The Jester
PEOPLE CAME FROM ALL OVER MASSAchusetts to see him in that week before he was transferred to Maryland, and when they weren’t allowed into the county court building, they settled outside, in the grass and on the road, perching like the warblers traveling south through the Commonwealth at this time of year. It was the last week of the blooming lilies, and the thin, green stems flutter each time a car passes by, the petals falling like leaves. Twice in the past few days, eggs have been thrown at the courthouse, and a bomb threat has been phoned in from a long-distance exchange, but the crowd that has gathered has come to support Ethan Ford, and sitting alone in his cell he can hear people call out his name, and he finds comfort there, where he least would expect to encounter it, in the voices of those who believe in him.
Rosarie Williams is at the top of that list. She has personally sent out thirty thousand fliers, folding paper until her fingers are bleeding, licking stamps until everything she eats tastes like glue. Mark Derry fashioned the task force room right where his dining room used to be, and that’s where the faithful congregate, quick to reassure one another that the world they know is not as perilous as some might have them conclude. Good deeds prevail among these people. A fax machine has been donated by the friends of the town council, and the volunteers at the firehouse have presented the task force with a Xerox copier. On most days, Mark has a crew of five or more staff members working away, raising both money and awareness, but Rosarie Williams is his right-hand girl, running back and forth to the jail, making herself useful in the dining room office, donating her time and energy even on Saturday nights, when most girls her age are out looking for a good time.
Mark Derry has grown so fond of Rosarie that he sincerely regrets the fact that she broke up with his son; she might have been a cherished daughter-in-law if circumstances had worked out differently, present at holiday dinners and birthdays. But of course it’s clear to Mark that Rosarie is far too mature for a boy like Brendan. She doesn’t even glance at him whenever Brendan glumly edges past to go into the kitchen to fix himself a ham-and-cheese sandwich. On evenings when Brendan comes home from his job at the Pizza Barn, with free pizzas for everyone, Rosarie doesn’t blink an eye. She’s too busy thinking about the way Ethan looked at her when she last went to visit him at the jail, how he’d drawn her close and told her he’d be lost without her, how he would have given up long ago if not for those who had faith in him.
As for Brendan Derry; he pouts at first, tormented by how close Rosarie is, and still, how far away, but soon enough he takes to avoiding his own house. Seeing Rosarie makes him feel wretched deep down inside. He feels the way people do when they start to go bad, a wizening of the spirit, a desire to take foolhardy-chances just for the hell of it. He’s stopped showing up for work on most evenings, and he’s started driving fast in an aimless loop around town, looking to self-destruct, and tempting fate every time he walks out his front door. He might have done himself in completely, crashing into those big rocks down at the tricky intersection on the way to Lantern Lake, if Barney Stark’s Lexus hadn’t been broken down by the side of the road one pearly evening.
The blinking lights cause Brendan Derry to slow down, and when he does, he glimpses a scene that causes him to step on his brakes. Kelly Stark and her sisters are inside the car, all of them shaking and pale, afraid they’ve ruined their father’s most prized possession. The three girls are crying about how their father has left them, moved out for no reason to live in his office; they’re certain he’ll hate them if his beloved Lexus is ruined. But the trouble is only a flat tire, caused by broken glass on the road, easy enough to fix. In fact, Sophie and Josie Stark are given the job of working the jack, which allows Brendan and Kelly to stand together on the side of the road in the dark, listening to the call of the frogs in the lake and finding each other much more interesting than they’d ever imagined they might.
After this encounter, Kelly does her best to avoid Rosarie Williams. She’s heard firsthand from Brendan how cruel Rosarie can be, and besides, Kelly has begun to have serious doubts about working for Ethan Ford. According to Brendan, Ethan is nothing but a reprehensible murderer, slithering his way into their lives. Now whenever Rosarie phones, Kelly tells her sisters to say she isn’t home. She’s repulsed by the way Rosarie has been acting, practically throwing herself at a man in jail. She’s begun to think Ethan Ford’s wife has a right to know the real story and is tempted to reveal what goes on when Rosarie goes to visit Ethan. There is such intense flirting that the guards are said to be aroused at the mention of Rosarie’s name. They grow feverish the minute they see her, drinking so much icy water from the cooler that the bill for spring water at the jail has doubled this month.
Kelly’s father is representing Jorie in the sale of her house, and one afternoon Kelly meets up with Jorie in the hall outside his office. Standing there, making polite conversation, Kelly is about to whisper, watch out for Rosarie, but then she makes the mistake of really looking at Jorie. The anguish she observes forces her to take a step backward, so that she lurches into the wall. The idea of causing more harm raises gooseflesh on Kelly’s arms, and so she keeps silent, merely watching as Jorie rushes to the realtor with the papers Barney Stark has prepared for her in hand.
When it comes to the sale of the house, Jorie knows she should be thankful that the young couple from Framingham have decided to buy; some people, it’s true, won’t even look at an address where a criminal has lived. You never knew what you might find when you dug up the garden to put in a swing set. You never could tell what the attic crawl space might yield or what might be hidden in the garage. Luckily, these buyers have no qualms about the house’s history, especially in light of the great deal they’re getting, thousands less than the asking price of any other house in the neighborhood. It’s true, photos of the house had been in both the city papers and the Monroe Gazette, but no one pays much attention these days; cars don’t drive past slowly anymore, with the occupants’ tongues wagging, embellishing and refining an already sad story. Occasionally, a reporter may circle Ruth Solomon’s house on Smithfield Road, but Jorie’s sister, Anne, has been known to turn the hose on such people, an act of defiance she greatly enjoys. She’s on her own family’s property, after all, and even Gigi, who is usually such a stick-in-the-mud when it comes to wicked behavior, applauds her mother’s efforts to maintain what little privacy they have left.
But most people in town don’t need to read the newspapers to get the facts anymore; they’ve made up their own minds by now, especially when it comes to their opinion of Jorie. Some have made the choice to ignore her completely; she doesn’t even exist for such individuals. On the streets and in stores, many people Jorie has known all her life have begun to look the other way when she walks by, as if she’d never set foot in their universe, never sat next to them in school, or shopped at the Hilltop supermarket alongside them, or washed cars at the PTA bazaar, or brought homemade blueberry muffins to the Friends of the Library day. These are the citizens of Monroe who wonder how Jorie has the nerve to show her face, and for the life of them they can’t figure out how she’s managing to live with herself now that she knows she’s been sleeping next to a monster for so many years, dreaming in his arms.
