“I’m not so sure about that P,” Reagan told him. (Easy for Levi to shrug it all off. He was surrounded by fresh air and bison.) Her family wouldn’t even talk to her about Covid anymore. Reagan’s sister Caitlin had been down for about two months this spring, and she was still having trouble climbing stairs—but she’d told Reagan to stop checking in with her. “I can feel you judging me.”
Reagan didn’t know how to tell her sister that she only sort of judged her. That she wished Caitlin had been more careful, but that she also didn’t believe that being careful was enough. And more than all that, she was just worried about her. She was constantly worried about all of them.
Reagan’s mother had called the week before Christmas to make sure Reagan was coming home. “You worry too much,” her mom said. “The CDC says the risk for vaccinated people—”
Reagan had cut her off. “Oh, the CDC . . .”
“Sometimes I think you don’t want to get back to normal, Reagan. Sometimes I think you like it better this way.”
Sometimes Reagan agreed with her.
But Reagan had made the drive out to Arnold, anyway. She’d even come a day early to carry the folding chairs up from Grandpa’s basement and to wash all the not-quite-china. And here she was, sitting at a table crowded with family—and even more crowded with food. (She’d claimed a chair at the grown-ups’ table without consulting anyone. Her thirty-eight-year-old brother was at one of the kids’ tables, and Reagan didn’t feel a tiny bit bad about it.) She was sitting between her mom and her aunt, facing the window that looked out on the house next door. Reagan had spent the last twenty-four hours not looking in that direction, but now she was stuck.
The neighbors had a full house today, too; the street outside was bumper-to-bumper trucks and SUVs. The two houses were set so close that Reagan could see right into the neighbor’s dining room. She could see people sitting at the table . . .
She could see Mason staring right at her.
Reagan froze.
He was smiling at her. His gentle little chipmunk smile. He slowly raised a hand and moved his fingers to wave. Reagan nodded, but she wasn’t sure he’d see it, so she raised her hand, too, then quickly put it back under the table.
“Who are you waving at?” her mom asked.
“One of the kids next door.”
“We should close those curtains.” Her mom flagged down one of the great-grandkids who was walking by the window. “Grace, close those curtains.”
“Leave them open,” Reagan’s grandpa said. “This isn’t a funeral.”
“Dad, the McCrackens are watching us eat.”
“They aren’t watching us eat. They’ve got satellite TV over there. They’ve got better things to do.”
Reagan avoided the window for the rest of the meal. The few times she glanced up, Mason was sitting there, probably talking to someone; it was hard to tell. Then she glanced up again, and someone else was sitting there. She relaxed a little after that.
After dinner, she helped her mom and her aunts clear the table. Reagan picked up the glass lasagna pan of Jell-O salad that she’d brought. It was still half-full. She grabbed two wet spoons out of the dish drainer and headed out the back door. “Be right back.”
He was standing on his deck, leaning on the railing, looking out into the field. She’d known she’d find him out here . . .
No, that wasn’t quite true. She’d just hoped that she would.
Mason turned when he heard her door open. He smiled a little. “Hey.”
“Hey,” Reagan said. “Who’re you hiding from this time?”
“I’m not hiding,” he said.
It was still full daylight. Winter daylight—bright yellow shot with gray. Mason was wearing a red sweater with Rudolph on the front. His face was flushed. It wasn’t cold enough for a heavy coat—there wasn’t any snow on the ground—but he had on a faded denim jacket with a flannel collar. His hair was cut short over his neck and ears. That must have been Covid hair, last year. This was what he really looked like.
Reagan held out the pan of Jell-O salad.
He lowered an eyebrow.
“I’ve got spoons,” she said.
Mason laughed and sat down on the edge of his deck, hopping off.
He came around the side of her grandpa’s deck, taking the steps. Reagan prepared herself for it. She still wasn’t good in these moments, when someone was approaching her.
She saw the top of Mason’s head on the stairs. And then the rest of him. She could see his body more clearly than she had last year. He had broad shoulders and a barrel chest. Thick arms. A belly. He looked young. The way country boys look young. Even this side of thirty.
When he got to the deck, Reagan took a step back. He stepped back, too, to the edge of the stairs.
She kind of shrugged the pan at him. Like she wasn’t sure what to do next. There weren’t any chairs out here, and she was already losing her nerve.
“I have a mask,” Mason said, reaching into his pocket.
“It’s okay,” Reagan said. “We’re outdoors. And . . . it’s okay.”
“Here . . .” Mason backed down a few steps and sat, leaving room for Reagan at the top. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” she said, sitting. She stuck a spoon in the pan and passed it down to him.
He took it. “Is that what I think it is?”
It absolutely was. Raspberry pretzel Jell-O salad. Reagan didn’t say anything. Just watched him take a bite.
“Oh my God,” he said. “Why don’t people still make this?”
Reagan laughed. He held the pan out to her, and she took a bite, too.
Mason was clean-shaven. His eyes were blue. He was square-faced and handsome.
He motioned at the front of his sweater with his spoon. “We do this ugly-Christmas-sweater thing now.”
Reagan nodded. “My family does that, too.”
He looked down at her chest, confused. She was wearing a snug black V-neck.
“Not me,” she said. “Fuck that.”
Mason laughed and offered her the pan again.
Reagan took another bite of Jell-O salad. There were three layers—raspberry Jell-O, whipped cream cheese with sugar, and crushed pretzels. “So are you back in DC now?”
“I was,” he said, “for a month or two. Then I bought a house in Omaha.”
Her head jerked up. “You moved back to Nebraska?”
Mason nodded. He was more earnest-looking this close. In the daylight. (And he’d already seemed pretty earnest in the dark.) “Yeah, DC just felt too far, after everything. And my apartment seemed so small . . . So I bought a house in Omaha. My brother says I got ripped off, but it’s palatial compared to what I could afford back east. I feel like a Major League Baseball player.”
Reagan laughed. This was a lot of laughing. “Did you quit your job?”
“No. I’m still remote.”
“Me, too.”
“That’s good.” He frowned. “I mean, is that good?”
“It’s what I wanted,” she said.
“Well then, good.” He took another bite of Jell-O salad. He had the pan in his lap. “I’m eating a lot of this, is that okay?”
“God, yeah,” she said, “my nieces and nephews won’t touch it. They say dessert shouldn’t be salty.”
“Okay,” he said with his mouth full, “well, one, this isn’t a dessert; it’s a salad. And, two, the saltiness is the best part.”
“You can have as much as you want,” she said.
“I will.”
Reagan smiled—then bit both her lips for a second. “Was, um . . . was everything okay last year?”