Who can explain what happened next? Several months after that blissful day at the Lincoln Memorial, Sarah still wasn’t pregnant. Her doctor told her not to worry, that it sometimes took a while after going off the pill, but he suggested she see him again later that year if they were still having problems. They were, and tests were scheduled. A few days later, when the results were in, they met with the doctor. As they sat across from him, one look was enough to let her know that something was wrong.
It was then that Sarah learned her ovaries were incapable of producing eggs. A week later, Sarah and Michael had their first major fight. Michael hadn’t come home from work, and she’d paced the floor for hours while waiting for him, wondering why he hadn’t called and imagining that something terrible had happened. By the time he came home, she was frantic and Michael was drunk. “You don’t own me” was all he offered by way of explanation, and from there, the argument went downhill fast. They said terrible things in the heart of the moment. Sarah regretted all of them later that night; Michael was apologetic. But after that, Michael seemed more distant, more reserved. When she pressed him, he denied that he felt any differently toward her. “It’ll be okay,” he said, “we’ll get through this.”
Instead, things between them grew steadily worse. With every passing month, the arguments became more frequent, the distance more pronounced. One night, when she suggested again that they could always adopt, Michael simply waved off the suggestion: “My parents won’t accept that.”
Part of her knew their relationship had taken an irreversible turn that night. It wasn’t his words that gave it away, nor was it the fact that he seemed to be taking his parents’ side. It was the look on his face-the one that let her know he suddenly seemed to regard the problem as hers, not theirs. Less than a week later, she found Michael sitting in the dining room, a glass of bourbon at his side. From the unfocused look in his eyes, she knew it wasn’t the first one he’d had. He wanted a divorce, he began; he was sure she understood. By the time he was finished, Sarah found herself unable to say anything in response, nor did she want to.
The marriage was over. It had lasted less than three years. Sarah was twenty-seven years old.
The next twelve months were a blur. Everyone wanted to know what had gone wrong; other than her family, Sarah told no one. “It just didn’t work out” was all she would say whenever someone asked.
Because she didn’t know what else to do, Sarah continued to teach. She also spent two hours a week talking to a wonderful counselor, Sylvia. When Sylvia recommended a support group, Sarah went to a few of the meetings. Mostly, she listened, and she thought she was doing better. But sometimes, as she sat alone in her small apartment, the reality of the situation would bear down hard and she would begin to cry again, not stopping for hours. During one of her darkest periods, she’d even considered suicide, though no one-not the counselor, not her family-knew that. It was then that she’d realized she had to leave Baltimore; she needed a place to start over. She needed a place where the memories wouldn’t be so painful, somewhere she’d never lived before.
Now, walking the streets of New Bern, Sarah was doing her best to move on. It was still a struggle at times, but not nearly as bad as it once had been. Her parents were supportive in their own way-her father said nothing whatsoever about it; her mother clipped out magazine articles that touted the latest medical developments-but her brother, Brian, before he headed off for his first year at the University of North Carolina, had been a life-saver. Like most adolescents, he was sometimes distant and withdrawn, but he was a truly empathetic listener. Whenever she’d needed to talk, he’d been there for her, and she missed him now that he was gone. They’d always been close; as his older sister, she’d helped to change his diapers and had fed him whenever her mother let her. Later, when he was going to school, she’d helped him with his homework, and it was while working with him that she’d realized she wanted to become a teacher.
That was one decision she’d never regretted. She loved teaching; she loved working with children. Whenever she walked into a new classroom and saw thirty small faces looking up at her expectantly, she knew she had chosen the right career. In the beginning, like most young teachers, she’d been an idealist, someone who assumed that every child would respond to her if she tried hard enough. Sadly, since then, she had learned that wasn’t possible. Some children, for whatever reason, closed themselves off to anything she did, no matter how hard she worked. It was the worst part of the job, the only part that sometimes kept her awake at night, but it never stopped her from trying again. Sarah wiped the perspiration from her brow, thankful that the air was finally cooling. The sun was dropping lower in the sky, and the shadows lengthened. As she strode past the fire station, two firemen sitting out front in a couple of lawn chairs nodded to her. She smiled. As far as she could tell, there was no such thing as an early evening fire in this town. She’d seen them every day at the same time, sitting in exactly the same spots, for the past four months. New Bern.
