“Maybe some other girl has more physical strength,” Dean said, “but you have more mental strength. What I said the other day about you bringing this team together—I meant it. The team wouldn’t exist without you, it really wouldn’t. So when you get tired tomorrow, when you’re in the last mile and you have to start passing people, ask yourself if the runner in front of you is as powerful as you are. If she’s a catalyst, the way you are.”
“I take it the answer is no, they aren’t,” See-See said drily—but sincerely, too.
“Exactly. Put a target on their back and reel them in. You’re the leader, they’re the followers.”
“What should I tell the others?”
Dean heard a long beep, followed by two short ones, the call-waiting signal.
“See-See, I have to go, I’m sorry. Tell them to remember that it doesn’t matter how fast they can run—”
“—what matters is how fast they can run when they’re tired.”
“Right.”
Dean switched to the other call. It was the police lieutenant from Hagerstown. They’d gotten two new leads, one from the owner of a small toy store in town who’d seen Robbie’s photo on the evening news and realized that it was the same boy who had come into his shop late in the afternoon. The boy had been alone but friendly. He had bought a gift for his mother.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Dean said.
“Yeah, that’s what we thought,” the officer said. “And it kind of contradicts the other call we got.”
The other lead was from a woman who had seen a boy who looked like Robbie on her bus. He had been traveling alone when she saw him. She’d thought it was odd for someone so young to be by himself, but she hadn’t given it another thought until she returned home and heard something on the radio about a missing boy.
“The woman was on a five o’clock to Pittsburgh, so it’s possible that your son went to the toy store and then boarded that bus shortly after. But that seems unlikely because we had sent officers to the station.”
“You said the bus was going to Pittsburgh?” Dean asked. “What’s the route?”
“It goes west through Allegany County and then into Pennsylvania.”
“What are the stops?”
“Berkeley Springs, Cumberland, Frostburg, Meyersdale, Rockwood—”
“I know where he’s going,” Dean said. “I know exactly where he’s going.”
THE LANDSCAPE WAS hidden, the fields like dark quilts, with farmhouses set far back from the road. You traveled back in time when you headed west in Maryland and now, Pennsylvania. Old farms, old industries. They’d just crossed the Mason-Dixon line. There were very few lights; the road was illuminated only by passing cars and the occasional streetlight when they reached a significant intersection. Above, the sky was black as soot, with a wash of stars, some of them as fine as dust.
The radio was playing, tuned to an oldies station. People were sending out lovelorn dedications on Friday night. In the backseat, Bryan was quiet but awake. Stephanie’s father had barely managed a sentence since they’d left. There was nothing to say now that they knew Robbie was safe. Still, it wouldn’t seem real until they saw him.
Someone requested a live recording of the John Denver song “Sunshine on My Shoulders.” It was one of the songs her mother liked best, and Stephanie remembered telling her that it was easily one of the cheesiest songs ever written. Stephanie didn’t know why she’d needed to curdle such a sweet melody. It was as if she’d resented the song’s simplicity. Listening to it now, at night, with her mother dead and her brother at the end of some secret journey, she wondered what the song had meant to her mother. She felt a twinge of guilt, the pinch of all the questions she’d been too angry to ask, and then she let the guilt go, just let it fly out through the windshield, let it rush past like the trees and the flat fields and the black road. She thought of riding in the passenger seat next to her mother when she was a little girl, of her mother’s shoulders bare and freckled in a summer dress she used to wear that had string straps that tied in a bow around her neck . . .
The memory began to break into pieces, getting mixed up with the song lyrics, and before Stephanie realized it, she was falling asleep.
DEAN CAME TO a quiet stop at the end of his father’s lane and opened his door carefully, so as not to wake Stephanie and Bryan. The distinct smell of his father’s farm drifted in, the smell of horses, dirt, hay, moss, mulch, and some other metallic, starry scent that Dean could never quite identify. This was where his wife had chosen to die.
