Mrs. Q.(Kevin Hughes) “Who is this?”

“A friend.”

He could almost here the snort in her mind over the phone.

“Friends tell me who they are…they don’t just call in the middle of the day.”

She could almost feel the wheels spinning in the mind of whomever was at the other end of the line. She hadn’t heard her landline ring in more than forty years. It surprised her so much she picked it up without thinking. Now she was wondering if she should have just let it ring.

“Okay, an old friend. One you haven’t heard from in more than forty years. Surely you recognize my voice?”

She heard the hope in that last sentence. A part of her brain was already on it. She got a tingle of a memory, then a confused rush of thoughts. One of which was: “Oh, my.”

The silence dragged on as her long ago self checked in with her current self. She did know the voice. She was surprised that she had forgotten it, and even more surprised that she remembered it.

“Stefan?”

The relief in the voice at the other hand came out in a woosh of words:

“Yes! I am so glad you remembered.”

It wasn’t just his voice that was bouncing around the halls of Memory, unlocking doors she had closed firmly all those years ago. It was her own feelings trying to find some footing on a hill of emotions to steep to climb. She mumbled out the first words that came to mind:

“What, pray tell, do you want?”

Her voice had an edge to it. She had buried all the hurt, pain, and confusion her young mind had reeled with the day they broke up. She had given the ring back, cried for days, and then…moved on. She knew he had tried to contact her a few times, but her Mother had wisely shielded her from those probes into her life. Within a year, she was dating seriously. Just another year later…she was married. And now…she was a widow.

He must have heard the walls go up in her voice. His voice changed too.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to bother you. I guess I just wanted to see who you became when you left.”

“I LEFT?! “

Her voice shocked even herself. An old wound had opened. One that had festered quietly for almost fifty years.

“May I remind you…YOU LEFT. “

The silence dragged out …and out…and out.

“Well, yeah. This was a bad idea. So sorry. Truly. Good bye.”

She heard the click before she could even hang up herself.

She put the phone back down in its cradle. Then she went to the kitchen to sort through her feelings. The tea pot screamed for a while before she noticed. She refilled it again. This time there was enough boiling water left to make tea. She sipped it carefully.

Moments in time drifted, shifted, and scuttled in and out of her reverie. Her tea cooled.

She wondered if her landline would ever ring again. Part of her hoped so. Part of her was curious, part of her didn’t care. She flickered between the conflicting emotional states like a candle in a drafty room. She went about her day…one ear always listening for a phone call that may - or may not- ever come.

Two weeks later…the phone rang.

She answered with a simple:

“Is this you…again?”

“Yes.”

“What do you want?”

What she heard next she had no way to wrap her mind around the words. What did they mean? Why were they said?

“I want to know how the girl I knew... became the woman you know.”

She stumbled over the next words she managed to eek out of a brain working overtime.

“What does that even mean?”

She heard his sigh. It calmed her in a way.

“It means I knew you as Elaine Boucher. The name you had for almost twenty two years. I knew you for most of those years. Now you are Mrs. Quincy. It said in your husband’s Obituary that the kids and relatives all called you Mrs. Q. I don’t know her at all. How you came to be called that…and not “E.”

A small shiver ran through her heart. He never did call her Elaine. Not after Sixth grade and they started to go steady. Later in her Sophomore Year, they got engaged. Four years after that…it ended. For all those years, she was simply “E” to him. Nobody else called her by that name…nobody dared. It was more intimate than anyone knew. It was his name for her…and belong to them both.

He hadn’t called her “E” directly…she thought that might have opened flood gates she didn’t know existed. He had just asked how she became a different letter to a different man. Mrs. Q. It made her smile. It wasn’t the pet name her husband gave her, it was what her son’s and their friend called her. And all the people down at the barn called her. Mrs. Q was the one that everyone trusted. And loved.

“That would take a long time …and bore you to tears.”

He laughed. It was the same gentle open honest laugh she remembered. A kind of laugh not shared with her deceased husband. Who laughed at people, not with them.

“I wouldn’t be bored, I would be interested …and I have the time.”

“Do you, really?”

“Yes.”

That phone call lasted a few hours. So did the next one. She couldn’t remember when she started looking forward to his weekly calls. Nor did she remember when they became daily things. She did remember - after a year or so, asking him to come up to her town for lunch.

Now, when he calls her…he still calls her “E”.

And that call comes from the other room.

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