a small stain near the knot—CJ suspected it was Gabe who had set up the VFW for this afternoon.
“CJ Baxter,” the handyman said.
CJ had no idea how old Gabe was, only that he’d always looked old, and that he looked now just as he had when CJ left for college. He’d have believed any number between fifty and seventy. The gray hair, weathered skin, and hands roughened by years of hard labor could have been hallmarks of that entire age range.
“I’m guessing I have you to thank for setting this place up?”
Gabe glanced around at the VFW hall and shrugged. “Didn’t take long. Doug did most of the work.”
CJ guessed that Doug was Gabe’s current assistant.
“Well, thanks to both of you,” CJ said.
Gabe grunted and didn’t say anything for a while. After a time, he caught CJ’s eye. “Sal was a good one,” he said. “Not too many good ones left.”
“No, there’s not,” CJ agreed. It would only occur to him later that Gabe’s comment might have been something more than a blanket statement about general humanity. It was quite possible he’d been referring to CJ’s family. But even with this narrower interpretation, he would have agreed with the assessment.
When Gabe walked off, people left CJ alone for a while, and he stayed by the table, his eyes finding his brother. Graham was talking with a short man in a nice suit, who had hung around the periphery of the afternoon’s activities. CJ had noticed him right away because of his eyes; they seemed to be in constant motion, and CJ guessed he didn’t miss much. What made him truly interesting, though, was the way he smiled: all warmth and charm, and the eyes never stopping, looking through and around a person. A person like this was a gold mine for a writer. CJ learned more about writing by watching people than he did from just about anything else, and so it thrilled him when he found someone interesting to watch.
Ben, Julie’s husband, approached the table and got himself a drink. He nodded at CJ and was about to head back to his wife when CJ pointed at the stranger.
“Who’s that?” he asked his cousin. “With my brother.”
Ben followed the line of CJ’s pointed finger.
“I think they said his name’s Daniel Wolfowitz,” he answered. “He’s your brother’s new campaign manager.”
CJ mouthed a silent oh and returned his eyes to the pair across the room, and it occurred to him, as he watched the men talk, that he hadn’t heard a single person who wasn’t directly associated with the family mention anything about Graham’s senate run. There were, undoubtedly, a number of reasons for that—not the least of which was the short time he’d been in town. There had simply been few opportunities for anyone to bend his ear about his brother. He imagined that if he stayed in Adelia longer than it took to say a proper goodbye to Sal, and then to work on the article for The Atlantic, which he wasn’t sure he would write, he’d hear a lot more.
He thought about the article while he watched his brother. There was a part of him that wanted to put this place in the rearview tomorrow. Yet the more he pondered delivering something to the magazine, the more the idea appealed to him. Talking with Sal had convinced him that there was a story here somewhere, and the fact that no one seemed to be talking about it meant it was something that Graham would likely not want him to tell.
“One man’s daydream is another man’s day.”
CJ was wearing a smile before the quote made an immediate connection with the memory from his childhood. As a boy, CJ had been the consummate daydreamer, and he understood now that this particular affliction was a necessary trait for anyone who made his living telling stories. However, to the adults charged with instructing such a child, a penchant for daydreaming was a mortal sin. There had only been one person in his life who had recognized CJ’s attention-related malady for something other than an inconvenience, and he turned to face her now.
“Grey Livingston,” he said with a smile.
“Indeed it was,” said Sister Jean Marie.
Of course she was older, but he could still see the much younger woman somewhere inside the habit. And the thing that truly distinguished her was the smile that lit up her face. Twenty years ago the fact that Sr. Jean Marie could smile had surprised CJ, since he’d