Crossing the Bridge Read Online Free PDF Page A

have forgotten what she looked like. I’d even done a somewhat effective job of aging her in my mind.
    From the point at which I watched Iris walk away from Chase’s gravesite, I believed that we were meant to have more time together. I’d had unresolved relationships before and I’d certainly had well beyond my quota of them since. But unlike the others, it simply seemed wrong that this one would
go so completely unresolved. We had so much to deal with. Our shared and separate experiences with Chase. The friendship that had emerged between us during the time the two of them were together. The abandon of those seconds when we were kissing. While I lay in my room those weeks after Chase died, listening more to his CDs than my own, I thought often about calling Iris, meeting her in the park, crying with her, slowly facing our own relationship, whatever it might be, and staying in each other’s lives. But whenever I did so, I would think about Iris and Chase together. I’d think about how they were always touching, always feeling each other, and I’d shrink back into the music. I’m sure that Iris was the only woman that Chase had ever loved and the memory of that was both sad and intimidating.
    And a day after seeing her on the street, I began to feel some of the same trepidation again. I even thought about calling and saying that all of my evenings in Amber had suddenly booked up. But at the same time, I couldn’t help but feel a certain hopeful expectation at being with Iris again. I imparted great meaning to our brief encounter the day before. I found it encouraging that she tried so hard to assure me that she needed to get back to her mother’s house. I read much into her glance back toward the store when she left the bakery. I even wondered about her choice of the Cornwall as our meeting place. Surely, she remembered the dinner we had there with my family. Chase got sick and I wound up driving her home. We spent twenty minutes on her driveway debating the upcoming presidential election and another couple jokingly
castigating each other over our opinions. It was the first time I’d had the chance to speak to Iris without Chase’s unremitting energy serving as counterpoint and I remember driving back home that night convinced that my brother had happened on someone who would turn into a woman of genuine power. Of course, I had no idea what Iris remembered of that night or if she even remembered it at all, but I couldn’t help but think that her selection of that particular restaurant was portentous.
    At the same time, as was the case in those months before we kissed, I had no clear idea of what I was expecting from our drinks date. Back then, while my feelings for Iris were undeniably romantic, there was no way to imagine doing anything with those feelings because she was involved with my brother. Now, while it was impossible to know what kind of transformation those feelings had taken, there was the very real fact that, though Chase had been dead for nearly ten years, she was still involved with him, would be eternally involved with him as far as I was concerned. Certainly, nothing momentous was on the horizon, but it was entertaining to consider the possibility that there might be some kind of charge between us, something to give us some brief hesitation before we headed back to our lives.
    All of which was considerably more interesting to think about than straightening the greeting cards or restocking the magazines. Though I eventually did these tasks because I needed to do something to make the time go faster.
    I truly had no idea how my father managed to get out of bed for this.

    When I visited my father at the hospital that afternoon, there was more color in his complexion. He cheered noticeably when I told him that Tyler was doing a good job. I spent an hour or so with him and my mother after I left the store, but we didn’t talk very much beyond that debriefing. I was preoccupied with thinking about