Her life, she realized, had taken on a strange simplicity since she’d moved here. Though she sometimes missed the energy of city life, she had to admit that slowing down had its benefits. During the summer, she’d spent long hours browsing through the antique stores downtown or simply staring at the sailboats docked behind the Sheraton. Even now that school had started again, she didn’t rush anywhere. She worked and walked, and aside from visiting her parents, she spent most evenings alone, listening to classical music and reworking the lesson plans she’d brought with her from Baltimore. And that was fine with her. Since she was new at the school, her plans still needed a little tinkering. She’d discovered that many of the students in her class weren’t as far along as they should have been in most of the core subjects, and she’d had to scale down the plans a bit and incorporate more remedial work. She hadn’t been surprised by this; every school progressed at a different rate. But she figured that by the end of the year, most students would finish where they needed to be. There was, however, one student who particularly concerned her.
Jonah Ryan.
He was a nice enough kid: shy and unassuming, the kind of child who was easy to overlook. On the first day of class, he’d sat in the back row and answered politely when she’d spoken to him, but working in Baltimore had taught her to pay close attention to such children. Sometimes it meant nothing; at other times, it meant they were trying to hide. After she’d asked the class to hand in their first assignment, she’d made a mental note to check his work carefully. It hadn’t been necessary.
The assignment-a short paragraph about something they’d done that summer-was a way for Sarah to quickly gauge how well the children could write. Most of the pieces had the usual assortment of misspelled words, incomplete thoughts, and sloppy handwriting, but Jonah’s had stood out, simply because he hadn’t done what she’d asked. He’d written his name in the top corner, but instead of writing a paragraph, he’d drawn a picture of himself fishing from a small boat. When she’d questioned him about why he hadn’t done what she’d asked, Jonah had explained that Mrs. Hayes had always let him draw, because “my writing isn’t too good.”
Alarm bells immediately went off in her head. She’d smiled and bent down, in order to be closer to him. “Can you show me?” she’d asked. After a long moment, Jonah had nodded, reluctantly.
While the other students went on to another activity, Sarah sat with Jonah as he tried his best. She quickly realized it was pointless; Jonah didn’t know how to write. Later that day, she found out he could barely read as well. In arithmetic, he wasn’t any better. If she’d been forced to guess his grade, having never met him, she would have thought Jonah was just beginning kindergarten.
Her first thought was that Jonah had a learning disability, something like dyslexia. But after spending a week with him, she didn’t believe that was the case. He didn’t mix up letters or words, he understood everything she was telling him. Once she showed him something, he tended to do it correctly from that point on. His problem, she believed, stemmed from the fact that he’d simply never had to do his schoolwork before, because his teachers hadn’t required it. When she asked a couple of the other teachers about it, she learned about Jonah’s mother, and though she was sympathetic, she knew it wasn’t in anyone’s best interest-especially Jonah’s-to simply let him slide, as his previous teachers had done. At the same time, she couldn’t give Jonah all the attention he needed because of the other students in her class. In the end, she decided to meet with Jonah’s father to talk to him about what she knew, in hopes that they could find a way to work it out.
She’d heard about Miles Ryan.
Not much, but she knew that people for the most part both liked and respected him and that more than anything, he seemed to care about his son. That was good. Even in the little while she’d been teaching, she’d met parents who didn’t seem to care about their children, regarding them as more of a burden than a blessing, and she’d also met parents who seemed to believe their child could do no wrong. Both were impossible to deal with. Miles Ryan, people said, wasn’t that way.
At the next corner, Sarah finally slowed down, then waited for a couple of cars to pass. Sarah crossed the street, waved to the man behind the counter at the pharmacy, and grabbed the mail before making her way up the steps to her apartment. After unlocking the door, she quickly scanned the mail and then set it on the table by the door.
