I sat down beside him, letting my shoulder brush against his flannel sleeve. He did not move away, but he did not look up either.
“You have been coming by almost every afternoon this week,” I said, leaning closer to see the neat, slanted lines of numbers in his book. “Is Arthur keeping you busy with the estate files?”
Ben closed the notebook with a soft click of leather and slid it deep into his brown canvas coat pocket. He pressed his palms flat against his thighs, his fingers spreading wide across the coarse denim.
“Just some small details we had to iron out,” he said, his voice low and steady. “Nothing that concerns the office.”
“You used to tell me about the small details,” I said, watching his hand stay flat against his leg.
“Some things are different now, Cathy,” he said.
He stood up before the swing could start to drift, his eyes fixed on the gravel driveway where my father’s sedan was usually parked.
“Are you coming in for dinner?” I asked, looking up at his quiet profile against the graying sky.
“Not tonight,” he said, adjusting the collar of his coat. “Your father and I finished our business for the day.”
He walked down the porch steps without looking back, his boots crunching on the gravel until he reached his truck.
I stayed on the swing, the wood cold beneath me, watching the dust from his tires settle back into the dirt.
My father did not look up from the financial section when I walked into the living room an hour later. The smell of his pipe tobacco hung heavy in the air, a sweet, cherry-flavored smoke that always made my throat feel dry.
“Ben was here again,” I said, standing by the mahogany sideboard.
