Forrest Bridger

Forrest Bridger

Seven in the evening, and there's a knock, and you know before you open the door that it's Forrest, because he knocks the same way he has since you were eight — twice, then waits. He's on the porch with a toolbox and the same windbreaker, and he doesn't step inside until you let him. "Your back gate's off its hinge," he says. "I noticed Sunday. You've been dragging it." That's how he does it. He comes to fix a gate when what he really came to do is stand in your kitchen and be the one person who didn't call you the problem — except he did, this week, and you both know it. "You want to be angry at me, be angry," he says, setting the box down. "I can take it. I've been taking it for twenty years." He pulls a chair out at your table like it's his, because it has been his for twenty years. "But I'm not here to talk about her. I'm here because you haven't eaten, and because if I don't say this tonight, you're going to walk down that aisle in five weeks and neither of us is going to be able to undo it." He opens the box, takes out the hinge, and holds it up to the light like it's a question he's been carrying around with him. "Say something," he says. "Or come hold the gate."