A Bend in the Road (5 page)

“Does that
happen a lot?”

“More than you
can imagine. Before I sent the note home, I even talked to Brenda about the
best way to tell you.”

“What did she
say?”

“She told me
not to worry, that you wouldn’t overreact. That first and foremost, you’d be
worried about Jonah and that you’d be open to what I was telling you.  Then she told me that I shouldn’t worry one
little bit, even if you did have a gun with you.”

Miles looked
horrified. “She didn’t.”

“She did, but you
have to have been there when she said it.”

“I’m going to
have to talk to her.”

“No, don’t—it was
obvious that she likes you. She told me that, too.”

“Brenda likes
everyone.”

At that moment,
Miles heard Jonah yelling for Mark to chase him. Despite the heat, the two boys
raced through the playground, whipping around some poles before spinning off in
another direction.

“I can’t
believe how much energy they have,” Sarah marveled. “They did the same thing at
lunch today.”

“Believe me, I
know. I can’t remember the last time I felt that way.”

“Oh, come on,
you’re not that old. You’re what—forty, forty-five?”

Miles looked
horrified again, and Sarah winked. “Just teasing,” she added.  Miles wiped his brow in mock relief,
surprised to find himself enjoying the conversation. For some reason, it seemed
almost as if she were flirting, and he liked that, more than he thought he
should.

“Thanks—I think.”

“No problem,” she
answered, trying and failing to hide the smirk on her face.

“But now . . .”
She paused. “Where were we again?”

“You were telling
me that I haven’t aged well.”

“Before that . .
. Oh yeah, we were talking about your schedule and you were telling me how
impossible it was going to be to get a routine going.” “I didn’t say
impossible. It’s just not going to be easy.”

“When are you off
in the afternoons?”

“Usually on
Wednesdays and Fridays.”

As Miles tried to
work it out, Sarah seemed to come to a decision.

“Now, I don’t usually
do this, but I’ll make a deal with you,” she said slowly.

“If it’s okay
with you, of course.”

Miles raised his
eyebrows. “What kind of deal?”

“I’ll work with
Jonah after school the other three days a week if you promise to do the same on
the two days you’re off.”

He couldn’t
hide the surprise in his expression. “You’d do that?” “Not for every student,
no. But as I said, Jonah’s sweet, and he’s had a rough time the last couple of
years. I’d be glad to help.”

“Really?”

“Don’t look so
surprised. Most teachers are pretty dedicated to their work.  Besides, I’m usually here until four o’clock
anyway, so it won’t be much trouble at all.”

When Miles
didn’t answer right away, Sarah fell silent.

“I’m only going
to offer this once, so take it or leave it,” she finally said.  Miles looked almost embarrassed. “Thank
you,” he said seriously. “I can’t even tell you how much I appreciate this.”

“My pleasure.
There’s one thing that I’m going to need, though, so I can do this right. Think
of it as my fee.”

“What’s that?”

“A fan—and make
it a good one.” She nodded toward the school. “It’s like an oven in there.”

“You got
yourself a deal.”

• • •

Twenty minutes
later, after she and Miles had said good-bye, Sarah was back in the classroom.
As she was collecting her things, she found herself thinking about Jonah and
how best to help him. It was a good thing that she’d made the offer, she told
herself. It would keep her more attuned to his abilities in class, and she’d be
able to better guide Miles when he was working with his son.  True, it was a little extra work, but it was
the best thing for Jonah, even if she hadn’t planned on it. And she hadn’t—not
until she’d said the words.  She was
still trying to figure out why she’d done that.

Despite
herself, she was also thinking about Miles. He wasn’t what she’d expected,
that’s for sure. When Brenda had told her that he was a sheriff, she’d
immediately pictured a caricature of southern law enforcement: overweight,
pants hanging too low, small mirrored sunglasses, a mouth full of chewing
tobacco.  She’d imagined him swaggering
into her classroom, hooking his thumbs into the waistband of his pants, and
drawling,Now, just what did you want to talk to me about, little lady? But
Miles was none of these things.

