Ten Years and Eleven Minutes

Halloween, 1985

Beneath the courthouse elm, Amanda Simmons almost rose onto her toes to kiss Andrew. Mist beaded on his face, but he didn’t smile. The courthouse clock showed seven minutes past six. Her fingers curled inside her mittens. Their first kiss began here, her glove caught in his hair, their foreheads knocking together. She had laughed against his lips. Now his mouth was inches away. She kept her heels down.

Around them, costumed children darted between candy stalls as “Thriller” played from the bandstand. Overhead, papier-mâché ghosts swayed beneath a plywood moon framed by orange lights.

Graceville was usually quiet, tucked between Toqua Lake and the Minnesota prairie. But every Halloween, the town gathered to light the Witch Tree, an old elm said to grant wishes. Amanda and Andrew had come together every year since the night they met.

“I have to go,” Andrew said, pulling away from her.

A broken telephone exchange waited in Duluth, three hours north, and Andrew’s supervisor wouldn’t wait long. Amanda tugged at the brim of her raspberry beret, a nervous habit, then caught his lapels before he could turn. The wool was damp beneath her mittens.

“Then go.”

Wrong words. Exactly the wrong words.

For three nights, Amanda had heard Andrew turn over on the sofa, the springs creaking through their bedroom wall. She had stopped asking why he hadn’t told her about the promotion. He had stopped claiming he slept better out there.

Three days earlier, she had lifted the sugar bowl and brushed sugar from the letter beneath it. Circled in red: better pay, a larger crew, a rented room during the week. She had read that last line twice. This morning, he had left every kitchen cabinet ajar before taking the wooden black cat from the windowsill. “Be right back,” he called. Through the window, she watched him settle his long-drive companion on the Buick’s dashboard.

Beneath the elm, Andrew looked down at her mittens still gripping his lapels. Her words hung between them. His face closed. “Happy Halloween, Mandy.” He kissed her—brief, cold, familiar—and stepped away.

The crowd closed around him.

Amanda tracked his brown coat between masked families until it vanished beyond the stalls. His name rose in her throat, but pride locked her jaw. He had weighed a life in Duluth without her. Even if he turned back now, it would not erase that. Let him feel the twenty feet between them. Let him turn back.

The mist thickened into rain as the high-school band launched into “Monster Mash,” and the brass made her flinch. Mayor Krieger, dressed as Abraham Lincoln for the third consecutive year, reached for the ceremonial switch.

Amanda pressed the brass compass to her heart, its chain taut against her neck. Andrew had given it to her on their first Halloween as husband and wife. So you can always find your way back to me. At twenty-three, she had called him outrageous and kissed him beneath the decorations. They had cupped the compass between their hands and wished beneath the Witch Tree that they would always find each other.

At thirty-two, she wanted to hurl it after him. Take me back, she thought. Just once. The compass warmed beneath her mitten. Its needle swung toward the elm and held there. Along the nearest branch, an unlit bulb glowed faintly. Then the mayor flipped the switch.

Orange and violet lights raced through the elm. A blue-white spark snapped from the service box. It leapt through the rain and struck the compass at Amanda’s chest. The crowd’s cheer broke into a gasp, and every bulb in the elm flared white. Someone shouted the mayor’s name.

The band stretched into one impossible note. Faces blurred. Wet leaves. Hot copper. Andrew’s cologne. The world folded around her.

When Amanda opened her eyes, Anderson’s Five and Dime occupied the corner where Woolworth’s should’ve been. A green sedan passed the square down Studdart Avenue, coughing blue exhaust. The courthouse elm was half its former height and dark.

A newspaper had wrapped itself around her boot. October 31, 1975. Coal smoke hung beneath the rain, mixed with damp newsprint and the sugary warmth escaping the five-and-dime.

“What is going on?” Amanda whispered.

She turned back to the paper.

Still 1975—the day she met Andrew ten years ago. Before Duluth. Before the mortgage. Before they stopped sharing the small room at the end of the hall.

Wet denim clung to her knees. Through her mitten, she rubbed her thumb over her wedding ring.

“Lady, are you hurt?” Amanda froze. Andrew’s voice came from behind her—young, light, without the careful pause she had grown used to. She turned.

He stood beneath the five-and-dime awning in a shearling jacket, a paper bag tucked under one arm and a wrench sticking from his pocket. Mist clung to his lashes.

He looked as he had before she learned the shape of his back in bed, the tune he whistled when he was afraid, or that he only pretended to like her meatloaf. “Andrew,” she whispered.

His brows rose. “Have we met?”

Amanda hesitated. He guided her into Mabel’s Diner. Warm air hit her face. Coffee and fryer grease mingled with the sweetness of cinnamon gum. Every red stool and countertop scratch was as she remembered. She sat at the counter, wet boots on the footrail.

Andrew set down a mug. “Drink before you freeze.”

Amanda hid behind the coffee. The mug was thick white china, chipped at the handle in the place her thumb remembered. That certainty frightened her more than the changed storefronts outside.

