Things Were Never the Same Afterward. Mike JD Trial

the people back home, but mostly about the farm. For the first time in months, Jan could feel her faith glowing again as it used to. The liturgy flowed through her mind, only this time it did not have the cool echo of St. Elizabeth’s, but the sound of an April morning in the country.

      A guy was swimming over the long combers toward the raft, his right arm lifting higher than his left.

      “Here comes the guy I was telling you about,” Everett said. Jan sat up. The guy got to the raft and pulled himself up the ladder, tilting the side of the raft down sharply.

      “Hello,” Everett said. “You owe me fifteen pesetas. For your drink at the bar.”

      The guy grinned a wide, square-toothed grin. “Fifteen pesetas.” Then he glared at the distant mountains, pulled his head down, and shadow-boxed a couple of punches. “You’ll get paid. Everybody will get what they have coming. No more phony happy ending.” He let his arms fall to his sides.

      “Happy endings aren’t phony,” Jan said quietly.

      The guy shook his head and dove in, rocking the raft hard against its anchor chain. But he came up and hooked an elbow over the edge of the raft. “You’ve got to do the one right thing, the true thing, whether it makes people happy or not.”

      He pushed off and began stroking for the shore.

      Everett looked at Jan and began to recognize the feeling inside him was love. “I think doing the right thing is how you get a happy ending. I want to marry you,” he said in one long line.

      They looked at each other for a time, aware of the blue ocean, the slow rocking of the raft, the distant brown mountains, and the sunshine flowing down on them like molten gold.

      “Alright,” Jan heard herself say. They both started to say more, then turned away from each other, already sure of their own happy ending.