He was
attractive, too. Not as Michael had been—dark and glamorous, everything always
perfectly in place—but appealing in a natural, more rugged way. His face had a
roughness to it, as if he’d spent many hours in the sun as a boy. But contrary
to what she’d said, he didn’t look forty, and that had surprised her.  It shouldn’t have. After all, Jonah was only
seven, and she knew Missy Ryan had died young. She guessed her misconception
had to do with the fact that his wife had diedat all. She couldn’t imagine that
happening to someone her age. It wasn’t right; it seemed out of sync with the
natural order of the world.  Sarah was
still musing over this as she glanced around the room one last time, making
sure she had everything she needed. She removed her purse from the bottom
drawer of her desk, slipped it over her shoulder, put everything else under her
other arm, and then turned off the lights on her way out.  As she walked to her car, she felt a pang of
disappointment when she saw that Miles had already left. Chiding herself for
her thoughts, she reminded herself that a widower like Miles would hardly be
entertaining similar thoughts about his young son’s schoolteacher.

Sarah Andrews
had no idea how wrong she was.

By the dim
light on my desk, the newspaper clippings look older than they are.  Though yellowed and wrinkled, they seem
strangely heavy, as if burdened with the weight of my life back then.

There are some
simple truths in life, and this is one of them: Whenever someone dies young and
tragically, there’s always interest in the story, especially in a small town,
where everyone seems to know each other.

When Missy Ryan
died, it was front-page news, and gasps were heard in kitchens

throughout New
Bern when newspapers were opened the following morning. There was

a major article
and three photographs: one of the accident scene and two others that showed
Missy as the beautiful woman she’d been. There were two more lengthy articles
in the days that followed as more information was released, and in the
beginning, everyone was confident that the case would have a resolution.  A month or so after the event, another
article appeared on the front page, stating that a reward had been offered by
the town council for any information on the case; and with that, confidence
began to fade. And as is typical of any news event, so did the interest. People
around town stopped discussing it as frequently, Missy’s name came up less and
less often. In time, another article appeared, this one on the third page,
repeating what had been stated in the first few articles and again asking
anyone in the community with information to come forward. After that, there
wasn’t anything at all.

The articles
had always followed the same pattern, outlining what was known for sure and laying
out the facts in a simple and straightforward way: On a warm summer evening in
1986, Missy Ryan—high school sweetheart of a local sheriff and mother of one
son—went out for a jog, just as it was getting dark. Two people had seen her
running along Madame Moore’s Lane a few minutes after she started; each of them
had been interviewed later by the highway patrol. The rest of the articles
concerned the events of that night. What none of them mentioned, however, was
how Miles had spent the last few hours before he finally learned what happened.

Those hours,
I’m sure, were the ones that Miles would always remember, since they were the
last hours of normalcy he would know. Miles blew off the driveway and the walk,
just as Missy had asked, then went inside. He picked up around the kitchen,
spent some time with Jonah, and finally put him to bed. Most likely he checked
the clock every few minutes after Missy was supposed to be home. At first, he
might have suspected that Missy had stopped to visit with someone she’d seen on
her job, something she sometimes did, and he probably chided himself for
imagining the worst.

The minutes
turned into an hour, then became two, and Missy still hadn’t returned. By then,
Miles was worried enough to place a call to Charlie. He asked him to check out
the usual route Missy jogged, since Jonah was already asleep and he didn’t want
to leave him alone unless he had to. Charlie said he’d be glad to do it.

An hour
later—during which Miles seemed to be getting the runaround from everyone he
called for updates—Charlie was at the door. He’d brought his wife, Brenda, so
she could watch Jonah, and she was standing behind him, her eyes red.  “You’d better come,” Charlie said softly.
“There’s been an accident.” From the expression on his face, I’m sure that
Miles knew exactly what Charlie was trying to tell him. The rest of the night
was a terrible blur.  What neither Miles
nor Charlie knew then, and what the investigation would later reveal, was that
there were no witnesses to the hit-and-run that had taken Missy’s life. Nor
would anyone come forward with a confession. Over the next month, the highway
patrol interviewed everyone in the area; they searched for any evidence that
might provide a lead, poking through bushes, evaluating the evidence at the
scene, visiting local bars and restaurants, asking if any customers had seemed
intoxicated and had left around that time. In the end, the case file was thick
and heavy, chronicling everything they had learned—which in the end was
essentially nothing more than what Miles knew the moment he’d pushed open the
door and seen Charlie standing on the porch. 
Miles Ryan had become a widower at the age of thirty.

