In the Texas panhandle not long ago a man and woman fell in love. They were far from young. The woman one side of fifty, the man the other. And they were not free. Both had been married long and fairly happily.
Each of them was a pillar of the community, and the community was faltering and fragile as the oil depleted and cattle prices stayed low. The ground was borderline for soy beans or cotton. There was fear that the high school would close. Already there were too many knick knack shops full of dried flowers and ``collectables'' on Main Street.
But the big families were still there, buying their equipment and supplies locally as much as possible, keeping their money close to home. And the woman was president of the Chamber of Commerce and the man was president of the school board and neither one of them could afford a scandal. They were very careful where they met, but it was a thinly populated country. There must have been some who knew their secret.
They were so happy, the two of them. The man felt great joy that he should know such sweet and perfect love. For him it was not the first affair. But the woman loved the man so deeply that it was like a knife in the ribs. If he had asked her to leave everything and move away it is likely she would have abandoned her perfect home and family and gone anywhere with him.
The man knew this and was careful what he said to her. After about a year he told her they had to stop. People were beginning to talk. Her heart was broken. She still saw him at football games and church pot-lucks and in the hardware store. She worked with him on a couple of committees and she even smiled at him in a fairly normal way when the occasion called for it.
She wanted him back. She wanted to regain and continue the perfect happiness of that short year, but she knew it would never be.
She drank a little more than she should from time to time.
One afternoon she was out riding alone, a couple of shots of tequila absorbing happily into her blood.
The day seemed strangely beautiful. A soft wind blowing, the sweet quality of light. Quite suddenly she realized that this love affair was a perfect memory. A completed entity existing in her past. Untouchable. Nothing more.
She turned her horse down a dirt road to see how the soy beans were doing.