When she got home from work she checked the phone as she always did. Two messages. The voice of an old friend and lover.
``I've been thinking,'' the voice said. ``I've been thinking that I hurt you in some way and I want to apologize. I want to talk to you. I'll call again.'' The second message from him too. ``I'll call again.''
``What's he talking about?'' she asked herself. ``We just didn't get on that well. We had nothing in common.'' There was that time when he invited her out to his place and she drove twenty miles on packed snow and lost control on the Nineteen Mile curve and did a 360 degree turn and by some miracle did not go off the embankment or into the creek. That was bad. Then when she got to his place he wasn't there. Forgot he'd invited her. She found him in the Cow Shed Tavern playing pool with Henry Bad Eye. But he was a drunk then. You don't expect anything better from a drunk. She never held it against him. Now after seven years he was calling again. She did not return his calls, did not want to talk to him.
Then he switched to e-mail: ``I don't know what it was I did that hurt you. I drank a lot in those days. I want to make it up to you. I have a woman with me now. I'm not trying to make a play for you. I just want to be straight with you. I want things right between us.''
He was a wealthy man. True the family corporation held all the land, the motels, the elevator, but still he had money of his own. If she played out the line enough perhaps she could bring in a nice lump sum to retire on. He had a woman though. Probably a mail order woman from the Philippines or Albania. They were clever though, some of those women.
He sent three e-mails in six days. Two phone calls. Then there was nothing for a week. She attached a reply to his last e-mail. ``Don't worry about it,'' she wrote. That should get him worrying.
He did not reply. Did not call. She sent him a Christmas card that year with a friendly note and a photograph. She sent it early with plenty of time for him to send one back.
But there was no response.