Our Souls at Night Read Free Page A

know? What happened?
    You know Dorlan Becker.
    He used to own the men’s store.
    Yes. He sold it and stayed in town. Everybody thought he’d move somewhere else. He never seemed to like it here. He goes down to Arizona for the winters.
    What’s that have to do with our secret being out?
    He’s one of the people I meet with at the bakery a couple times a month. Today he wanted to know how I had so much energy. Being out all night and then to do what I normally do in the daytime.
    What did you say?
    I told him he was getting the reputation of a gossip and a liar. I got mad. I didn’t handle it right. I’m still mad about it.
    I can tell.
    I should’ve just ignored it and defused it. But I didn’t. I didn’t want them thinking anything bad about you.
    Let it go, Louis. We knew from the start that people would find out. We talked about it.
    Yes, but I wasn’t thinking. I wasn’t ready. I didn’t want them making up a story about us. About you.
    I appreciate that. But they can’t hurt me. I’m going to enjoy our nights together. For as long as they last.
    He looked at her. Why do you say it that way? You sound like I did the other day. Don’t you think they’ll last? For a good while?
    I hope so, she said. I told you I don’t want to live like that anymore—for other people, what they think,what they believe. I don’t think it’s the way to live. It isn’t for me anyway.
    All right. I wish I had your good sense. You’re right, of course.
    Are you over it now?
    I’m getting there.
    Do you want another beer?
    No. But if you want more wine I’ll sit here with you while you drink it. I’ll just watch you.

8
    I was raised in Lincoln, Nebraska, she said. We lived out on the northeast side of town. We had a nice two-story clapboard house. My father was a businessman and did well and my mother was a very good housekeeper and a good cook. It was a middle-class sort of neighborhood, a working-class neighborhood. I had one sister. We didn’t get along. She was more active and more outgoing, with a kind of gregarious nature that I didn’t have. I was quiet, bookish. After high school I went to the university and lived at home and took the bus downtown to my classes. I started off studying French but switched to elementary school education.
    Then I met Carl in my sophomore year and we started dating and by the time I turned twenty I was pregnant.
    Were you scared?
    Not of the baby. No. Not of having one. But I didn’tknow how we would manage. Carl still had a year and a half to get his degree. On Christmas Day he joined me at my parents’ house—he lived in Omaha—and together we both told my parents after dinner, all of us sitting in the living room. My mother just started crying. My father was angry. I thought you knew better. He stared at Carl. What in hell’s wrong with you. Nothing’s wrong with him, I said. It just happened. Well it didn’t by God just happen. He made it happen. There were two of us involved, Daddy. Well my God, he said.
    We got married in January and moved into a tiny dark apartment in downtown Lincoln and I got a temporary job clerking in a department store and we waited. The baby came one night in May. They wouldn’t let Carl in the room. Then we took the baby home and were happy and very poor.
    Didn’t your parents help you?
    Not much. Carl didn’t want their help. Well, I didn’t either.
    That was your daughter, then. I didn’t think she was that old.
    Yes, that was Connie.
    I only remember her vaguely. I know how she died.
    Yes. Addie stopped talking and moved in the bed. I’ll talk about that some other time. I’ll just tell younow that when Carl graduated we both wanted to come to Colorado. We’d gone to Estes Park once for a short vacation and liked the mountains and needed to get out of Lincoln and away from everything. And start up somewhere new. Carl got a job selling insurance in Longmont and we lived there for a couple of years, then old Mr. Gorland here in Holt