Jubilee July's Arc

Chapter 6 of 7

The friend came the next afternoon, walked the cleared ground, sat on the bench under the red beams, and touched the checked blanket. She did not say yes again. She did not say no. She said she would think on the drive home and call by the end of the week. Jubilee watched the car pull away and stood alone under the shelter with a phone that would not ring on command. She drove home and checked the mailbox out of habit. A plain white envelope waited among the flyers. The word CONFIRMATION was printed across the front in black block letters. Jubilee opened it at the kitchen counter without sitting down. Inside was a short note from the friend she had visited eleven years late. The note said the condition was met on her end. She had spoken with one of the others by phone that morning. Both of them would come to the maple tree on Canada Day. She signed her name and drew a small leaf beside it. Jubilee read the note twice. Then she called the friend who had sat on the bench that afternoon. She kept her voice steady and told her two people were confirmed. The line was quiet for a moment. Then her friend laughed, the short surprised laugh of someone whose excuse has been taken away, and said she would be there. Three yes answers. Jubilee wrote the names on the back of the envelope and put it in the front pocket of her satchel behind the four drafts. In the morning she drove to the tree with a ceramic pot of red and white petunias in the passenger seat and a second bench roped to the roof of her car. She set the pot at the foot of the trunk where the roots pushed up through the grass. She carried the bench to the shelter and placed it beside the table with its painted maple leaf facing the road, so anyone arriving would see it first. Three seats claimed. One friend still unaccounted for, and the boarded house still silent. Twelve days left. Jubilee locked her car and drove back to town to keep working through the ledger.