The Best American Short Stories 2015 by T.C. Boyle Page B

made the rounds.”
    â€œIt’s a small town,” said McHenry.
    â€œIn the middle of nowhere,” said LaFrance. “Oh, well.”
    They left the bar and joined the group: about a dozen altogether, with only four men. Some of them were people McHenry had known (and in LaFrance’s case, disliked) since high school. The women especially had made an effort, red lipstick and pretty skirts and city shoes, but in every one of their faces were the marks of weather, of a life lived outdoors in a place where the wind hurried and the snow flew. The men were dressed Western in boots and sport coats. They looked at home in these clothes, while some of the women looked like an impersonation, a costume. These were widows, most of them, and had the short hair and hard practical faces of Montana wives, their girlishness erased by weather and work. They didn’t look at home in their pretty dresses.
    All but Lydia Tennant. She was ten years younger than the rest of them and dressed for a ski resort in sporty, bright colors. She had married into the Maclays, an old ranching family, and had somehow stuck it out after her husband, Tom, was killed in an avalanche, three or four years ago. She had two kids, both boys, McHenry thought. He had never considered her as a possibility. But here she was, presenting herself as a single, smiling, making small talk, looking tan and pretty in the lobby of the Graves Hotel. This was interesting, at least.
    But before he could make his way to her, he was sidelined by Adele Baker, one of Marnie’s good friends, an English teacher at the high school. She was plump, energetic, dry.
    â€œAre we moving forward or giving up?” she asked him.
    â€œI’ve no idea,” McHenry said. He was wary of her; she thought before she said things, and you were likely to get yourself in trouble if you just said the first thing that came into your head. He asked, “What do you think?”
    â€œI gave up several years ago,” she said. “I’m just here to get out of the house.”
    â€œOh, me too. Getting the shack nasties.”
    He looked over to see where Lydia was in the room—the far side, by the bar door, with Tom LaFrance standing at her elbow—and Adele caught the glance and laughed.
    â€œNo fair,” she said.
    â€œWhat’s not?”
    â€œYou and she are the only two new faces since last summer. I believe that almost everybody else has dated almost everybody else. And by dated I don’t mean
dated
. Don’t be shocked.”
    â€œI thought these were the Christian Singles.”
    â€œWe’re all Christian and we’re all single, but we’re not always both at the same time.”
    â€œYou’ve been saving that one up.”
    â€œMaybe,” Adele said. “It’s a long winter. Come buy me a drink and I’ll tell you all our secrets.”
    Â 
    That Saturday they went birdwatching, or birding, as it was now called. Adele wanted to go to Freezeout and McHenry hadn’t been there in decades so they went, three hours each way and iffy weather but they went. They left at seven in the morning, which was early for Adele on a weekend, she said so. McHenry had been up for two hours.
    It wasn’t a date, they agreed on that. They didn’t have another name.
    Adele drove her Honda, which only made sense—McHenry still had the Expedition from his drilling days, which smelled of dirt and petroleum and got eleven miles to the gallon. But he hadn’t been a passenger in a while and it was strange, filling her go-cup from the thermos and watching the weather. It really had been quite a while. Marnie never drove when they went places together unless she was driving him to the hospital, which had happened a couple of times. But just sitting back and relaxing and watching the snow fall on the far hills—this was like something out of his childhood, a distant memory, watching the telephone wires loop by