The Longest Ride

after him, the words coming out automatically.

“Luke,” she called. “Wait.”

When he faced her, she raised her chin slightly. “You said you were going to show me your barn. Supposedly, it’s more rickety than this one.”

He smiled, flashing his dimples. “One o’clock tomorrow?” he asked. “I’ve got some things to do in the morning. How about if I pick you up?”

“I can drive,” she said. “Just text me the directions.”

“I don’t have your number.”

“What’s yours?”

When he told her, she dialed it, hearing the ring a few feet away. She ended the call and stared at him, wondering what had gotten into her.

“Now you do.”

5

    Ira
    I t’s growing even darker now, and the late winter weather has continued to worsen. The winds have risen to a shriek, and the windows of the car are thick with snow. I am slowly being buried alive, and I think again about the car. It is cream colored, a 1988 Chrysler, and I wonder whether it will be spotted once the sun has come up. Or whether it will simply blend into the surroundings.

“You must not think these things,” I hear Ruth say. “Someone will come. It won’t be long now.”

She’s sitting where she’d been before, but she looks different now. Slightly older and wearing a different dress… but the dress seems vaguely familiar. I am struggling to recall a memory of her like this when I hear her voice again.

“It was the summer of 1940. July.”

It takes a moment before it comes back. Yes , I think to myself. That’s right. The summer after I’d finished my first year of college. “I remember,” I say.

“Now you remember,” she teases. “But you needed my help. You used to remember everything.”

“I used to be younger.”

“I was younger once, too.”

“You still are.”

“Not anymore,” she says, not hiding the echo of sadness. “I was young back then.”

I blink, trying and failing to bring her into focus. She was seventeen years old. “This is the dress you wore when I finally asked you to walk with me.”

“No,” she says to me. “This is the dress I wore when I asked you.”

I smile. This is a story we often told at dinner parties, the story of our first date. Over the years, Ruth and I have learned to tell it well. Here in the car, she begins the story in the same way she’d always done for our guests. She settles her hands in her lap and sighs, her expression alternating between feigned disappointment and confusion. “By then, I knew you were never going to say a word to me. You had been home from university for a month, and still you never approached me, so after Shabbat services had ended, I walked up to you. I looked you right in the eyes and I said, ‘I am no longer seeing David Epstein.’”

“I remember,” I say.

“Do you remember what you said to me? You said, ‘Oh,’ and then you blushed and looked at your feet.”

“I think you’re mistaken.”

“You know this happened. Then I told you that I would like you to walk me home.”

“I remember that your father wasn’t happy about it.”

“He thought David would become a fine young man. He did not know you.”

“Nor did he like me,” I interject. “I could feel him staring at the back of my head while we walked. That’s why I kept my hands in my pockets.”

She tilts her head, evaluating me. “Is that why, even when we were walking, you said nothing to me?”

“I wanted him to know my intentions were honorable.”

“When I got home, he asked if you were mute. I had to remind him again that you were an excellent student in college, that your marks were very high, and that you would graduate in only three years. Whenever I spoke with your mother, she made sure I knew that.”

My mother. The matchmaker.

“It would have been different had your parents not been following us,” I say. “If they hadn’t been acting as chaperones, I would have swept you off your feet. I would have taken your hand and serenaded you. I would have picked you a bouquet of flowers. You would have swooned.”

“Yes, I know. The young Frank Sinatra again. You have said this already.”

“I’m just trying to keep the story accurate. There was a girl at school who had her eye on me, you know. Her name was Sarah.”

Ruth nods, looking unconcerned. “Your mother told me about her, too. She also said that you had not called or written to her since you had returned. I knew it was not serious.”

“How often did you talk to my