In the car, the
memories of the day Missy died came back to Miles in bits and pieces, just as
they had earlier when he’d driven along Madame Moore’s Lane before his lunch
with Charlie. Now, though, instead of running endlessly in the same loop, from
his day spent fishing to the argument with Missy to all that followed, they
were displaced by his thoughts of Jonah, and Sarah Andrews.  With his mind occupied, he didn’t know how
long they had driven in silence, but it was long enough to finally make Jonah
nervous. As Jonah waited for his father to speak, his mind began focusing on
the possible punishments his father might inflict, each of them worse than the
last. He kept zipping and unzipping his backpack until Miles finally reached
over and rested his hand on top of his son’s to stop him. Still, his father
said nothing, and after finally gathering his courage, Jonah looked toward
Miles with wide eyes that were nearly brimming with tears.

“Am I in trouble,
Dad?”

“No.”

“You talked to
Miss Andrews for a long time.”

“We had a lot to
talk about.”

Jonah swallowed.
“Did you talk about school?”

Miles nodded and
Jonah looked toward his backpack again, feeling sick to his stomach and wishing
he could keep his hands occupied again. “I’m inbig trouble,” he mumbled.

• • •

A few minutes
later, sitting on a bench outside the Dairy Queen, Jonah was finishing an ice-cream
cone, his father’s arm around him. They’d been talking for ten minutes, and at
least as far as Jonah was concerned, it wasn’t half as bad as he’d thought it
would be. His father hadn’t yelled, he hadn’t threatened him, and best of all,
he hadn’t been grounded. Instead, Miles had simply asked Jonah about his
previous teachers and what they had—and hadn’t—made him do;

Jonah explained
honestly that once he’d fallen behind, he was too embarrassed to ask for help.
They’d talked about the things Jonah was having trouble with—as Sarah had said,
it was practically everything—and Jonah promised that he’d do his best from now
on. Miles, too, said that he’d help Jonah and that if everything went well,
he’d be caught up in no time. All in all, Jonah considered himself lucky.

What he didn’t
realize was that his father wasn’t finished yet.  “But because you’re so far behind,” Miles went on calmly, “you’re
going to have to stay after school a few days a week, so Miss Andrews can help
you out.” It took a moment for the words to register, and then Jonah looked up
at his father.

“After school?”

Miles nodded.
“She said you’d catch up faster that way.”

“I thought you
said that you were going to help me.”

“I am, but I
can’t do it every day. I have to work, so Miss Andrews said she’d help, too.”

“But after
school?” he asked again, a note of pleading in his voice.

“Three days a
week.”

“But . . . Dad .
. .” He tossed the rest of the ice-cream cone into the garbage.

“I don’t want to
stay after school.”

“I didn’t ask if
you wanted to. And besides, you could have told me you were having trouble
before. If you’d done that, you might have been able to avoid something like
this.”

Jonah furrowed
his brow. “But, Dad . . .”

“Listen, I know
there’s a million things you’d rather do, but you’re gonna do this for a while.
You don’t have a choice, and just think, it could be worse.” “Howww?” he asked,
sort of singing the last syllable, the way he always did when he didn’t want to
believe what Miles was telling him.

“Well, she could
have wanted to work with you on the weekends, too. If that had happened, you
wouldn’t have been able to play soccer.” Jonah leaned forward, resting his chin
in his hands. “All right,” he finally said with a sigh, looking glum. “I’ll do
it.”

Miles smiled,
thinking, You didn’t have a choice.

“I appreciate
that, champ.”

• • •

Later that
night, Miles was leaning over Jonah’s bed, pulling up the covers.  Jonah’s eyes were heavy, and Miles ran his
hand through his son’s hair before kissing his cheek.

“It’s late. Get
some sleep.”

He looked so
small in his bed, so content. Miles made sure that Jonah’s night-light was on,
then reached for the lamp by the bed. Jonah forced his eyes open, though one
look said they wouldn’t stay that way for long.  “Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for not
being too mad at me today.”