His father came outside to meet him, wearing a heavyweight plaid shirt over his pajamas. His father was shorter than he was, with a narrower build, and Dean had to lean over, slightly, to embrace him. With his head bent, prayerfully, and with his father’s broad hands on his back, he remembered how Nicole always described his father as having “a warm soul.” And he realized how much he’d missed him.
“I’m so glad Robbie came to you,” Dean said.
“When he knocked on my door, I thought I was dreaming. He walked here from the bus station.”
“I have to see him,” Dean said. “Let me wake Stephanie and Bryan.”
“Go on inside,” his father said. “I’ll get them.”
Dean’s father lived in a different house from the one Dean had grown up in. It was smaller but newly renovated, a four-room, two-story cabin that was close to the barn and that had once been a servant’s quarters to the farmhouse. Nicole thought it was adorable, and when they visited, she would always make a point of cooking dinner in her father-in-law’s kitchen and eating it outside, on his little lawn. Now, as Dean passed the wooden picnic table, he thought of their last dinner there. She had been in such a good mood, she had made a pound cake for dessert, had put edible flowers in the salad. He couldn’t make sense of what she did just two days later. He wasn’t going to try to anymore.
As soon as Dean saw Robbie, his body covered by one of his father’s old blankets, he felt his knees buckle and he had to grab hold of the door frame.
“Robbie,” he said. “Robbie, Robbie, Robbie.”
Robbie didn’t stir. He was sleeping on his stomach, with his right arm dangling off the sofa bed and his face turned away from the doorway. Dean went over to him and knelt in front of him, carefully moving his arms back onto the cushions. Robbie moved slightly; Dean whispered his name and stroked his hair. Robbie rolled onto his back. “Mom?” he said, softly.
“It’s me,” Dean said.
Robbie turned toward him, his eyes opening slowly. His gaze was soft and dream-touched; Dean could see he was in a place where anything could happen. His mother could easily become his father; his father could be his mother.
“Dad,” Robbie said, smiling, coming to the surface. He sat up and the blanket fell away. He’d fallen asleep in his clothes. “Hey, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Dean said, wrapping his arms around his son. His narrow body felt taller, stretched out; it felt precious, living, growing. “I’m just glad you’re okay. You have no idea how worried we were.”
“I’m sorry,” Robbie said. “I really am. I just wanted to come here.”
“I would have taken you. We could have come here together.”
Robbie nodded, acknowledging that this was what he should have done, but Dean could see that he didn’t believe it.
“Why didn’t you ask me?” Dean said.
“I don’t know. I couldn’t explain.” Robbie tugged on the hem of his T-shirt, a gesture Dean recognized from his toddler years.
“It’s okay, I’m not angry. I just wanted to know.” Dean took his son’s face in his hands, savoring the feeling of his soft skin. “You’re my Robbie, you’re my boy. You can’t do this again.”
“No, no, I won’t. I promise.”
Stephanie and Bryan came into the room. They climbed up onto the foldout mattress to hug their brother. Bryan cried, the tears coming effortlessly, almost joyfully. “You came to Grandpa’s!”
&n
bsp; Dean’s father stood in the doorway, where Dean had been just a few minutes before. “I wasn’t sure you’d ever come back here,” he said.
“Neither was I.” Dean couldn’t look away from his kids, together on the bed, the sheets and blankets rumpled beneath them. Stephanie leaned behind her brother to turn on the lamp and the light filled the room.
Chapter 16
Stephanie awakened early, when it was still dark outside. She closed her eyes and tried to fall back asleep, but the floor was too hard, even with the three heavy wool blankets her grandfather had laid down as a makeshift mattress. She could hear her brothers’ breathing, both of them asleep on the foldout. Outside the sky was a faded predawn black.
Stephanie changed out of her pajamas in the bathroom. The floors creaked as she made her way to the kitchen, where the stove clock said it was almost six. Her grandfather’s lined plaid shirt hung on a hook near the back door and she pulled it on as a jacket.
