Cutter Press didn’t believe in miracles. Or Devine intervention. Or in any of those easy feel-good explanations people used to explain the unexplainable. Not after living under the pragmatic tutelage of Virginia Press these past twenty-nine years. But the woman sitting in front of him made him think that perhaps miracles happened after all-at least small ones.
    He studied Gloria. She had never look so good. And it wasn’t just the way her hair hung like velvet across her cheek or the way her makeup made her face look so contoured and lovely. Rather, it was because of something in her eyes, some inner quietness and confidence that made them sparkled like the zircon earrings Virginia was so fond of.
    He knew he was violating all rules of polite conduct, but he continued staring, in a perverse test to see how long her composure would last. To see which of them would break first. But she didn’t fidget. And she didn’t nibble her nails-a sight which always filled him with an urge to dunk Gloria’s fingers in a bowl of his mother’s Clorox-water, the concoction Virginia swore, if applied correctly, kept ants from nibbling the food in her kitchen.
    And that was the miracle. Not only to see Gloria Bickford back in his office, but so relaxed, with her hands resting like doves on her lap, her ankles crossed, her feet tucked discretely under the director’s chair.
    Then there was that smile. So sweet it made perspiration pool around his white starched collar and run down his back and chest like raindrops against a window. A smile like that could make a man say something foolish, and Cutter Press had spent the better part of his life trying not to say anything foolish to Gloria.
    Tried and failed. A hundred times.
    He broke eye contact first when he picked up a dart. The firm metal shaft, pointed at one end and fluted at the other, felt good between his fingers, and gave him a feeling of control. He could direct it wherever he chose or hold it as long as he wished. Not being a dullard, he understood that it was just a silly diversion he used whenever he felt the need for one. Like now.
    Be a man, Press, and look her in the face.
    “I never expected to see you here. Never expected you to leave Mattson Development.”
    For the first time Gloria looked uncomfortable and shifted in her chair. “It was impossible to stay…after learning what was going on, after learning what…Tucker was doing. It’s still hard to believe he deliberately tried to stop the development of the Lakes property.”
    Cutter grunted. “The environmentalists still have it all tied up. Don’t know what it’s going to take to get the EPA and the rest of them off our backs. My partners are fuming…but that’s another matter.” He fingered his dart. “Anyway…here you are back in Appleton. I think your mother was the only one who really believed you’d return. You surprised a lot of us.”
    “I surprised myself.”
    Cutter had heard through the grapevine that after Gloria left Tucker Mattson she took a job in an Eckerd City print shop. He wondered why she had left that job and come all the way back here to this dead-end town. He twirled the dart in his fingers. He couldn’t imagine why was she still smiling like that? Didn’t she understand that coming home was a form of failure? An admission that she couldn’t cut it in the big city? Only…right now she looked like she could cut it anywhere.
    “If you’ve come for your old job, it’s filled.” He was taken back when he heard light laughter. Strange how everything about her seemed to surprise him. He had spent years trying to figure her out, and just when he thought he had…
    “I have a job at Appleton Printers. I’ve been there for over a week.”
    Cutter had heard that too, but hadn’t believed it. Not in that little mouse-hole of a business. Even now, after Gloria’s confirmation, it seemed implausible. Why would she want to work in a place like that when she could work at Medical Data? He tented his fingers and glared, as though daring her to explain. “Okay, if you don’t need a job, why have you come?” Strange how disappointed he felt. Had he wanted to see her squirm? Beg even?
    Gloria shook her head as though reading his thoughts, her shiny brown hair barely moving. Her hair was different from the last time he saw her in Eckerd. It was longer and fell over one eye, almost like that actress, Veronica Lake. That hair had made Veronica a big star and when she cut it, she cut herself out of a career. Strange how hair could do so much for a woman. Just looking at Gloria’s hair now and what it did to her face, made the perspiration soak his collar even more. “If you haven’t come for a job, why have you come?” he repeated, hearing the snarl in his own voice and wondering why she irritated him.
    “I’ve come to ask your forgiveness.”
    This was one surprise too many. Cutter hurled the dart at the dartboard-the only object hanging on the left wall of his office. As the tip sank into the bull’s-eye, he felt his lip curl. He was wrong to want her to grovel, but this cool-calm-collected manner was intolerable, almost infuriating, as if she thought she were above it all…superior even. And yet…that gentleness, that composure… He searched her eyes. What was that look? Soft and kind and… He felt the need to turn away, and that annoyed him.
    She had to be playing with him. What forgiveness could she possibly need? He was the one needing forgiveness. The memory of her last visit here still made him cringe. And it had nearly rubbed his brain raw from the number of times he relived it. He had been rough and arrogant-demanding she give an explanation for refusing his marriage proposal. A business deal he called it. How could he have expected her to sell herself so cheaply?
    No wonder she left town.
    “I just wanted to say how sorry I was about the Mattson Newsletters, and to ask you to forgive my part in them.” She pulled a handful of folded flyers from the pocket of her windbreaker and put them on the desk. The windbreaker looked new, stylish, not like one of those cheap folded-up plastic things she used to wear, the kind that came stuffed in a pouch. The rest of her clothes looked new too, and…stylish. And he couldn’t help but notice how nicely she filled them out. Must have put on at least five pounds since he saw her last. And all in the right places. He watched that smile come over her face again when the pile of flyers teetered, then watched her push them closer to him. “Here are some of the Conservation & Common Sense flyers Harry Grizwald-my old boss at E-Z Printing-and I have done.”
    If she smiles that way one more time… He picked up a flyer, swiveled his chair to the side so she was no longer in his line of vision, and began reading.
    “I know the flyers haven’t undone all the harm those newsletters did to the Lakes, but they’ve helped. Harry says more and more people are calling him with their stories. And many are letting him print them too, hoping to expose the radical environmental movement. And we’re going to continue the flyers, for now anyway. Maybe in time it will force the EPA to back away, so you can build.”
    Cutter sat silently in his chair, wondering how he should react. Truth was, he no longer held those newsletters against her. It should be easy for him to just come out and say so. It would go a long way in making him look like a big man. But the words stuck to the back of his throat like wallpaper.
    He watched Gloria rise to her feet. Say it man, say it. When she extended her hand, Cutter smelled perfume and felt his irritation rise. What was that all about? She never wore perfume. Women wore perfume to attract men. And Gloria wasn’t into that sort of thing. Or maybe she was.
    Maybe he didn’t know her at all.
    “Well…I just wanted to tell you how sorry I was and to show you the flyers.” Gloria took his hand and shook it. “And to show you that my remorse extended beyond words, that I was backing it with actions.”
    Cutter allowed Gloria to give his hand another shake before he pulled away, lamenting both that the moment to be magnanimous had passed and that Gloria’s perfume continued to linger in his nostrils.
    “I know it’s a reach, but maybe we could try to be friends,” Gloria said, still smiling.
    Cutter thought he saw a pained expression on her face as though she were choking over the words, as though someone-like her mother-had forced her to say them. And that possibility irritated him. “At this point, why bother?”
    “Appleton’s a small place. There’s no need for it to be unpleasant every time we bump into each other.”
    Cutter twisted his heavy Appleton High ring around his finger, feeling the familiar lines of the beveled garnet. So that was it. It wasn’t forgiveness she wanted. It was a truce. She was afraid he would make life unpleasant for her, now that she was back.
    Well…she could stop worrying. The last thing he wanted was to make her leave Appleton again. ***