If pressed, some people might admit they haven’t recently turned against Jorie. in truth, many held a grudge long before Ethan was brought into custody. They always believed Jorie was too pretty and stuck-up for her own good, and they view her with an indifference that is far from cold. There are quite a number of people in town who always resented the arrogant manner Ethan possessed when he refused an award ceremony back when the McConnell house burned down. Still others have never approved of the way Jorie and Ethan kissed each other in the field during baseball practice, so brazen, right in front of everyone, there for all the children to see.
Sometimes Jorie wears sunglasses when she has to run errands; she ties a scarf around her head and does her best to hide. But there are other times when she stares right back, eye to eye, in defiance of the prying glances sent her way in the drugstore and the bank. Either way, folks who know her can tell she’s been crying; her eyes are puffy even on days when she doesn’t shed a tear. Her pretty honeyed hair is snarled, her clothes are wrinkled, her face drawn. A few weeks ago, Jorie had been a beautiful woman, but that’s over now. She’s been avoiding people, spending most of her time inside, behind locked doors. She holds the diary in her hands when she’s alone on the sun porch, hiding it beneath her pillow if her sister or mother should happen to approach. She has given up gardening and going for walks with her mother’s dog, Mister. Now, whenever she ventures into the Sunlight, Jorie finds she breaks out in a rash, sorrowful bumps of grief that rise on her arms and legs and along her chest, in a red line beside her heart.
There are still some neighbors who continue to be concerned, people like Grace Henley. the librarian, and Mrs. Gage, their next-door neighbor for so long, who go out of their way to ask Ruth Solomon if there’s anything to do to help out and insist upon bringing over casseroles that sit in the refrigerator untouched. These are the people it’s most difficult to see, for Jorie knows they pity her, and their pity makes her even more desperate, it causes her to draw the curtains in the middle of the day and refuse to allow her son to go to the town pool even though the weather is brutal, with temperatures hovering high in the nineties, and cherries ripening too soon, and fledglings dying of thirst in their nests in the tallest of the trees.
Ethan, of course, has his throngs of supporters, those advocates who sprawl on the lawn at the courthouse and have taken up his cause. The family should feel reassured by so many well-wishers, but these good people are the reason Collie gives for not visiting his father—the crowds and the reporters, the traffic and the fuss make him nervous, or so he says. He prefers to stay on the couch with Mister, watching TV But there’s more to Collie’s isolation, and Jorie has seen for herself the reason he steers clear of people in town. just a few days earlier, she’d been driving by the high school during baseball practice and she’d spied two boys throwing balls at Collie as he walked past. She’d thought it was all in fun, until she saw the look on Collie’s face. He’d just kept on his way along the sidewalk, ignoring the other boys’ taunts and their dares, even though one of the balls had hit him between the shoulder blades, hard.
“Hey, you guys, cut it out,” Jorie had heard Barney Stark call. He’d jogged across the field from third base to lecture the offending boys, but the damage had been done. Collie continued on, the sun in his eyes, the late afternoon light turning his hair flaxen, his mouth set in a flinty; uncompromising line, his shoulders hunched to avoid further assault. Jorie knew then that things would never be the same, no matter how she might try to protect him. She found herself thinking of James Morris, a boy like her own, whose life was turned around one ordinary summer morning. She was proud of her son for not giving in to his tormentors. He’d kept on his appointed route despite them; he’d turned them into smoke and ash inside his mind.
When Jorie asks Collie if he wants to go with her to the final rally at the courthouse, she’s not surprised to hear him say no. He has plans, he’s meeting Kat, and they leave it at that: they don’t discuss the fact that Collie doesn’t want to get within five hundred feet of the courthouse, not the way he hurts inside, more deeply than he himself knows. It’s Charlotte who agrees to accompany Jorie downtown. They drive to the courthouse to get a look at the last rally on this hot August night. Half the town is gathered on King George’s Road, and those who are in attendance are in high spirits. Ethan’s fellow firemen are there, as are most regulars from the Safehouse, along with the Little League commissioner and several people from the school board. But there are plenty of outsiders congregated as well, and many have hung their towns’ banners from the trees: Everett is represented, as is Cambridge, and Newton, and Essex, along with a huge crowd from Hamilton assembled beneath the linden trees. There are women from Boston who have seen Ethan’s photograph in the Herald and who can tell simply by looking at him that he has repented. There are men from New Hampshire and Maine who have made mistakes in their lives and could use a little forgiveness of their own, Someone has been selling green light sticks and the night is aglow with wands of brilliant jade. Up and down the street, there are several trucks selling ice cream and hot dogs and sizzling fried dough that leaves the air permeated with a sultry, sugared scent.
“Just be prepared when you do go over there,” Barney Stark had advised when Jorie came to pick up Charlotte. “There are all sorts of folks getting involved at this point, and probably half of them have their own twisted reasons for coming to this rally Whatever happens, don’t let them get to you.”
Barney was still living in his office, but he was spending more and more time at Charlotte’s. Jorie, however, felt she had been neglectful; she hadn’t been to see Charlotte since she'd decided to shave her head. Charlotte explained that she’d spent so much energy fearing the loss of her hair, she figured it might be best to go ahead and get it over with, slapdash, snip snap, Jorie kissed her friend on the forehead. She had never before noticed how truly beautiful Charlotte was, and when Charlotte grabbed for the hat she’d taken to wearing, Jorie told her not to bother. “You don’t have anything to hide,” she observed. “You look amazing.”
“Amazingly scary.” Charlotte had laughed, but she’d left the hat behind.
“You look like you.”
“Oh, God. That’s even scarier. Let’s just say I look like a Martian and leave it at that.”
When they had almost reached the street, Charlotte rushed back to the house. At first Jorie thought she'd changed her mind and decided to cover her head, but Charlotte had only returned to say good-bye to Barney, whom she’d forgotten in the doorway.
“See ya, pal.” Charlotte stood on tiptoes to kiss him, then, out of breath and happy, she ran back to Jorie, who was holding open the door of the truck. “I don’t like to leave without saying good-bye,” Charlotte said as they drove away “You never know when you won’t see someone again.”
“You’ll see him again.”
“Actually, I think Barney’s here for the duration. You’re the one I’m afraid might disappear. ”
Jorie managed a grin. “I’ll let you know if I plan to.”
“We’ll send each other messages from the great beyond.”
Jorie laughed at that notion. And that was fine, as long as she didn’t look over at Charlotte and admit that such a loss seemed horribly possible at this point in their lives. “I was thinking more of a change of address.”