Outside, the cold air felt like something bright on her exposed skin. The stars were still visible in the sky, and so was the moon. In the distance, the white barn where her mother killed herself was a pale gray. It looked peaceful, pastoral. The barn in her memory was different. It stood on a hill, it glowed white in the high summer sun. The road that led to it was hot and dusty, the fields that surrounded it were violently green.
It was November now. Winter was coming. Soon the whole landscape would be covered in layers of snow and ice, and on some days the barn and sky and ground would be almost the same shade of white.
Stephanie felt a sudden gratitude for the change of the seasons. It made life easier, somehow.
She began to run, the cold air spurring her to move. She jogged aimlessly, or what she thought was aimlessly, until she understood that she was following the horse trail down to the creek, the same trail she’d followed on that day.
In the summer, the trail was deeply shaded by the deciduous trees that grew alongside it, but now the gray end-of-night light shone between the bare branches. The trail had a steeper grade than she remembered, the road tipping down toward the creek. Stephanie heard the water before she saw it—a soft, rushing sound. There was a break in the trees above it, and when she reached the creek, the light was stronger there, and the clear water reflected some of it, like a dark mirror. Stephanie ran along the banks, stopping at the watering spot where she had stopped so many times before. The pebbly, muddy beach had hardened with frost, the shapes of horse’s hooves and tire tracks preserved from the last warm days.
On the other side of the creek was the field of another farm. Stephanie often saw cows grazing there, but it was too early in the morning for them to be out. She looked upstream and noticed that a huge tree had fallen across the creek. A willow. The current was pulling its dead tendril branches downstream. It still had some of its leaves, and they were still faintly green. They’d never yellowed and fallen, Stephanie realized. The tree had plunged into the creek sometime over the summer. Stephanie remembered seeing it when it was alive, remembered her father saying it was going to fall over and stop up everything. She gazed at it, mesmerized by the way it disturbed the even current, and also by the water that continued to flow beneath it and over it and around it; there were dozens of miniature waterfalls spilling over the smaller branches that reached out across the surface of the water, and there were places where the water churned violently to get past the heavy trunk. The water was going to break down the tree, over time.
Stephanie stood and stared at the fallen willow for a long while before making her way back to her grandfather’s house. The sun was rising, it was a bright orange spot of light low on the road. As it made its way up into the sky, shining between the tree trunks and then the higher branches, it seemed to be caught. But then it broke free.
EVERYONE HAD AWAKENED early, out of discomfort or exuberance or some combination of the two. They had to crowd to fit around the kitchen table, where Dean’s father arranged two platters, one of toast and the other of bacon—the best breakfast he could provide on short notice. Dean had slept well, but he was still tired and looked forward to going home, to spending time with just his family, his boys, his girl, the four of them.
Dean’s father turned on the radio to hear the weather. Rain was forecast for later in the morning.
“Do the girls still race if it rains?” Bryan asked.
“It’s rain or shine,” Dean said. “Let’s hope Megan has spikes. I forgot to remind Joelle.”
“We can bring them to the race,” Bryan said.
“Honey, we’re not going to the race,” Dean said.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s far away. We don’t have time.”
“We could make it. The race isn’t until ten thirty.”
“It’s okay, the girls are still going to run it. They don’t need us to be there.”
“But don’t you want to see it?” Bryan said.
“If we can make it, we should go,” Stephanie said. “Why not?”
“Because we don’t need to rush from one thing to the next,” Dean said. “We’ve been through a lot. Right, Robbie?”
“I don’t mind going,” Robbie said.
“Robbie doesn’t mind! Come on, Dad, let’s go, please. I want to see if Megan wins.”
“We’d have to leave really soon,” Dean said, checking in with his father, who nodded his assent.
“That’s fine!” Bryan got up from the table. “I’ll go brush my teeth!”
