After two weeks, I decided to tell him.
I sat at my kitchen table one evening with my phone in my hand for almost an hour. I typed it out and deleted it four times.
Finally, I just wrote it plainly.
Arthur, I should tell you something before this goes any further. I have facial hair. A mustache. I’ve had it since I was young. You may have noticed in my photograph. If that bothers you, I understand completely, and I won’t be hurt.
That last part was a lie. I’d be very hurt.
I pressed send. I put the phone face-down on the table. I made a cup of tea I didn’t drink. I held my breath.
Twenty minutes later, the phone buzzed.
Please don’t ever shave it, Arthur wrote. I think you’re beautiful exactly as you are.
I read those words three times.
Then I cried. Right there at my kitchen table, at seventy-eight years old.
Not because Walter had failed to love me. He never failed. Not once in forty-three years.
I cried because I’d spent all those years refusing to believe him.
Our first date was at a little coffee shop downtown called The Daily Grind.
I almost didn’t go. I stood in front of my bathroom mirror for forty-five minutes. I shaved. Then I wished I hadn’t. Then I put on powder. Then I wiped it off. Then I put it back on again.
In the end, I wore a light layer of powder and my good lavender cardigan, and I went.
Arthur was already there when I walked in, sitting at a corner table by the window. He stood up when he saw me. He was even taller than I’d expected. He had a small white bakery box on the table in front of him.
“Holly,” he said. He held out his hand. “I hope you don’t mind. I brought lemon cookies.”
I stared at the box.
“How did you know I like lemon cookies?”
“You told me,” he said. “Last Tuesday. You said the lemon cookies at Hoffman’s Bakery were the only reason you ever went downtown.”
I had said that. I’d forgotten.
He’d remembered.
We talked for almost three hours.
At some point, I realized he was looking at my face. Really looking. Studying it. My hand went up automatically and covered my upper lip. Fifty years of habit.
Arthur noticed.
“You don’t have to do that around me, Holly,” he said gently. “Darling.”
I lowered my hand slowly.
I left it in my lap for the rest of the afternoon.
On our second date, we went to the botanical garden.
It was April. The tulips were out, thousands of them, red and yellow and pink. We walked slowly along the paths, because Arthur’s knee was bad and mine wasn’t much better.
In the rose garden, which wasn’t blooming yet, just green leaves and thorns, he stopped.
“Stand there,” he said. “By that bush.”
“Arthur, it doesn’t even have flowers.”
“I don’t need the flowers,” he said. He took out his phone. “Just you.”
I stood there by a rosebush with no roses on it, squinting into the sun. He took four pictures.
That evening, he sent me a message.
Would you send me another picture? Without makeup? I’d love to see your face the way it really is.
I thought about it for a long time.
Then I went into the bathroom, washed off my powder, stood by the window where the light was good, and took a picture of myself with my phone.
It took me eleven tries. My hands were shaking.
I sent it.
On our third date, we had lunch at a little Italian place.
Arthur asked a lot of questions that day. About my life. Where I’d grown up. What my parents had been like.
“Have you always lived here?” he asked.
“Not always,” I said. “My family moved around when I was young. My father sold farm equipment. We lived in four states before I was eighteen.”
He seemed very interested in that.
Maybe a little too interested.
“Which states?” he asked.
“Oh, all over,” I said. “Iowa. Ohio. Illinois for a few years. Then here.”
He nodded slowly. He didn’t ask anything else about it. But I noticed him write something down on a napkin when he thought I wasn’t looking, and fold it into his shirt pocket.
A few days later, Arthur invited me to dinner at his house.
“Helen will cook,” he said on the phone. “My housekeeper. She makes the best roast chicken in the state. Saturday at six?”
“I’d love that.”
“Wonderful.” He paused. “And Holly? Would you send me one more picture before then?”
I laughed.
“Arthur, at this rate you’ll have enough photographs to open a museum!”
“Just your face, darling. No makeup.”
I didn’t laugh this time.
“Why are you so interested?” I said. “Truly?”
There was a short pause on the line.
“Because I love your natural beauty,” he said.
I wanted that answer to be enough.
So I sent the picture.
But that night, lying in bed, I noticed something odd.
Arthur had never asked for a photograph of my roses. He talked about them all the time. He asked about my Peace roses and my Mister Lincolns. But he’d never once asked to see them.
He’d never asked for a picture of my house. Or my kitchen. Or my garden. Or me holding Maddie’s new puppy, which I’d mentioned three times.
Only my face.
Always my face. Always without makeup. Always close up.
I lay there in the dark for a long time.
Then I told myself I was being a foolish, suspicious old woman, and I went to sleep.
Arthur’s house was a big old brick Colonial on a quiet street on the north side of town, with tall trees in front and a slate path leading to the door.
He greeted me at the door with a bouquet of pink roses.
“For the lady who grows better ones,” he said.
“Flattery will get you everywhere,” I said.
He smiled. Then he looked at my face. He studied it for so long that I touched my upper lip without meaning to.
“Come in, Holly,” he said.
The house was beautiful and a little dusty. Old bookshelves lined the hallway, floor to ceiling, packed with books. There were photographs everywhere, on the walls, on the tables, on the mantel. Most of them were of a woman with short silver hair and a gentle face. Margaret, I assumed. Margaret on a beach. Margaret in a garden. Margaret laughing at a birthday party.
In every picture, Margaret was holding her hand near her face. Covering her cheek, or her chin. I noticed that right away. I know that gesture. I’ve made it a million times.
Arthur led me into the living room. There was a fire going in the fireplace.
A woman came in from the hallway carrying two crystal wine glasses on a little silver tray.
She was about sixty, short and round, with gray hair pulled back in a bun and a plain blue apron over her dress.
“Holly, this is Helen,” Arthur said. “Helen, this is Holly.”
Helen looked at me.
And she went completely white.
One glass slipped off the tray. Then the other.
They shattered on the hardwood floor.
“Oh, goodness!” I said.
I jumped back. There was broken crystal everywhere, glittering in the firelight.
Helen didn’t move. She didn’t even look down at the glass. She just stood there with the empty tray in her hands, staring at my face.
“Are you all right?” I asked her.
Her lips moved.
“Holly?” she said.
It came out like a gasp.
I blinked.
“Yes?”
Arthur stepped between us.
He moved faster than I’d seen him move all week.
“Helen,” he said. “Please take care of the glasses.”
Helen looked at him.
“Arthur…”
“Now, please.”
His voice was firmer than I’d ever heard it. Not loud. But hard.
Helen bent down slowly and began picking up the pieces of glass, one by one, and putting them on the silver tray.
I knelt down to help her.
“No, ma’am,” she said quickly. She wouldn’t look at me now. “Please don’t. You’ll cut yourself.”
Arthur put his hand on my elbow and guided me gently toward the dining room.
“She’s been having a difficult week,” he said quietly. “Her sister’s in the hospital.”
I glanced back over my shoulder.
Helen was still kneeling on the floor among the broken glass. And she was still watching me.
I had the uncomfortable feeling she’d just recognized somebody she wasn’t supposed to see.