In the kitchen, she poured herself a glass of ice water and carried the glass to her bedroom. She was undressing, tossing her clothes in the hamper and looking forward to a cool shower, when she saw the blinking light on the answering machine. She hit the play button and her mother’s voice came on, telling Sarah that she was welcome to stop by later, if she had nothing else going on. As usual, her voice sounded slightly anxious.
On the night table, next to the answering machine, was a picture of Sarah’s family: Maureen and Larry in the middle, Sarah and Brian on either end. The machine clicked and there was a second message, also from her mother: “Oh, I thought you’d be home by now…,” it began. “I hope everything’s all right.
…”
Should she go or not? Was she in the mood?
Why not? she finally decided. I’ve got nothing else to do anyway.
***
Miles Ryan made his way down Madame Moore’s Lane, a narrow, winding road that ran along both the Trent River and Brices Creek, from downtown New Bern to Pollocksville, a small hamlet twelve miles to the south. Originally named for the woman who once ran one of the most famous brothels in North Carolina, it rolled past the former country home and burial plot of Richard Dobbs Spaight, a southern hero who’d signed the Declaration of Independence. During the Civil War, Union soldiers exhumed the body from the grave and posted his skull on an iron gate as a warning to citizens not to resist the occupation. When he was a child, that story had kept Miles from wanting to go anywhere near the place. Despite its beauty and relative isolation, the road he was following wasn’t for children. Heavy, fully loaded logging trucks rumbled over it day and night, and drivers tended to underestimate the curves. As a homeowner in one of the communities just off the lane, Miles had been trying to lower the speed limit for years.
No one, except for Missy, had listened to him.
This road always made him think of her.
Miles tapped out another cigarette, lit it, then rolled down the window. As the warm air blew in the car, simple snapshots of the life they’d lived together surfaced in his mind; but as always, those images led inexorably to their final day together.
Ironically, he’d been gone most of the day, a Sunday. Miles had gone fishing with Charlie Curtis. He’d left the house early that morning, and though both he and Charlie came home with mahi-mahi that day, it wasn’t enough to appease his wife. Missy, her face smudged with dirt, put her hands on her h*ps and glared at him the moment he got home. She didn’t say anything at all, but then, she didn’t need to. The way she looked at him spoke volumes.
Her brother and sister-in-law were coming in from Atlanta the following day, and she’d been working around the house, trying to get it ready for guests. Jonah was in bed with the flu, which didn’t make it any easier, since she’d had to take care of him as well. But that wasn’t the reason for her anger; Miles himself had been the cause.
Though she’d said that she wouldn’t mind if Miles went fishing, shehad asked him to take care of the yardwork on Saturday so she wouldn’t have to worry about that as well. Work, however, had intervened, and instead of calling Charlie with his regrets, Miles had elected to go out on Sunday anyway. Charlie had teased him on and off all day-“You’ll be sleeping on the couch tonight”-and Miles knew Charlie was probably right. But yardwork was yardwork and fishing was fishing, and for the life of him, Miles knew that neither Missy’s brother nor his wife would care in the slightest whether there were a few too many weeds growing in the garden.
Besides, he’d told himself, he would take care of everything when he got back, and he meant it. He hadn’t intended to be gone all day, but as with many of his fishing trips, one thing had led to the next and he’d lost track of time. Still, he had his speech worked out-Don’t worry, I’ll take care of everything, even if it takes the rest of the night and I need a flashlight.It might have worked, too, had he told her his plans before he’d slipped out of bed that morning. But he hadn’t, and by the time he got home she’d done most of the work. The yard was mowed, the walk was edged, she’d planted some pansies around the mailbox. It must have taken hours, and to say she was angry was an understatement. Even furious wasn’t sufficient. It was somewhere beyond that, the difference between a lit match and a blazing forest fire, and he knew it. He’d seen the look a few times in the years they’d been married, but only a few. He swallowed, thinking, Here we go.