“I know what we’ll do.” Charlotte looked so young without her hair. She wore a sweater in spite of the heat, for lately she was always cold. At the hospital, during her treatments she shivered and tried to imagine Florida beaches, a vacation Barney has promised they’ll take when she’s strong enough to travel. “We have to vow that we’ll send each other lilies if we make it over to the other side. If we do that, then we’ll know something remains.”
“Fine,” Jorie agreed. “If I ever leave you, I won’t really be gone, and the same better be true for you.”
They sealed this promise by hooking pinkies, the way they used to, long ago, when promises didn’t hurt as much.
There was so much traffic in town it took nearly half an hour to get to King George’s Road, and they had to circle for quite some time before a parking place was found. From their spot on the crowded street, they can at last see the wide lawn of the county offices. People are laughing as they wait for the rally to begin; they’re having a good time. Some have brought blankets and picnic dinners; children race back and forth, playing tag in the waning light. Jorie and Charlotte sit in the cab of Ethan’s truck with a Thermos of milky tea and a box of Kite’s doughnuts, jam and cream-filled, between them on the seat, not that either woman can eat. Charlotte’s mouth has reacted to chemo with painful little sores that her doctor assures her will disappear before long. Because of this, she’s taken to fixing watery oatmeal for nearly every meal; she’s actually begun to enjoy the stuff although Barney continues to refer to it as gruel.
As for Jorie, her stomach is lurching about, a severe case of indigestion brought on by nerves. Watching the crowd that has gathered, she feels the ache of her own aloneness, as might be expected in anyone who was not among the faithful here tonight. Across the darkness, across the lawn, there are Warren Peck and Hannah from the coffee shop; there is Hal Jordan, the Little League commissioner, and near the stage that has been set up by the firemen, Jorie and Charlotte both can spy Rosarie Williams, dressed as though she’d been invited to a party, wearing a pale blue frock she must have borrowed from her mother, for it seems far too adult for a girl of her age. Rosarie’s black hair is loose and her skin is shining, illuminated by the diamond-white light streaming from the half-dozen sparklers local boys have set out on the lawn.
“What does the Williams girl have to do with any of this?” Charlotte doesn’t like the devout expression on Rosarie’s face.
“She’s Mark Derry’s assistant.” Jorie takes a good look at Charlotte and sees that her friend is brimming with suspicion. “It’s not what you’re thinking. She’s helping out.”
“Yeah, well, some people are attracted to trouble.” Charlotte knows how true this can be from her years of marriage to Jay “Some people can only fight battles they can’t win.”
“I see. Because you’re in love, you think everyone else is.”
“I didn’t say anything about love. I just don’t trust that girl.” Charlotte reaches for a blanket she’s brought along. It’s a velvet night, warm and lush, but she’s chilled to the bone. “Anyway, love is different than I thought it would be.”
Everything is different, the way they are sitting in Ethan’s truck on a summer’s night hoping for the best, fearing the worst; the way their lives have been rattled around, as though they were dice, their futures decided by a throw onto a tabletop.
Mark Derry walks out to the stage, and as soon as he does, the crowd begins to applaud. People around here know Mark from his work on Ethan’s behalf, and they respect him; they get fired up when he charges them to show their allegiance, right here and now, so loud and so strong that people all the way down in Maryland will be able to hear. Horns honk along King George’s Road and several Roman candles left over from the Fourth of July are set off, filling the sky with bands of scarlet and sapphire light.
Charlotte reaches over and takes Jorie’s hand as they watch. Charlotte’s hand is small and cold, but she has a firm grip and she holds on tight. As for Jorie, she is thinking of blue skies and fields and of the endings of things. She brings up the image of their old friends Lindsay and Jeannie from high school, two lovely girls who woke one morning without realizing it was to be their last day on earth, who brushed their hair and talked on the phone and walked out their front doors into the inky night, traveling on a road that was slick with pale rain, turned to ice before anyone noticed.
All good men make mistakes, that’s what Mark Derry is calling from the podium, and by the time he asks his neighbors for their donations and their pledges, their hands are in pockets, checks are being written. As it turns out, the usually silent plumber is both convincing and reassuring; Trisha Derry, gazing on from the sidelines, with her arms around her little girl, April, has good reason to look as proud as she does. Mark Derry speaks from the heart, he means what he says, but he hasn’t been to Maryland, he hasn’t walked through the cordgrass or gone through the door into Rachel’s room. Rachel’s diary is in Jorie’s purse, beneath her wallet and a shopping list and a packet of Kleenex, there to remind her of what happened all those miles away. This is a book of hope that has never been finished, a list of dreams left undone. It’s therefore no consolation to hear the jubilation that meets Mark Derry’s remarks, not for anyone who carries a diary such as this.
Fred Hart’s turn at the podium has come, and it’s clear the attorney from Boston relishes the attention. He waves his hands in the air, getting people riled up, and when he begins to speak, his voice is just low enough to spur the crowd to lean in close and listen hard. Hart announces that a group of Monroe citizens will be chosen to travel south to assist in the effort during Ethan’s trial. No one mentioned this game plan to Jorie; if Fred had bothered to discuss it with her, she would have assured the attorney it was a tactical mistake. She can’t help but imagine what the reactions of local people in Holden might be when this group of supporters arrives in town. She suspects the Black Horse Hotel will be unable to accommodate them, as a matter of principle, and that they’ll have to stay at the Econo Lodge out on the highway.
But what will people in Duke’s Diner say when these strangers come in to order turkey club sandwiches and egg salad on toast? Will folks mention that the graveyard is just up the hill and that the mallows that grow there are carefully tended? Will they say that Rachel Morris came in to Duke’s nearly every Saturday to order vanilla Cokes and French fries with vinegar and that she was the prettiest girl in town?
“He wants to have me and Collie go with him,” Jorie tells Charlotte.
“To Maryland?” Charlotte is stunned. “And he thinks you would even consider putting Collie through that?”
“Collie could stay with my mother.”
“Like you’d ever do that. You’re not about to leave Collie behind.”
Jorie smiles to think of how well Charlotte knows her, for in fact when she tries to envision sitting on the opposite side of the courtroom, across the aisle from James Morris, she simply cannot see herself. In Holden, she would be an invisible woman, it’s true. When she walked across town, she wouldn’t leave footsteps. When she opened her mouth, no sound would issue forth.
A wave of excitement has begun to move through the throng on the lawn; it snakes like a current through the grass and the air. People rise to their feet, and from where Jorie and Charlotte are parked they can see that the door to the courthouse has opened. There is a wash of green light across the lawn.
