When You Were Older by Catherine Ryan Hyde

need to tell you something about my daughter,’ he said.
    And, of course, that foreclosed upon any chance for a settled stomach. I pushed the plate a few inches farther away.
    ‘Anat is a good Egyptian girl. And that is unlike an American girl. An Egyptian girl is raised with traditions of morality. An American girl, you meet her, you text her, to her cell phone, you talk two or three times. Then you “hook up”, and she is OK to “hook up” with you, because she is raised to think that way. That is not how I raised my daughter.’
    I actually put one hand on my stomach. It was that tipped.
    ‘I have no dishonorable intentions toward your daughter,’ I said.
    I guess it sounds like I was stretching the truth. But it didn’t feel that way. I didn’t want to text her three times and then hook up. It was nothing like that. And he didn’t say it was immoral to think I might love her. Or at least that I could.
    ‘Good,’ he said. Sounding completely convinced. Apparently not doubting my word for a moment. ‘Good. That is as it should be. You will forgive me for speaking this way to you, but you are a man, and you have been around early when no one else is around.’
    ‘Only because I have to take Ben to work before seven.’
    ‘Understood. Please, you will forgive me. But, as I say, I am protective. You will have something else to eat?’
    ‘No. Thank you. I’m all done.’
    ‘I sincerely hope I have not made you lose your appetite. Anat said you have a big appetite.’
    ‘Oh. Well. When she met me, I had some catching up to do.’
    ‘The first of the bread is about to come out. You will take some bread home with you.’
    ‘You have to let me pay you, though.’
    ‘No. I will not hear of it. I owe you. Besides, it will only go to waste. We make half what we used to make, and we throw more than half of that away. It’s a crime. I don’t know what we will do.’
    ‘I think people will get over this after a while.’
    ‘I hope so. I hope they get over it soon. Sooner than we will be out of business.’
    Just as I was leaving, my arms laden with not one but three loaves of bread, Nazir asked one last question.
    ‘Who does such a thing, and why? Can you tell me this?’
    ‘People get scared,’ I said. ‘And it brings out the worst in them. Probably somebody was drunk. Most people know better, till they get drunk. And then they do stupid things. Probably a bunch of guys went out and got drunk. And put each other up to it.’
    But then I thought, It was Sunday night. Who goes out and gets drunk on Sunday night?
    And then I remembered.
    But that was a circumstantial indictment of my old gang. At best.
    Wasn’t it?
    I went for a run. Finally. I was finally rested enough to give it a try.
    There was only one problem. I was not running in New York. Not in Manhattan. Not in Jersey City. Not in any city.
    Another piece of the ice floe of denial breaking loose, I guess. I’d been refusing to take a good look around me and accept where I’d landed. But the ice shifted as I ran, and I missed New York so much that, at one point, I actually had to stop and lean on my own knees. Try to breathe it out. Anyone driving by probably thought I was just out of breath.
    Good way to disguise grief. I’d have to remember it.
    Then I was forced to admit to myself another problem. Meeting Anat had thrown a wrench into the gears of my half-baked plans. I think, until that moment, I’d believed I would sell the house and take Ben back to New York with me. Even though transplanting Ben was a plan with many potential flaws. But I purposely hadn’t examined them fully in the light of day.
    Now I had something in Nowhere-ville, someone I might not be willing to leave behind. So I ran through the streets of that town, fully understanding that I was staying. My reaction was to run harder, and faster, counting on endorphins to save me.
    Then I saw Vince Buck. He and his parents and his sister – who I went on dates with twice in high