Forever Friends by Lynne Hinton

stopped a minute, thinking about her past as she dealt her memories out like cards on the table.
    â€œI even went to a bar and had a drink with a stranger.” She leaned forward and picked her cup off the table and took a sip. “It was all so very exciting.” She turned back toward her friend, whose face was still cast downward.
    â€œAnyway, by Sunday I realized that Memphis didn’t have what I was really looking for, so I got on a bus and came home.” Margaret ran her finger along the top of her cup. “I never left again.”
    She wiped her hand on the napkin. She wasn’t even sure Lana was listening.
    Finally, the young woman responded. Her voice sounded small, distant. “What did your husband do?”
    â€œMet me at the bus station, had a little bouquet of daisies.” She stopped as if to recall. “Told me that he hadn’t slept in three nights and that he was sorry if he had done something wrong.”
    Margaret sat leaning in her chair with her cup in her hands, remembering how her husband had stood waiting for her at the bus terminal. She thought of how it was to see him through the window on the bus as they pulled up, how he was out front all alone, his hat resting on his forehead, perspiration running down the sides of his face, the heaviness in his eyes and all along his shoulders.
    â€œIn all of the rest of the years that we were married, there was nothing that he did that made me love him more than I loved him that day.” She brought the chocolate to her mouthand drank the last swallow. “He never asked me why I left or what I did while I was away or if I thought I’d leave again.” She sat forward and put her cup on the table. Then she slid her chair back and rested her chin on the palms of her hands. “He just welcomed me home. He handed me those five little stems of yellow flowers, reached out, took my luggage, and welcomed me back home.”
    Margaret remembered the day she returned, how hot the vinyl on the seat in Luther’s truck was and how he pulled her away from the door before she got in, took a towel from behind the seat, folded it, and draped it across where she would sit.
    She remembered how the sweat beaded across the top of her lip, how a strand of her hair kept sticking across her eyes, and how he turned to her at the end of the road just before their driveway. She thought he would ask if she really meant to be home.
    She remembered the smell of grass, the white clouds, and the taste of salt on his neck when she leaned over to kiss him. She remembered the strength of his hand on her leg and the pink and lavender snapdragons blooming at the front porch of their house, the reflection of the sun on the tin roof and the way Luther opened his door and reached for her across the seat. She remembered being happy and sad at the same time, how it felt to leave and then come back. Empty in some places, filled up in others.
    Margaret turned her attention to her friend.
    â€œSee, the thing about being restless is that it isn’t about who you’re married to or where you run off to.” She wasn’tsure she was saying the right thing, but she kept going. “It isn’t about anybody else and what you feel for them or don’t feel for them.” She interlaced her fingers, her hands readied for prayer.
    â€œWhat I’m trying to say is that a person never finds what’s missing from their lives in somebody else. Or in Memphis,” Margaret added, thinking of her own displeasure and departure from home.
    â€œI felt stuck in those early years, edgy and unfulfilled, but I didn’t feel those things because of the man I married or because of where I lived.” She swallowed and then finished. “I felt that way because I had not come to terms with what was inside my heart.”
    Lana did not speak.
    Margaret continued. “So, when I came home I did that. I listened to my heart. I tried finding out