Miles smiled.
“You’re welcome.”

“And Dad?”

“Yeah?”

Jonah reached up
to wipe his nose. Next to his pillow was a teddy bear Missy had given him when
he’d turned three. He still slept with it every night.  “I’m glad Miss Andrews wants to help me.”

“You are?” he
asked, surprised.

“She’s nice.”

Miles turned out
the light. “I thought so, too. Now get some sleep, okay?”

“Okay. And Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

Miles felt a
tightness in his throat. “I love you, too, Jonah.”

• • •

Hours later,
just before fourA .M., Jonah’s nightmares returned.  Like the wail of someone plunging off a cliff, Jonah’s screaming
immediately jolted Miles awake. He staggered half-blindly from his bedroom,
nearly tripping over a toy in the process, and was still trying to focus when
he scooped the still-sleeping boy into his arms. He began whispering to him as
he carried him to the back porch. It was, he’d learned, the only thing that
would ever calm him down. Within moments the sobbing dropped to a whimper, and
Miles was thankful not only for the fact that his home sat on an acre of land,
but that his nearest neighbor—Mrs. Knowlson—was hard of hearing.

In the hazy
humid air, Miles rocked Jonah back and forth, continuing to whisper in his ear.
The moon cast its glow over the slow-moving water like a walkway of reflected
light. With low-slung oak trees and the whitewashed trunks of cypress trees
lining the banks, the view was soothing, ageless in beauty. The draping veils
of Spanish moss only added to the feeling that this part of the world hadn’t
changed in the last thousand years.

By the time
Jonah’s breathing had fallen into deep, regular patterns again, it was nearly
fiveA .M. and Miles knew he wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep.  Instead, after putting Jonah back in bed, he
went in the kitchen and started a pot of coffee. Sitting at the table, he
rubbed his eyes and his face, getting the blood flowing again, then looked up.
Outside the window, the sky was beginning to glow silver on the horizon and
splinters of daybreak filtered through the trees.

Miles found
himself thinking about Sarah Andrews once more.  He was attracted to her, that much was certain. He hadn’t reacted
that strongly to a woman in what seemed like forever. He’d been attracted to
Missy, of course, but that was fifteen years ago. A lifetime ago. And it wasn’t
that he wasn’t attracted to Missy during the last few years of their marriage,
because he was.  It’s just that the
attraction seemed different, somehow. The initial infatuation he’d felt when
meeting Missy the first time—the desperate adolescent desire to learn
everything he could about her—had been replaced with something deeper and more
mature over the years. With Missy, there weren’t any surprises. He knew how she
looked just after getting out of bed in the mornings, he’d seen the exhaustion
etched in every feature after giving birth to Jonah. He knew her—her feelings,
her fears, the things she liked and didn’t. But this attraction for Sarah felt
. . .new, and it made him feel new as well, as if anything were possible. He
hadn’t realized how much he’d missed that feeling.  But where would it go from here? That was the part he still
wasn’t sure about.  He couldn’t predict
what, if anything, would happen with Sarah. He didn’t know anything about her;
in the end, they might not be compatible at all. There were a thousand things
that could doom a relationship, and he wasn’t blind to them.  Still, he’d been attracted to her. . . .

Miles shook his
head, forcing the thought away. No reason to dwell on it, except for the reason
that the attraction had once again reminded him that he wanted to start over.
He wanted to find someone again; he didn’t want to live the rest of his life
alone. Some people could do that, he knew. There were people here in town who’d
lost their spouse and never remarried, but he wasn’t wired that way and never
had been. He’d never felt as if he’d been missing out on something when he’d
been married. He didn’t look at his single friends and wish that he could lead
their life—dating, playing the field, falling in and out of love as the seasons
changed. That just wasn’t him. He loved being a husband, he loved being a
father, he loved the stability that had come with all that, and he wanted to
have that again.

But I probably
won’t. . . .

