You can sleep in Evan’s room.”
The words were robotic. Julia moved like someone else: the old Julia, the Julia who existed before she heard what she heard, before she shut off the television, like the Julia who called the shots. She told the boys they needed to get into bed. She watched them, still as stone, as they brushed their teeth. She turned off their light and silently closed the door. And neither of them said a word, even though it was hours before their bedtime. Both Evan and Thomas avoided looking directly at their mother and did what they were asked without hesitation.
They sensed something, surely. Yet they would never ask. Life hadn’t yet turned on that part of the brain that might need to face the fear they felt. Instead, they would sit in the darkness of their room and feign sleep.
The second Julia reached the stairs, the tears started. She did not sob, or really even cry. Not really. Instead, she walked with a firm, otherworldly purpose. She called Evelyn.
“He’s not there, right?” she said.
Julia didn’t answer right away. She couldn’t. “Is Tom home?”
“Yeah. Do you need me . . . ?”
“Can you come over and sit for the kids? They’re in bed.”
“I’m on my way,” she answered, too quickly.
Julia put her shoes on. She got her keys. She opened the garage door and backed the car out, pulling out onto the street. Evelyn’s car came around the bend, tires squealing. It slowed and then stopped beside hers. They rolled their windows down.
“Oh, God, Julia.”
“I’m going to find him,” she simply said. And drove away.
He’s alive. I feel it.
Julia wouldn’t put on the radio. She couldn’t listen to that. It meant nothing. Instead, she drove on pure instinct, never once questioning her route. Her car sped across Route 202 and merged onto the Pennsylvania Turnpike as if it drove itself.
What am I going to do?
Once again, the thought invaded. She pushed it back. A strange smile lifted the corners of her mouth.
“He’s okay,” she said aloud. “I’d know if he wasn’t.”
Can I do this alone?
That had never been a part of the plan. They were partners. They were supposed to be partners forever. Years should have spread out in front of them like the highway on which she drove, no ending in sight. It had been a promise, made even before their wedding day. One that simply could not be broken.
“Stop,” she whispered.
Her thoughts no longer listened to reason. They bounced and crashed with the numbness of circumstance. One minute, the thoughts of the future nearly suffocated her. The next, memories of the past threatened to break her forever.