“They wouldn’t let him out for this, would they?” Charlotte asks.
But, indeed, they have. Four men have joined the others on stage: Dave Meyers and two of the guards, and with them, Ethan Ford. The cheering is truly wild; it bursts into the vast night above the courthouse, above the linden trees. Tonight, the rules have been bent to allow for Ethan’s presence at the rally, but that’s to be expected. This is Monroe, the town that supports Ethan; these are his friends and neighbors, several of whom will travel to Maryland. leaving jobs and families to work on his behalf
In return for these many favors, Ethan offers the crowd endless gratitude, and people hush each other once he begins to speak, the better to hear. They move in closer, the better to see.
“Do you want to go up there?” Charlotte asks
To Jorie, Ethan looks strangely small in the distance. Someone has brought him a clean white shirt for this occasion, and he glows the way stars do, so distant that, as it turns out, they’re not what they seem to be. Mark Derry stands to Ethan’s left, Fred Hart to his right. The men lift their linked arms into the air, victorious and hopeful and so far away they might as well be in another galaxy.
Jorie thinks about the day their life split apart, when Ethan’s past was laid out for everyone to see, like an accident on the highway, or a piece of fruit, golden on the outside, gray and coarse within. She thinks of how well she thought she knew him. She would have recognized him anywhere just from his smile. She knew everything- the way he walked, the sound he made low down in his throat when he was displeased, the thumbs-up signal he gave to each and every boy on his team, whether or not the play they made was successful. She knew how he reached for her at night and how she felt when he did so.
“No. I don’t want to go up there,” she tells Charlotte.
Does she imagine that most things cannot be hidden in the way that Ethan concealed his past? That if she took a single step forward, the diary in her purse would begin to bleed, and once it began, it would continue until the lawn of the courthouse was awash with it, until everyone’s shoes were slick and blood coursed down the sidewalk, into the streets?
“Then let’s get out of here,” Charlotte suggests, and they do exactly that. While the crowd is applauding, while Ethan is thanking those gentle, loyal people who support him, Jorie and Charlotte drive out of town. In any other part of the Commonwealth, this is nothing more than a pleasant August night. They turn the radio up, the way they used to when they were girls. Out of habit, they find themselves on the road to Hamilton; they pull into the parking lot of the Safehouse, but they don’t go inside. It’s empty in there anyway, with Warren Peck’s dad, Raymond, holding down the fort, and only a few customers who are too old or too confused about the issues to attend the rally for Ethan.
“I shouldn’t have made you come here with me that night,” Charlotte says. “You probably never would have met him if it hadn’t been for me.”
There is a big moon hanging in the sky, just above the trectops.
“Don’t think that way” Jorie closes her eyes, but she still sees the moonlight. “I wouldn’t have Collie without that night. ”
Collie himself is currently wishing that he was miles away from Monroe; anywhere at all would do, as long as it’s far from Massachusetts and everything he’s ever known. When he walks through the familiar streets he’s accustomed to, they feel too small for him, lamplit and shadowy; the linden trees block out the sky, even in the dark they take up too much space. Collie usually waits for Kat on the corner; since moving into his grandmother’s house, he can’t bring himself to revisit Maple Street. Tonight, Kat rides her bike to meet him, and because Collie’s own bike is pretty much ruined, the tires wobbling wildly, the frame bent from the time he slammed into the fence, they ride together on Kat’s bike, out to the abandoned house. Collie is behind Kat, his arms around her waist. They are so close, he swears he can feel her heart beating : he can hear his own heart as well.
They come to the old house almost every night; nobody’s keeping tabs on them, nobody knows where they are. This place is theirs, at least temporarily. They’ve found an old couch, which they’ve set up in the parlor, and they’ve stored flashlights and cans of soda in the rubble. This house was here before Monroe was a town. only fields and apple trees as far as a man could see, but it won’t be standing much longer. Kat and Collie both have the sense that it’s crumbling around them. Each time they come here, they’re afraid they’ll find nothing left, only bricks and slats of wood, all falling to dust. They can feel what little time they have. The summer is fading away, drifting into a green haze. This is what summer will always mean to them, even when they’ve grown old. The way the crickets called, the way they huddled close together on the old couch that was abandoned here long before either one of them had been born, the way they didn’t want to step forward into the future, not yet.
Rosarie was right; it’s different between them, and there’s not a thing they can do about it. They don’t communicate the way they used to, lighthearted and easy with each other. Everything’s difficult now. A single word has the potential to break their hearts to pieces. Tonight, they watch the moon through the holes in the roof and they’re careful with each other; they don’t talk about the rally at the courthouse ; they don’t talk about anything. When it’s late enough for the raccoons to start to take possession of the house, they head back home, but they do so slowly, dragging their feet as they go. This is always the hardest part of the night: coming back to town.
They walk Kat’s bike through the dark, quiet streets. It’s late and even those people who attended the rally are already in bed, their doors locked, windows latched. The air is aswirl with mosquitoes, so Kat lights up one of the cigarettes she’s stolen from Rosarie’s dresser drawer; she’s intrigued by the way the smoke rises through the dark when she takes a puff The mosquitoes are chased off but the smoke causes Kat to cough as well.
“You’d better stop doing that.” Collie makes a face. “It’s plain stupid.”
Kat waves the cigarette around as if she didn’t care what Collie thought. A hazy curtain rises between them, and all at once, Kat feels scared. She realizes that this moment will be with them for the rest of their lives. She feels weighed down somehow, as if whatever she says, whatever she does, will be wrong.
“I don’t want to be here anymore,” Collie says.
It’s a terrible thing to hear your best friend say, but Kat doesn’t respond, Oh, please, she thinks, don’t ever leave me, but she remains quiet. The odd thing is, she already feels as though he’s left her, or maybe she’s just telling herself that so she won’t feel so bad when he actually does.
Collie is staring upward, searching a sky that is ablaze with stars. White ones, yellow ones, pink ones, ones that have never been seen by anyone else before. Kat looks up, too. She has chills down her arms. She has wreaked havoc and now she is paying the price. She has loved someone completely only twice in her life, and she’s paying for that, too.
“I would do anything to make you happy.” Kat says. Her voice sounds small, even to herself.
Collie turns away from her, so she can’t see what he’s feeling for her, but she knows anyway. If they never saw each other again. she isn’t sure he’d miss her. not really; not the way she would miss him. Kat throws the cigarette on the sidewalk and steps on glowing embers so that bits of red sparks fly up. She doesn’t care how far away he goes; inside, she’s never going to give him up.
