Treasure Me by Christine Nolfi

her few real friends. Most of the people she’d once cared about had been whittled down to nothing more than memory while she chafed under the curse of longevity.
    There was no figuring why life worked out the way it did. Squirrel stew, buttermilk biscuits and venison steaks had kept her fit and irritable for years. Or maybe the hunting kept her in shape. She’d always been irritable.
    “Morning, Landon,” she called when he started down the incline.
    The former investment banker brightened at the sound of her hard, grating voice. He came around a poplar tree, waved, and then frowned at his boots. This far back in the woods the land was swampy, the smell of earthworms and fungus thick in the air. She chuckled as he sunk ankle-deep in a patch of mud.
    Behind him the sun crested the forest in a glow of pink light. A Canada goose lifted from the lake, breaking the silence with a honk.
    Landon stopped and looked around. “You didn’t answer the doorbell. I assumed you were out hunting.”
    “I have a hankering for duck.” She motioned toward the trees guarding the lake. “I’m on my way to fetch tonight’s supper.”
    “My apologies. I shouldn’t have disturbed you.”
    “You didn’t.” She rubbed her arms, silently cursing the arthritis that never abated until noon. Above, the goose arced into the sunlight, its black wings beating air. “Do you want coffee? You look damn cold.”
    Landon stomped his feet. “Would you mind if we walked instead? I’ve had too much coffee as it is.”
    Picking up her shotgun, she headed toward higher ground. The gun was nearly as tall as she was—the one thing aging had taken was her height and she’d never been tall in the first place. She drew the weapon over her right shoulder like a fishing pole. She glanced up at Landon, who looked pitifully sad, and waited.
    He kicked a stone from the path. “Meade is worried about me. It was a misunderstanding, but I couldn’t find a way to explain.”
    “It doesn’t take much to worry your daughter.” Of course, Landon’s depression gave the girl reason to fret. “What happened?”
    He cast a murky glance. “I inadvertently led her to believe I’m seeing ghosts. Cat’s ghost, in fact.”
    “Lordy.” Meade didn’t much trust Landon’s mental state as it was. “If she thinks you’re having visions of your late wife she’ll pack you off to a fine institution.”
    “I should’ve cleared up the misunderstanding.” He raised his hand then wearily lowered it to his side. “Meade arrived unexpectedly. She found me in the boathouse.”
    Had she found him weeping? Theodora sighed. Landon was a good man, and not nearly as off-center as his daughter thought. But he’d shielded too much of his life from Meade, especially after his wife drowned in Lake Erie fourteen years ago. He was like a magician lost in his own smoke and mirrors.
    “Why did she think you’d seen Cat’s ghost?” Theodora asked.
    “I saw someone in town, someone who left years ago. I couldn’t explain.”
    “Why the blazes not?”
    “Meade never would’ve believed me. I’m hoping you will. In fact, I’m sure you will.”
    His implicit trust slipped a latch in Theodora’s brain, opening her to memories vast and distended, like a drawn-out sigh. Her oldest daughter, in first grade, insisting on the concrete fact of the tooth fairy’s existence. Her husband, shortly after Kennedy’s inauguration, working over her heart with soft words while she fingered the lipstick-splotched collar of his Tasty Cream uniform. The fish tales she’d heard from friends who tried marijuana in the seventies and repented the following Sunday or, in the eighties, surreptitiously bleached their skin along with their hair. Recently, the whoppers she endured came from her great niece who was between jobs and always hungry for a handout.
    “I’ll believe you,” she heard herself say, and it wasn’t a lie. She’d lived long enough to wear her skin down to a vaporous film