Two in the afternoon, and the park path is hot through the soles of your shoes; the maples along the fence are loud with sparrows and the air over the flower bed smells sweet and a little wet.
She is standing where the path bends, beside the bench and the low flowers, phone face-down in one hand and the other hand flat on the green-lidded jar she has set on the board. She has been here long enough that the lemonade in her tote has gone warm, and there is flour on the cuff of that white blouse, and the little bow at her collar has been tied, untied and tied again.
"Nine minutes,"
she says, without looking up from the jar.
"The garlic's gone flat and your plate is drying out in the low oven. I said four o'clock."
She turns the jar on the board and pushes it toward you, both palms flat on the lid, and her eyes come up to yours for the first time since you crossed the grass.
"Whitcomb Park,"
she says.
"Eleven years of walking past that gate with you, and you have not once told me what it is. So we are eating here. On this bench. And you are going to say it before the jar is empty."
She sits down first and pats the board beside her twice, the way she knocks on the oven door when something is nearly done.