“I guess that settles it,” Stephanie said, with a funny smile on her face. She got up and began to clear the dishes.
The room was filled with new energy as they prepared for departure. Dean folded up all the sheets and blankets while Robbie changed into the clothes Dean had brought for him to wear. He frowned as he pulled on his sweatshirt, and Dean wondered if he had picked the wrong thing.
“What’s the matter?” Dean asked. “Do you want to take a shower? You can, if you want.”
“No, it’s not that.”
“Do you want to skip the race? We don’t have to go. Bryan will understand.”
“No, I want to go.”
“Okay,” Dean said. “Is it something else? Do you feel all right?”
“I feel fine, it’s just that I wanted . . . I wanted to go to the barn.”
“The barn?” Dean repeated. It was all he could think to say.
“Never mind.” Robbie looked ill. “Forget it.”
“No, it’s okay,” Dean said. “We can go.”
“I just wanted to see it when it’s normal inside, with all the horses there like they are in the mornings. So I can remember it a different way.” His chin trembled. “I know it’s strange.”
“It’s not strange.” Dean knelt down to take his hands. “Hey, listen to me, it’s not strange. Nothing is strange in this world.”
Robbie nodded, taking deep breaths to hold back his tears.
Dean put his hand on Robbie’s shoulder and led him through the kitchen where Stephanie and Bryan were sitting quietly with his father, aware that something important was transpiring in the next room. Dean signaled for them to follow him outside.
He didn’t have to say where he was going; it was obvious. They followed the driveway up the slight hill that led to the barn. Dean remembered driving away from it to go to the hospital, seeing it in his rearview mirror and knowing his life had changed forever. But he hadn’t really known. He wasn’t the kind of person who understood things in an instant.
When they reached the barn, Dean’s father helped him slide the heavy doors open. The horses stirred as light shone into their stalls. Dean could smell their bodies. There were only four horses; the white barn was the smallest of three barns on the property, and most of it was devoted to storage. The rope swing had been toward the back of the barn, near the hayloft, but it had been removed.
Robbie stood still, and then he walked down the dirt aisle to a particular spot. He looked up toward the barn’s vaulted ceiling and t
hen he knelt down and he touched the floor with his hand flat on the ground like he was trying to make an impression. Dean wished he had a wreath or a flower or a stone to offer. He thought of his visits to the battlefield, the potent sense of lives lost. His wife had fought hard for her life; she had fought hard and she had been defeated. He had to honor that. Maybe that was all anyone ever meant by forgiveness.
THE RAIN HAD already passed over the valley and the sky was a rinsed blue. Dean stood on a hill, watching the teams line up on the field below. His legs and chest ached pleasantly from his sprint across the parking lot. He was too far away to identify his girls, and he had no idea of the course they were about to run. But he didn’t care, he was just grateful to have made it to this spot.
Next to him, Robbie, Bryan, and Stephanie were yelling, “Go blue!” and trying to get the attention of the crowd of Willowboro spectators at the bottom of the hill. He felt an easy happiness, a desire simply to be near the people who meant the most to him.
The crowd went quiet as the starter walked out onto the field. He raised his arms and shot the pistol. A cloud of smoke appeared, floating like a ghost above the advancing runners. Dean watched it dissolve before following his children down the hill and across the playing field.
Acknowledgments
First, to Maura Candela and Courtney Knowlton, who coaxed this—and many other stories, essays, and novels—into existence. You are my first, most generous readers, and I can’t thank you enough for your kindness, discernment, and insight—and of course, for all the gossip you’ve shared with me over the years.
To Emma Patterson, my agent: your support of and attention to my writing have made me a better storyteller. Thank you for everything.
To Margaux Weisman, my editor, and everyone at William Morrow: thank you for bringing this book to life with so much care and intelligence.
To Jennifer Acker, Kimberly England, and Krista Hoeppner-Leahy: your friendships have enriched my life in too many ways to list.
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