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Harold Jennings had been a fixture in Lindsborg, Kansas, ever since retiring from his job at the post office twenty years earlier. A quiet man, Harold spent most mornings at the Blacksmith Coffee Shop, sipping plain drip coffee and watching the college students buzz by on their way to Bethany College.
His wife, Mavis, had passed four years ago after a long illness. Since then, Harold mostly kept to himself. His grown kids called now and then. Church on Sunday, crossword puzzles, and tending the rose bushes were his constants.
One Thursday afternoon in late June, Harold was at Scott’s Thriftway picking up a carton of milk when he ran into Ruth—Ruth Adams, the widow who had moved in across the street six months ago. She was carrying a half-gallon of Rocky Road and had a mischievous grin on her face.
“You know,” she said, nudging him gently with her elbow, “they’ve got waffle cones on sale over at the Tastee-Freeze. I was just thinking… It’s too nice a day to sit inside. Want to come have an ice cream with me?”
Harold blinked. His first instinct was to say no. He hadn’t been out with anyone, not even as friends, since Mavis. And this felt too sudden. Too informal. Too much.
He smiled politely. “That’s kind of you, Ruth, but I’ve got dinner in the crockpot already.”
She looked at him a moment longer, then nodded. “Another time then.”
They parted ways at the checkout. Harold walked home, feeling a little foolish for turning her down. That night, he sat alone on his porch with his chicken and dumplings, watching the sun set and listening to the breeze stir the cottonwoods. He thought about what it might’ve been like to eat a sticky cone on a park bench and laugh about nothing in particular.
But “another time” never came. The very next week, Ruth’s daughter came by and told Harold they were moving her mom to Wichita to be closer to family. Ruth waved to him from the passenger seat of a minivan as they drove away. That was the last he ever saw of her.
Harold still tends to his rose bushes. Still drinks his coffee. But once in a while, he walks by the Tastee-Freeze, watches the families and young couples sharing sundaes, and thinks about Rocky Road and waffle cones, and a chance he let slip by.
Not out of rudeness. Not out of meanness. Just out of habit.
And he knows now: some invitations don’t get mailed twice.
