I'll Be There First

On the night the fireworks go up, she has tied a navy ribbon to the same railing post for nine years. The spot was settled the summer they picked it, and she always buys two cans and never opens one. This year she gets the date wrong for the first time and arrives a day early, and the post holds not nine knots but eighteen. Beside every navy one sits a grey one, tied a day earlier, every year for nine years.