Above them a star falls from its place in the luminous sky.
“Make a wish!” Kat cries.
It’s such a brilliant light, Kat forgets she’s made a vow to stop believing in such things. She herself closes her eyes and wishes hard, but when she opens her eyes again and looks at Collie she can tell that it’s no longer possible for him to believe. He’s done making wishes.
Collie walks her home before he goes on to his grandmother’s house on Smithfield Lane. The air is so thick and hot it slows them down; every step takes effort and willpower and courage. The house where he lived before will be painted next week; the buyers want to put their own stamp on the facade, as do any new property owners. Collie stops as soon as they reach the corner. He doesn’t dare go farther. They can hear the click-clack of Mrs. Gage’s sprinkler. They can hear a dog far away, howling in the night.
That’s when Collie leans forward and kisses her. He kisses her with everything he feels, and then he runs off. away toward Smithfield Lane, away from her. Kat jogs the rest of the way home; she cuts across the lawn that is such a mess this summer, filled with brambles and weeds. She’s flying over crabgrass and stones, all legs and anguish, her heart throbbing like a beehive, abuzz and already stinging.
Every door is locked, back and front, so Kat climbs in through Rosarie’s window, waking her sister as she drops to the floor. Rosarie starts and flips on the light.
“Kat?” Rosarie says when she sees her sister standing there in the dark. Rosarie doesn’t expect Kat to throw herself onto the bed any more than she would have envisioned Kat climbing through the window at this hour, but after a moment she understands. Kat is curled up with her legs to her chest, trying to stop everything that she feels.
“You didn’t think you were going to get married and live happily ever after, did you? You’re not that stupid, Kat.” Rosarie runs her hand over her sister’s hair. She herself has not believed in love for a ridiculously long time, considering she’s only seventeen, but she does believe in going after whatever makes you feel alive.
“Shut up,” Kat says to her.
“Make me.” Rosarie laughs, then gives her sister a little push.
Kat slips under the covers. She’s freezing. Everything keeps ending, and there’s nothing she can do about it. “When will it stop hurting?” Kat runs a finger across the burns on her sister’s arm. Her skin is so pretty, but the marks won’t go away
“I thought you got it.” Rosarie smiles. “Never.”
For some reason, the blankets always seem heavier in Rosaric’s bed, the pillows deeper. Rosarie reaches to turn out the light. “Go to sleep,” she urges. Her voice is dreamy, as though she’s already back asleep. “Be quiet.”
Moonlight falls in through the window, turning everything silver and blue. A wind has come up, and the bramble bush hits against the house, and Kat listens to the sound carefully When someone kisses you with everything they feel, you don’t stop thinking about it for a very long time.
Collie is thinking about it, too, as he takes the long way back to his grandmother’s house, along Front Street, with its darkened storefronts, up Worthington, then through the old lanes overhung with lindens and oaks, past the twisted apple trees that still line the streets. It’s dark and late, but Collie doesn’t care. He goes past the library and stands looking at the place where the old Westfield Seck-No-Further used to grow The air smells of sulfur and sweet apples. Collie feels as though he were seeing everything for the very first time, as though he were a stranger in town. Where is he? He doesn’t know. Where’s he going? He’s not certain of that either.
He hears a horn honk, and when he turns he spies his father’s truck. For a moment he’s afraid he may come face-to-face with his father, even though he knows this is impossible. Ethan is in jail, and yet Collie’s first impulse is to bolt and take off through the parking lot of the library, Instead, he stands his ground. He peers at the driver, and then is relieved. It’s only his mother there behind the wheel.
“How about a ride?” Jorie calls through the open window. She’s out late, having visited with Charlotte and Barney for an hour or more, drinking Charlotte’s favorite green tea that has the unlikely name of Chop Wood Carry Water. It seems as if the rally at the courthouse was a movie they’d seen, a performance they simply couldn’t bear to observe.
Collie comes over and gets into the truck. It’s long past his curfew, and he expects his mother to question him about where he’s been, but she doesn’t mention the fact that he should be home in bed at this hour. As they drive, Jorie thinks about what a beautiful baby Collie had been, with his pale fine hair, and what a beautiful boy he’d become. In the past few weeks he’s changed, however; he’s harder, and quieter, and more withdrawn. He’s definitely grown taller. I le’s staring out at the dark neighborhoods they pass and whistling under his breath. He might as well be a million miles away.
“Are you okay?” Jorie asks, and when Collie looks at her from the corner of his eye, she can feel her love for him in a deep, fierce way, stronger than it’s ever been before. She can tell he’s about to become a different man than he would have had none of this happened. He’ll be moodier and less patient and far more careful in his choice of who he’s willing to trust. He’s the boy whose father killed someone, that’s who he is, the one who refuses to discuss what happened, who walks out of the room when his father’s name is mentioned, the one she’ll do anything to save.
“What if we moved away from here?” Jorie makes certain to keep her tone light. It’s not Maryland she’s thinking of, but someplace else entirely. “What if we moved to a town where we could be whoever we wanted to be and do whatever we wanted to do?”
Collie pays close attention. “What would we live on?”
“I could get a job teaching. There’s a placement agency that finds jobs in every state. We wouldn’t be rich. Anyway, it’s just a what-if situation.”
“Would it be far away from here?”
“It could be. It wouldn’t have to be.”
“I’d want it to be.” Collie gazes through the window. They are passing the high school, and the dark field beyond. “I don’t ever want to see him again.”
“You might change your mind. You’ll have to wait and see.”
She is keeping her voice even. Amazing how she can manage to do that. how close to a lie she feels she’s telling by saying nothing at all.
Collie shakes his head. “I know how I feel.”
But Jorie is keenly aware of how such things can change. You might feel something one moment—love, for instance—and the next, all you thought you knew and felt could be shaken right out of you, leaving you clear and free to feel something else entirely, something you’d never expected, something brand-new. Throughout the next day, Jorie considers what would be best for Collie. Her house has been emptied, the furniture put in storage, and Anne and Gigi are helping to sort through the belongings that will be kept in Ruth Solomon’s basement. They stack mixing bowls and fold sheets; they pepper boxes of blankets with mothballs and pack the good dishes in bubble wrap to ensure that none will chip.
“This is what happens when you stay in one place for thirteen years,” Anne says. “First you own things. Then they own you.”
