"Probably working late tonight," Hank Palmer grunted as he left for work, not bothering to kiss his wife of 27 years goodbye.
Peggy Palmer didn't bother answering because the door was closing as her spouse's declaration ended, and as she heard the truck start up out in the driveway the middle aged woman's attention turned from her increasingly detached husband's behavior to a more interesting topic.
He was out there somewhere, Peggy knew, her secret friend who she had recently befriended. Befriended might not be the right term because at 50 she was more than twice the age of young man who had been sleeping in the woods way back down towards the railroad tracks well behind the Palmer's house. Adopted might be more than accurate because although Ronnie was on the cusp of being 20 he had a baby face that made him look younger even though at about 5'9" and 150 pounds he had a manly build.
Peggy had seen the young man a week ago sneaking out of her garage carrying some of her husband's old clothes meant for charity, and although she knew it was foolish Peggy followed him back to the woods where she saw him changing the shirt he had on for one of Hank's old wife-beater t-shirts, getting a glimpse at his surprisingly muscular upper torso in the process.
In retrospect Peggy could see how dangerous this was to be confronting a thief back there, especially since she recognized the shirt the boy had discarded as one they had the inmates wear at the local prison, but maybe it was an indication that Peggy no longer much cared what happened to her. Beside, there wasn't much pain some criminal could inflict on Peggy than her beloved husband hadn't already done.
As it turned out Ronnie wasn't a hardened convict, or at least that was what Peggy concluded, although she knew from listening to her husband that the prison was full of guys that claimed to be innocent and she also suspected Ronnie might be a bit of a con artist too. He was just scared and lonely, something that Peggy could relate to, so after Peggy scolded him briefly she began taking care of him in a way, first by bringing back dome leftovers to the primitive shelter the kid had fashioned and then evolving to making him lunches of things he said he liked.
Yesterday though, after Ronnie ate and they chatted a while Peggy got up from the rock she had been sitting and declared that even though she didn't want to, she had better get home just in case Hank came home for dinner instead of banging whatever floozy du jour he was seeing now.
"Why do you put up with him?" Ronnie had asked, revealing that the teen actually did listen when she talked.
"I guess we're a habit. Besides, where else can I go?"
"Heck Peggy, you could do anything you set your mind too," Ronnie told her as he rose, his rippling neck and shoulder muscles filling the shirt like the garment never had from her husband's body, and as her eyes went to the crude tattoo on Ronnie's bulging bicep that read "REBEL" she heard him add, "You're smart - sexy too."
"Oh come on Ronnie," Peggy tittered at the compliment that might have been correct when she had been his age and she wasn't carrying about 25 pounds too much like she was now.
"You know you are Peggy. Damn, after you leave I can't get the image of you out of my mind," Ronnie added as he reached over and held her upper arms, and when he had leaned down and kissed her she had been too stunned to protest. "You kiss nice too."
"Ronnie, I'm married," Peggy reminded him when the kiss ended.
"Not happily," Ronnie had astutely noted.