Miles sighed
and looked out the window again. More light in the lower sky, still black
above. He rose from the table, went down the hall to peek in on Jonah—still asleep—then
pushed open the door to his own bedroom. In the shadows, he could see the
pictures he’d had framed, sitting on top of his chest of drawers and on the
bedstand. Though he couldn’t make out the features, he didn’t need to see them
clearly to know what they were: Missy sitting on the back porch, holding a
bouquet of wildflowers; Missy and Jonah, their faces close to the lens,
grinning broadly; Missy and Miles walking down the aisle . . .  Miles entered and sat on the bed. Next to
the photo was the manila file filled with information he’d compiled himself, on
his own time. Because sheriffs didn’t have jurisdiction over traffic
accidents—nor would he have been allowed to investigate, even if the sheriffs
had—he’d followed in the footsteps of the highway patrol, interviewing the same
people, asking the same questions, and sifting through the same information.
Knowing what he’d been through, no one had refused to cooperate, but in the end
he’d learned no more than the official investigators. As it was, the file sat
on the bedstand, as if daring Miles to find out who’d been driving the car that
night.

But that didn’t
seem likely, not anymore, no matter how much Miles wanted to punish the person
who’d ruined his life. And let there be no mistake: That was exactly what he
wanted to do. He wanted to make the person pay dearly for what he’d done; it
was his duty both as a husband and as someone sworn to uphold the law. An eye
for an eye—wasn’t that what the Bible said? 
Now, as with most mornings, Miles stared at the file without bothering
to open it and found himself imagining the person who’d done it, running
through the same scenarios he did every time, and always beginning with the
same question.  If it was simply an accident,
why run?

The only reason
he could come up with was that the person was drunk, someone coming home from a
party, or someone who made a habit of drinking too much every weekend. A man,
probably, in his thirties or forties. Though there was no evidence to support
that, that’s whom he always pictured. In his mind’s eye, Miles could see him
swerving from side to side as he made his way down the road, going too fast and
jerking the wheel, his mind processing everything in slow motion. Maybe he was
reaching for another beer, one sandwiched between his legs, just as he caught a
glimpse of Missy at the last second. Or maybe he didn’t see her at all. Maybe
he just heard the thud and felt the car shudder with the impact. Even then, the
driver didn’t panic. There weren’t any skid marks on the road, even though the
driver had stopped the car to see what he had done. The evidence—information
that had never appeared in any of the articles—showed that much.

No matter.

No one else had
seen anything. There were no other cars on the road, no porch lights flicked
on, no one had been outside walking the dog or turning off the sprinklers. Even
in his intoxicated state, the driver had known that Missy was dead and that
he’d be facing a manslaughter charge at the least, maybe second-degree murder
if he’d had prior offenses. Criminal charges. Prison time.  Life behind bars. These and even more
frightening thoughts must have raced through his head, urging him to get out of
there before anyone saw him. And he had, without ever bothering to consider the
grief he’d left in his wake.  It was
either that, or someone had run Missy down on purpose.

Some sociopath
who killed for the thrill of it. He’d heard of such people.

Or killed to get
back at Miles Ryan?

He was a sheriff;
he’d made enemies. He’d arrested people and testified against them. He’d helped
send scores of people to prison.

One of them?

The list was
endless, an exercise in paranoia.

He sighed,
finally opening the file, finding himself drawn to the pages.  There was one detail about the accident that
didn’t seem to fit, and over the years Miles had scribbled half a dozen
question marks around it. He had learned of it when he’d been taken to the
scene of the accident.  Strangely,
whoever had been driving the car had covered Missy’s body with a blanket.

This fact had
never made the papers.

For a while,
there were hopes that the blanket would provide some clues to the identity of
the driver. It hadn’t. It was a blanket typically found in emergency kits, the
kind sold in a standard package with other assorted items at nearly every auto
supply or department store across the country. There’d been no way to trace it.

But . . .why?

This was the part
that continued to nag at Miles.

Why cover up the
body, then run? It made no sense. When he’d raised the matter with Charlie, Charlie
had said something that haunted Miles to this day: “It’s like the driver was
trying to apologize.”

Or throw us off
the track?

Miles didn’t know
what to believe.

But he would find
the driver, no matter how unlikely it seemed, simply because he wouldn’t give
up. Then, and only then, could he imagine himself moving on.