Anne herself moved back to her mother’s house with next to nothing. In the past, she would have been jealous of everything her sister owned, but now too many possessions seem like a burden. Gigi, on the other hand, is a collector. She is the proud owner of seventeen pairs of shoes and twenty-six sweaters, and she clearly admires much of what she’s packing up.
“When you go away to college, you can take whatever you want,” Jorie tells her.
Gigi is amazed. “Don’t you want it?”
“She can always buy new things,” Anne tells her daughter. When Gigi goes upstairs to get more bubble wrap, Anne turns to her sister.“I didn’t want anything when I left, either. Not that I’m saying that’s what you should do. I would be the last person to come to for advice, but if I was about to give it, I’d point out the fact that you don’t seem to want anything that belonged to you and Ethan.”
“Maybe I just don’t want to be bogged down by belongings.”
“Maybe.”
“But you don’t think so.” They never used to talk like this, and Jorie certainly never valued her sister’s opinion, but now she’s interested. Anne has the ability to cut through pretense and speak her mind, but even Anne can’t tell her what to do next.
“The only thing I know for sure,” she tells Jorie, “is that I’m late for work and I support you no matter what you decide.”
That afternoon, as Jorie helps her mother around the house, she thinks about the way a person’s life can change in an instant. She thinks about that ten-year-old boy who raced across the field, tears in his eyes, blood burning his fingers, and her own dear boy, walking through the sunlight, hit in the back by a baseball. She thinks of the moment right before Jeannie Atkins’s car hit the fence; how the radio must have been playing, how Jeannie and Lindsay were probably laughing, the way she was laughing that morning before there was a knock on their door.
Sometime after supper, when the sunlight is fading, Jorie takes the phone out to the porch. Funny how she’s memorized the number, as though she’s been calling it all her life.
The phone rings for a very long time before James Morris answers.
“Hello,” he says, distrust in his tone. He’s a man who doesn’t get many phone calls, nor does he want them.
“It’s me.”
Jorie has the feeling that he may hang up on her, but instead James says, “Hey, you,” as if they were old friends. He’s recognized her voice, and what’s more, he doesn’t seem to mind that she’s contacting him.
A dog barks, and Jorie laughs. “Fergus,” she says.
“One and the same.”
“Is it still as hot down there?” Jorie asks.
“I don’t think you’re calling to talk about the weather.” James Morris has a tang in his voice whenever he thinks someone’s being disingenuous, and it’s there now. “What is it? Are you okay?”
“Oh, sure.” Jorie is sitting there in her mother’s sun porch with her house sold, her husband in jail, her life a disaster, but somehow James Morris lifts her up. He makes her consider what people are capable of going through in this world and how much courage it’s possible to have. “I think I’ll survive.”
“I think so, too.”
“He wants me to come to Maryland with him.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.”
Jorie can hear a door slam: James is letting the dog out as darkness falls across the fields. He doesn’t wish her ill. He wouldn’t turn away from her if he saw her in the courtroom; he wouldn’t run her off the road if he noticed her driving through town.
“Did you read the diary?” he wants to know.
“How am I supposed to do that? Break it open?”
“I’ll bet you anything he’s got the key.”
Evening is falling, here and in Maryland, a still August night littered with stars.
“And if I read it, what happens then?”
“Then you’ll do the right thing,” James Morris says.
“Oh, right.” Jorie laughs. “Like you know me so well.”
“Well enough.”
“I thought I knew him well enough.”
Jorie can hear the blackbirds, out in the cypress trees. She knows what she wants from James Morris, and he does, too.
“It wasn’t your fault,” he tells her.
It’s a gift he gives to her, and a lasting one at that. She goes to the jail later in the evening, ignoring the threat of a thunderstorm, bringing along supper for Ethan. The sky is shining, the way it always does before a storm, and the roads look as though crushed diamonds have been set in the asphalt. Jorie drives past those banks of daylilies, which haven’t much more than another week to bloom. Every time she comes out this way, she finds she has an overwhelming desire to make a U-turn. Words begin to escape her as soon as she turns onto King George’s Road, and by the time she reaches the county buildings, she is as cautious as the king rails who hide in the marshes of Maryland, secretive and silent even when danger is near.
Jorie parks behind the jail and walks down the path to the back door, dodging any reporters or well-wishers who might lie in wait. The wind came up last night, and it’s still racing through the sky, shaking the leaves on the trees. There are just a few people gathered on the front lawn; die-hard supporters like that pretty Rosarie Williams, along with Warren Peck and Mark Derry, who chat with Dave Meyers as the men gather trash from the previous evening that has been left scattered over the grass. Jorie walks faster and slips through the back door before anyone notices her. Because it’s a small town, people at the jail have been considerate for the most part; they’ve let Jorie visit at whatever times suit her. It’s true, there’s been some talk about how infrequent her visits have become, just as there have been some whispers about how often Rosarie Williams has come to call. It’s gotten so that the men who work at the jail find themselves waiting for Rosarie, and several of them have started to dream about her. Even Dave Meyers, a faithful, honest man, has dreamed that Rosarie asked him to run away with her, although thankfully he woke in his own bed, beside his wife, before he found out whether or not his dream-self decided to take Rosarie up on her offer.
Tonight the two guards on duty Frankie Links and Roger Lawson, are both disappointed to find it’s not Rosarie waiting at the gate, only Jorie. Still, they’re polite enough when they let her in. Frankie, who was two years behind Jorie in high school, looks through her purse and the basket of food she’s brought with some of Ethan’s favorite treats, egg-salad sandwiches, lemon drop cookies, cole slaw fixed with carrots and homemade mayonnaise.
“Crappy weather out there,” Frankie says as he leads Jorie down to the holding cells. Frankie is being civil enough, but he’s always had a nasty streak, and when they arrive at Ethan’s cell he gets a funny smile. “Visitor for you, Mr. Bell,” Frankie calls, and he gives Joric a look from the corner of his eye to see her reaction once he invokes Ethan’s real name.
But Jorie doesn’t react, and why should she? Everything seems like a dream to her now; the way he’d kissed her, the way she’d loved him. The steel bars that slide open seem real enough, however, as does the echo of Frankie’s footsteps in the hall after he shoves the door closed when Jorie enters, so he can return to the guards’ office.
“You don’t know the way I’ve missed you,” Ethan says to her then.
He comes toward her, but it’s as though he were speaking to her from a very great distance away, a place where the fields were green and the dirt was so red it left a film on collars and cuffs, red as the reddest roses. When he’s about to embrace her, Jorie turns away She places the basket of food on the bed, keeping her back to him. Standing there, she thinks for a moment that she hears the ocean, but it’s something inside of her, wailing.