The bell jingled again. A young woman hurried in with library books and a box of Halloween decorations, her green coat open and chestnut hair escaping its barrette. A paper witch hat shed silver stars across the floor. Amanda watched her twenty-two-year-old self step onto the slick tile.

Young Amanda tried to rescue a slipping book with her elbow. Her heel skated; books and decorations flew. Andrew caught her around the waist as cardboard bats and orange foil burst around them. A wooden black cat lodged in his hair. He plucked it out. “I generally ask a woman’s name before she decorates me.” Her laugh came breathless and bright.

So this was how it had started. Wet linoleum, cheap glitter, and Andrew’s ridiculous grin—not thunder and violins.

Andrew noticed the furnace-repair manual and asked which model her mother had. Older Amanda had forgotten: before he charmed her, he had listened.

Andrew looked over. Amanda held his gaze, hoping he might know her. His eyes softened, but he said nothing. Young Amanda’s smile faded. The compass needle jerked between them. Amanda’s wedding ring loosened. “I need air.”

Outside, rain slanted across the square. Amanda glanced back. Andrew had followed her, leaving her younger self inside. He should be getting to know her, not me. She pressed her thumb against her loose wedding ring. What if they never get together because of me?

The diner door shut behind Andrew, muffling the clatter of dishes and the jukebox. He stepped beyond the awning, leaving his jacket on the stool inside. “You know my name. You look at me like you know every answer I’m about to get wrong. How is that possible?”

Amanda closed both hands around the compass. “I know a man who keeps spare fuses in the sugar bowl. He sings harmony to songs that don’t have harmony. He leaves every cabinet door open because he swears he’s coming right back.”

“Sounds exhausting.”

“He is.”

Andrew’s smile disappeared. “Do you love him?”

Through the diner window, her younger self watched, one hand tight around the wooden black cat. Amanda had wanted an Andrew untouched by Duluth and every silence that followed. Now he watched the older stranger while the girl he had just met stood alone behind glass. “Yes,” she said. “Even when I’m angry enough to mistake silence for power.” Behind him, the elm flickered.

Andrew glanced at the elm. “I was supposed to get the Witch Tree ready an hour ago for the festival.” Amanda followed him across the square, rain slipping beneath her collar. He knelt beside the service box; she crouched next to him.

The compass grew hot against Amanda’s skin. Inside the service box, a cracked black cable flickered over the other wires, like a double image on television. The square she had left in 1985 seemed to be bleeding into this one. Andrew’s shoulder brushed hers as he leaned closer. He pointed to the bright copper beneath the shimmering cable. “That wasn’t there this afternoon. Why does it look like there are two cables?”

“I don’t know,” Amanda said, drawing the compass closer. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Amanda saw their wedding in June and Andrew wrestling the blue sofa through the front door while insisting it was green.

“Can you still light the elm?” she asked.

“Probably.”

“Without killing either of us?”

He considered this. “Now you’re imposing limitations.”

Amanda laughed, and the sound cracked halfway through.

The crease between Andrew’s brows deepened—the look Amanda knew meant he was worried but would not crowd her. Young Amanda appeared with a toolbox. “If you’re electrocuting yourselves, Mabel says to do it away from the window.” She handed him his jacket and kept the wooden black cat.

Together they worked in the rain, feeding wire through bare branches. Andrew skipped steps; young Amanda tapped each instruction until he surrendered theatrically. Older Amanda recognized the years ahead: his impatience, her insistence, the way irritation softened without either admitting defeat.

Andrew climbed down and offered young Amanda his hand. “Truce?”

“Temporary cease-fire.” She took his hand. Older Amanda felt her ring tighten and looked down at the compass. The shimmering old cable writhed in the service box; light climbed toward the brass casing. She looked up. The courthouse clock spun forward, back, forward.

“It’s opening again,” older Amanda said.

Andrew turned from the spinning clock to her face. “What’s opening?”

“A way back,” Amanda said, closing her hand around the compass.

He looked at the girl beside him, then back at the woman holding the compass. His smile faded as his gaze dropped to her wedding ring. “You’re her.”

Amanda removed her beret and let the wind take it. Rain cooled her scalp. She rubbed one eye, remembering the faint lines in the mirror. At twenty-two, she hadn’t looked for them.

“Yes. I’m her, ten years from now.” Amanda looked from her younger self to Andrew. “You’ve built a life together.”

“A good one?” the girl asked.

Amanda could lie or let three days of arguing stand for their whole marriage. “There’s burnt toast, a mortgage, and a blue sofa he insists is green. There’s a winter so hard you think neither of you will survive it. A spring when he plants tulips anyway.”

Her throat closed. “There’s love. More than you know what to do with.”

Andrew’s eyes shone in the elm’s strange light. “And tonight?”

Amanda saw the twenty feet between them in 1985. Then go.

“Tonight I let being hurt speak for me.”

Young Amanda took her hand. “Then go back. Say something else.” Andrew connected the final wire. The elm woke from trunk to crown, every bulb opening orange, violet, gold.

Amanda faced her younger self. Her mouth was dry; she had no right to say any of this, and no one else to say it. “Don’t make a religion of being fine. Ask for what you need before silence asks for you.” The girl nodded.

