by the stove, humming while she prepared breakfast.<\/p>\n
It was one of the few childhood memories I could recall without sadness.<\/p>\n
Wendell listened closely.<\/p>\n
"The yellow was bright?" he asked.<\/p>\n
"Not too bright. More like sunshine without the glare."<\/p>\n
He nodded, as though he were trying to picture it.<\/p>\n
I thought nothing more of the conversation.<\/p>\n
Two weeks later, he asked me about the color again.<\/p>\n
This time, he wanted to know whether the cabinets had been painted white or left in their natural wood finish.<\/p>\n
I laughed.<\/p>\n
"Wendell, why are you so interested in my mother's kitchen?"<\/p>\n
He looked down at his plate.<\/p>\n
"You always seem happy when you talk about it."<\/p>\n
That answer surprised me.<\/p>\n
I had spent so much time telling stories about Dwight that I hadn't realized how often I spoke about my childhood home.<\/p>\n
Wendell seemed to notice the little details that made me feel better.<\/p>\n
I should have taken that as a good sign.<\/p>\n
Instead, another question began bothering me.<\/p>\n
I had never been inside his house.<\/p>\n
Not once.<\/p>\n
We had been seeing each other for months, yet I knew his home only by the general description he had given me.<\/p>\n
He lived outside Ferris, in a modest house with a pecan tree in the yard.<\/p>\n
Whenever I asked to visit, he found a reason to postpone it.<\/p>\n
"The place isn't ready for company, Winnie."<\/p>\n
I told him I wasn't particular about housekeeping.<\/p>\n
He said that wasn't the issue.<\/p>\n
Another time, I suggested we have dinner at his place instead of mine.<\/p>\n
He looked uncomfortable.<\/p>\n
"Give me until Christmas."<\/p>\n
I asked what he meant.<\/p>\n
He only smiled and changed the subject.<\/p>\n
At first, I accepted his explanation.<\/p>\n
People who had lost their spouses often needed time to make changes.<\/p>\n
I understood that better than most.<\/p>\n
Still, I began noticing things I hadn't paid attention to before.<\/p>\n
There was sawdust on his jeans.<\/p>\n
Small splinters sometimes caught in the skin of his fingers.<\/p>\n
On several occasions, I spotted pale yellow paint near his fingernails.<\/p>\n
When I asked about it, he gave me the same vague answer.<\/p>\n
"Just a few things I've been working on."<\/p>\n
I wondered whether he was renovating his house.<\/p>\n
That would have explained the mess.<\/p>\n
But why couldn't he tell me?<\/p>\n
I didn't ask directly again.<\/p>\n
I was afraid that pushing too hard might drive him away.<\/p>\n
Looking back, I can see how easily affection can make a person accept uncertainty.<\/p>\n
I told myself I was being patient.<\/p>\n
Sometimes, I was simply afraid of hearing an answer I didn't want.<\/p>\n
One Sunday, Wendell arrived looking more exhausted than usual.<\/p>\n
He barely finished his meal before settling into Dwight's old recliner.<\/p>\n
Within minutes, he had fallen asleep.<\/p>\n
I stood in the doorway and watched him.<\/p>\n
For two years, nobody had occupied that chair.<\/p>\n
I had treated it as though touching it would somehow erase the last place my husband had rested.<\/p>\n
For a moment, I considered waking Wendell and asking him to move.<\/p>\n
Then I noticed his hands resting loosely on the armrests.<\/p>\n
He looked peaceful.<\/p>\n
Tired, but peaceful.<\/p>\n
I pulled a blanket from the cupboard and placed it over him.<\/p>\n
Then I sat on the sofa.<\/p>\n
The sight of someone sitting in Dwight's chair should have hurt.<\/p>\n
Instead, I felt something loosen inside my chest.<\/p>\n
I wasn't forgetting my husband.<\/p>\n
I was beginning to understand that my life could contain a memory without being trapped inside it.<\/p>\n
When Wendell woke, he apologized for falling asleep.<\/p>\n
I told him he had nothing to apologize for.<\/p>\n
He stayed a little longer that evening.<\/p>\n
Before leaving, he asked whether my knees had improved.<\/p>\n
I said they were manageable.<\/p>\n
He looked at me as if he didn't entirely believe me.<\/p>\n
Then he said goodnight.<\/p>\n
I watched his truck disappear down the street.<\/p>\n
For the first time, I wondered whether the secret he was keeping might have something to do with me.<\/p>\n
I didn't know what that meant.<\/p>\n
I only knew that the yellow paint, the sawdust, and his repeated questions about my mother's kitchen were beginning to form a pattern.<\/p>\n
I just couldn't see the whole picture yet.<\/p>\n
Source: kaylestore.net<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n Wendell and I began talking more during the weeks that followed. Not about anything extraordinary. We discussed the people in our group, the weather, and the small annoyances that seemed … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10083,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sharestory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10085"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10085\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10097,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10085\/revisions\/10097"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nClick here to continue reading: PART 3: My Son Suddenly Wanted Every Sunday With Me, and His Questions About Wendell Made Me Wonder Who Needed Protecting<\/a><\/strong><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"