“I couldn’t bring a Thermos in, because of the sharp edges. I guess they think you could smash it and use the pieces to cut your wrists or attack someone, so I just made sandwiches. I probably made too many.”
“You haven’t been coming to see me, Jorie.” His voice is plaintive, a tone she’s never heard from him before. “It less and less all the time.”
Jorie looks at him. She feels something racing inside her.
“Mark said he’s offered to pick you up and take you to the rallies, but you won’t go. You don’t want to talk about it and you don’t want to see me, and I’ve been missing you.”
Jorie thinks about blackbirds, about the way it’s possible to know someone, yet still be completely astonished by who they turn out to be.
“I was at the last rally” She has bitten her nails down until they are bleeding, little red half-moons that remind her of how she sits up nights and frets. “Charlotte and I were there.”
“You were there and you didn’t come up to the stage? You didn’t come up to be with me?”
“There was such a crowd.” It sounds like a weak excuse, even to her. It sounds similar to what Collie’s been saying. “You were surrounded by people.”
“But none of them were my wife.”
Jorie can see how hurt he is, yet she finds she’s unmoved. She thinks of Collie in that old, abandoned house, crouched down in the dark. She thinks of the years they’ve had together and the promises they’ve made. If she'd had to guess where their life would bring them, she never would have imagined this. But this is where they are and there’s no way out until they’re through.
Ethan sits down on the bed, hands in his lap. He’s not angry at Jorie, in fact. he’s quite calm. Guilty men are supposed to be anguished, but Ethan has found peace. He’s had more than enough time to think this over. Fifteen years, as a matter of fact.
“You want to know how I could lie to you, well, I’ll tell you the truth, it was easy It didn’t seem like a lie. For the longest time I couldn’t even think about it, and then when I finally could, it was like everything had happened to somebody else. Like it was some story I’d read a long time ago, so far in the past I could hardly remember it anymore. It wasn’t like telling lies. I didn’t feel I knew the man who did those things, and I still don’t. I would never do the things he did.”
Jorie has been unpacking his supper, but Ethan takes the basket of food and sets it on the floor, just to stop her from searching through it. He wants her attention. He clearly needs it.
“The man you married? The man you know? That’s me. That’s who I am.”
It’s odd the way words echo inside a cell, as though they were coming from so very far away when they’re right there in front of you, right in your face.
“Even now, when I force myself to think about it. it’s like it never happened.”
“I went to Maryland,” Jorie says. “And I can tell you, it happened.”
Ethan looks at her in a strange way when she says this.
“You went down there? And you didn’t tell me?”
Jorie laughs, a harsh sound, even to her own ears. “This is not about what I didn’t tell you.”
“I don’t know where that place is anymore. I couldn’t find it if I tried.”
“Well, I did.” Jorie feels like crying when she thinks about following James Morris through the field. She feels like crying when she recalls the way his dog, Fergus, tagged after him with true devotion, no matter where the path might lead. “It’s still there.”
Jorie has found herself wishing that Frankie Links would come for her. He would do it out of spite, thinking he was upsetting them if he cut the visit short; he’s a mean-spirited individual, but this time Frankie would be doing her a favor.
“Jorie, we can go over the facts again and again, but that’s not going to get us anywhere. I didn’t have to confess. I wanted to. I needed to. And now I’m asking you for your forgiveness.”
Jorie has the terrible feeling that she might choke; she might stop breathing altogether. “That’s all? That’s all you want? ”
Ethan Ford goes down on his knees, there in the cell that has mostly been used for drunk drivers in the past, right on the cement floor. He looks up at her and it’s him, the man she married, the one she fell in love with, forever, she said.
“Don’t do this.” Jorie takes a step back.
“That’s all I’m asking for.” He has a face like an angel. He has eyes that are so dark you could never look away once you gave in. “I don’t care what anybody else thinks, Jorie. I don’t even care what they do to me. I just want your forgiveness, baby”
He looks up at her and Jorie realizes that she knows him at least well enough to know what he wants. He wants her to sink to the ground and thread her arms around him; he wants her to kiss him and vow to forgive each and every one of his sins.
“What about Collie? Do you want his forgiveness, too?”
“In time, he’ll forgive me,” Ethan says.
Standing before him, Jorie thinks of their child, how he’d never hurt a single creature in his life, how he’d went around the house collecting the ant traps she set out every spring. She thinks of the white blossoms floating through town after he’d cut down the apple tree. She thinks about those orange lilies that have always frightened her so, and of her friend Charlotte Kite, with her beautiful red hair shorn. She had loved her husband so deeply she surprised herself, but now she knows the way to Maryland far better than he ever will. She understands that forgiveness isn’t so easy to give, and that without it there is only empty space between them, a yard or a hundred miles makes no difference. It’s the sort of distance that is impossible to cross.
“I hope you’re right about that. I hope he does forgive you someday:”
“What about you?”
He has gotten off his knees and is facing her. They can both hear Frankie opening the door into the hallway of the jail. The guard is whistling, a sharp little tune.
“I am who you think I am,” Ethan says. “I’m still the same man.”
Jorie takes her time when she drives home, passing by the far shore of the lake where she and Charlotte used to go swimming, back before there was a town pool, when they had no choice but to confront snapping turtles if they wanted to cool off in the summertime. Teenagers in town still prefer this place in spite of the turtles and the muck; there’s privacy here in the dark water, freedom on the wooded shore. Jorie pulls into the dirt parking lot, and as soon as she gets out, she slips off her shoes, leaving them beside the truck. She takes what used to be her favorite path down to the water, treading carefully because she knows this is a place where wild calla and star grass grow; it’s easy enough to trip if you’re not careful. On the other side of the lake, she can hear some kids whooping it up. Probably that Rosarie Williams and her gang of friends, sneaking beers, kissing each other with hot, greedy mouths, not caring about the rest of the world, centered only in the intensity of their private moments: the dive off the rock, the embrace in shallow water, the whisper in a pink, curved ear.
The reeds are overgrown around Lantern Lake, and peepers call, a thin, wobbly melody Jorie and Charlotte used to believe that if a falling star crashed into the lake, the water would turn silver; the glow would light up the whole town. One Halloween, they painted their faces silver; they wrapped themselves in old silver-threaded scarves and came here to dance under the moon. They danced themselves silly, until they collapsed into a silver pile on the shore, and they laughed so loud, their laughter echoed and came back to them across the water, like a gilt-edged cloud.