Amanda stepped toward Andrew and reached for his face, then hesitated. He was so close, but their years together hadn’t happened yet. She needed to let them begin.

She straightened his collar, something she had done a hundred times before. “When she tells you to go, ask whether she means it.”

“Does she?”

“Almost never.”

His crooked smile broke her open. “Will I see you again?”

Amanda kissed his cheek. “Everywhere.” She stepped back.

Then young Amanda joined him beneath the elm. Glitter clung near his ear. Her glove caught in his hair. Their foreheads knocked together. “I was going for unforgettable,” Andrew said.

“You’re succeeding.”

He asked permission with his eyes. She rose onto her toes. As their lips met, older Amanda closed her hand around the compass. Take me home, she wished. To him. She kept watching their first kiss until the light filled her eyes.

Amanda opened her eyes in the wet grass beside the service box. Cold. Rain. A woman knelt over her, sheltering her face with a folded coat. “Don’t get up. You’ve been out since the lights came on.” Amanda pushed onto her hands and knees, struggling to catch her breath. The compass lay hot against her ribs, its ticking slowing to nothing. Above her, the full-grown elm blazed orange and violet. “Monster Mash” no longer carried from the bandstand. The courthouse clock showed six eighteen. Eleven minutes. Ten years had gone somewhere else.

She stood too fast. The square tilted.

Mayor Krieger shouted for an ambulance. Amanda didn’t wait. Across Studdart Avenue, a green Buick rounded the dripping maples, braked, and slid to the curb, hazards blinking amber. Their Buick: the dented rear fender, the muffler that complained on hills.

The driver’s door opened. Andrew climbed out.

The engine ticked behind him while he stood in the street with one hand on the door, scanning the crowd, a deep crease between his brows. The elm’s light flared across his face as his gaze caught hers.

He held the wooden black cat. She knew its chipped ear, the paint worn bare by ten years of thumbs. It had ridden on their dashboard through Sunday drives and arguments about directions. A girl had once rescued it from a diner floor. Now he offered it like a white flag.

“Mandy!” The rain took half of it. She ran, boots skidding on leaves, past capes, plastic fangs, and a toddler dressed as a pumpkin. The compass chain snapped; the compass clattered onto the asphalt. She didn’t stop. Andrew shoved the car door shut with his hip. The thunk carried across the avenue, small and clean. He didn’t look left or right. He never did. He rounded the Buick’s bumper, toward the sidewalk and the light.

“I love you, Amanda!” A little laugh caught in his voice. She knew that laugh from other reconciliations, when neither quite knew what to say. He lifted the cat above his head. “I should’ve talked to you before I accepted. You’re all I want!”

Headlights swung into view behind him. They rounded the bend of Studdart, high and white, much too fast for the slick road. The sound arrived in pieces: the horn, the scream of rubber, loose chains slapping a trailer. “Andrew!” she screamed. He turned toward her voice, the smile still on his face.

For one suspended second the amber hazards, the white glare, and the orange glow of the Witch Tree lay across him all at once. He was only Andrew, coat open, hand in the air, one step from the curb. Then the truck passed, and the avenue was empty where he had been.

The quiet that followed was louder than the sound. The bandstand remained silent. Somewhere a child asked why everyone was standing still. Rain ticked on the Buick’s roof.

She dropped to her knees beside him. He lay on his side at the road’s edge, one arm stretched toward the curb. Rain darkened the shoulders of his brown wool coat, still open despite the cold. The wooden black cat had landed beside him and sat upright in a puddle, one painted eye catching the red of a brake light. She pressed two fingers to his neck, searching for a pulse. “Andrew. Please.”

His eyes found hers, unfocused and gentle. “Be right back,” he whispered, the way he said it every time he left a cabinet door open.

Then there was no more of him to say it.

When she tells you to go, ask whether she means it. She had told him that beneath the elm in 1975. Had he come back because of her? The thought would not leave her.

Amanda took his lapels, as she had at seven minutes past six. The wool was damp beneath her mittens, mist already beading on it. She smoothed his collar flat, the same small, ordinary gesture she had once given a boy beneath an elm. He was still warm. That was the unbearable part.

She remembered laughing against his lips beneath the elm. Now she waited for him to smile, though she knew he wouldn’t.

For a moment she looked at the rain on his lashes, the crease between his brows already smoothing, the face she had refused to call back across the square. Then she bent.

She kissed him slowly: rain, hot copper, her palm along his jaw, as if she could pour ten years back through his mouth. She remembered the glitter near his ear. Even now, he tasted as he had then. She held the kiss until her breath ran out and the sirens swallowed the crowd. Beyond the hazards, bystanders stood in a silent ring, their faces blurred by rain.

Amanda fished the cat from the puddle and wiped it on her sleeve. Her thumb found the chipped ear where memory kept it. The brass compass lay open where it had skidded, a few feet from his hand, its needle steady, pointing neither north nor home. She reached for it and pressed it to her heart.

“You found your way back,” she whispered, and bowed over his hand, sobbing.

Behind her, the Witch Tree blazed orange and violet. For the first time that night, Amanda did not ask time to return him.

She let the first kiss be first again.