Jorie walks into the water. It doesn’t matter that she’s wearing her favorite blouse, or that stones may collect in her pockets and perhaps weigh her down. She likes the feel of mud between her toes, how smooth it is, how slick. Bullfrogs startle as she goes on, and a water lotus drifts near, an elegant yellow variety that glitters in the dark with a soft light, like a watery firefly. The crickets are wild in the heat. they make the night shudder. The thunderstorm that has been threatening has moved on toward the coast and is now passing by with only a few grunts and groans in the crackly air. In between the clouds, Jorie can see stars. The brightest ones are reflected in the lake water, as though that falling star she and Charlotte had waited for had appeared at last.
When she is waist deep, Jorie dives in, grateful for the cool water on her clammy skin. She doesn’t think about love and forgiveness as she floats in the dark water. She thinks of apple blossoms and of girls dressed in silver; she thinks how strange it is that she never noticed how beautiful Charlotte was until she lost her hair. Jorie floats until she is shivering. It’s a Friday night, and the teenagers on the other side of the lake have lit a bonfire and switched on a boom box. Music falls across the water, and frogs jump in the shallows; the darkness is soft and hot. You could go under here and no one would know it; you’d drift to the bottom, so deep not even the starlight could reach you, so deep you’d never come back again.
Jorie gets out and wrings water from her clothes, then hikes back to the parking lot; she picks up her shoes and gets into the truck. No one who saw her now would have guessed her hair was honey-colored, or that she had once been so pretty other girls had been jealous. They would never have imagined that only a few weeks ago she had been so in love with her husband she'd thought herself the luckiest woman alive. Her clothes have turned a watery gray; her hair falls in strands that are as green as weeds. And yet Jorie feels a sort of light inside her, as though she really had been swimming in water lit by falling stars.
She keeps the windows open as she drives home, in spite of the clouds of mosquitoes, little cyclones buzzing through the night. The funny thing is, when she pulls into the driveway of their house on Maple Street, it just doesn’t seem real to her anymore. She understands why Collie refused to come back and pack up his belongings. Jorie’s had to empty the house by herself, and in the end she brought most of their clothes down to St. Catherine’s over in Hamilton for the end of the season back-to-school jumble sale. Tonight, it doesn’t seem as though they ever lived here, but that may change. Years from now; when Jorie and Collie stand on the sidewalk, they may remember things they’ve forgotten now: how the scent of grass came through the windows in summer, how the snow piled up on the front walkway, how he really did love them, despite what he’d done.
Jorie opens the garage door and goes inside. There are only a few cartons left, Ethan’s belongings. On the workbench is his tool-box, along with files from every job hed taken on during his time in Monroe. Jorie opens the files, one by one. She drips lake water onto the pages and the ink runs, but it doesn’t matter, no one will ever bother with these papers again. The new people will set them out on the curb on trash day, and they’ll be taken to the dump at the end of Worthington, and that will be that.
Ethan’s personal effects have been left in an orderly fashion on the workbench, but then he always was neat and methodical in his habits On a metal rack, behind glass jars of carefully sorted nails and screws, are the keys to every house he’s worked on, each one tagged. in case of emergency. Say a family was away on vacation and the pipes burst, or perhaps raccoons managed to eat through wallboard or if a break-in occurred. Ethan always had the ability to set things right.
Among the keys on the board, there is only one that has no tag. It’s silver, smaller than the rest, and when Jorie reaches for it, she knows it’s the right one. It’s been here all along. The key is attached to a bit of ribbon, frayed blue silk unwinding into strands. Jorie takes the key and goes out to her garden, where for years she has grown the sweetest strawberries, the crispest lettuce, bushels of snap beans so delicious even children begged for a taste. She thinks about the difference between right and wrong; she has already decided that if the key fits she will read Rachel’s diary, even if that means she has to leave him.
This key has been in their garage for thirteen years; it’s rusted and cheaply made, but it still turns the lock. Inside the diary, Rachel’s name is printed carefully; the paper carries the scent of cologne, Jorie guesses lily of the valley, that flowery, young odor, as hopeful as it is sweet. There are pages of pretty, looping handwriting in several shades of ink. Rachel must have had one of those pens that can hold a dozen cartridges, the sort Collie got one year for his birthday, but her last entry is written in blue. That is the entry Jorie turns to, skimming past the pages that record the scant six months Rachel Morris had to live in her fifteenth year. Its the beginning of August, but it’s the end of her life. She will brush her hair; she will give her little brother a piggyback ride; she will walk down the road to the store where she works on a day so hot the asphalt melts beneath her sneakers and the sunlight turns her skin the color of apricots, so that for that brief moment, as blackbirds swoop across the distance, she is the most beautiful girl on earth.
The final entry is a hurried, giddy paragraph in which every “i” is dotted with a perfect heart. Jorie can feel her pulse pounding; it’s as if someone’s life is rising off the page. She can feel Rachel’s words in her own mouth, melting there, on her tongue.
I met the handsomest boy in the world today. We went swimmining. He kissed me more times than I could count, Kissed at last. Hurray!
After Jorie reads this passage, she goes back to the beginning. She sits in her garden and reads every word. Before long, she knows more about Rachel than she knows about her own sister, and by the time she is through she understands what James Morris meant. She knows exactly what to do. Some other man’s wife might agree to go to Maryland, but Jorie has already been there. She knows how the blackbirds sing in the morning and how the roads skirt the brackish water and sweet gum trees. Instead, she’ll set off for somewhere she’s never been before: she’ll pack up everything that’s important to her, and she and Collie will drive as far and as long as they want to.
When they’re tired at last, they’ll stop at a motel where no one knows them, where they can be anyone they want to be, even themselves, if that’s what they choose. She won’t be thinking of Ethan as she packs up, nor will she dwell on her loss as she cuts down an armful of lilies to leave at Charlotte’s door, a small token to assure her friend that there are some things that never change--their friendship, for instance, will go on and on, here and beyond. Ethan may pass through Jorie’s mind as she drives down Front Street, a fleeting, sorrowful thought that pains her, but by the time she heads toward the highway Jorie will be concentrating on the map spread out on the dashboard. She won’t care if Collie turns the radio up, and she won’t be bothered by the heavy traffic as people return from their summer vacations. Another woman might drive to Maryland, but that’s not what Jorie intends to do. Instead, she’ll be imagining everything that’s out in front of them, road and cloud and sky, all the elements of a future, the sort you have to put together by hand, slowly and carefully, until the world is yours once more.