A Bend in the Road (15 page)

“Sometimes I
think he should be sainted.”

“Now, now . . .
don’t be so hard on your mom. I liked her, too.” “I think the feeling was
mutual. For a while there, I thought she was going to offer to adopt you.”

“Like you said,
she just wants you to be happy.”

“Say that to
her, and I don’t think she’ll ever let you leave. She needs someone to take
care of, now that Brian’s off at college. Oh, listen—don’t take Brian’s shyness
personally. He’s really reserved when it comes to meeting people. Once he gets
to know you, he’ll come out of his shell.”

Miles shook his
head, dismissing her worries. “He was fine. Besides, he kind of reminds me of
how I was at that age. Believe it or not, there are times when I don’t know
what to say, either.”

Sarah’s eyes
went wide. “No . . . really? And here I thought you were the smoothest talker
I’d ever met. Why, you practically swept me off my feet.” “Do you honestly
believe that sarcasm is the right tone to take on a day like today? A day to be
with family and offer thanks for all our blessings?” “Of course.”

He put his arms
around her. “Well, in my defense, then, whatever I did seemed to work, didn’t
it?”

She sighed. “I
suppose.”

“You suppose?”

“What do you
want? A medal?”

“For starters. A
trophy would be nice, too.”

She smiled. “What
do you think you’re holding right now?”

• • •

The rest of the
afternoon passed uneventfully. After the meal was cleared away, some of the
family went to watch the game, others went to the kitchen to help store the
mountains of leftovers. The afternoon was unhurried, and after stuffing himself
with two pieces of pie, even Jonah seemed to find the atmosphere soothing.
Larry and Miles chatted about New Bern, Larry quizzing Miles about local
history. Sarah wandered from the kitchen, where her mother repeated (and
repeated) the fact that Miles seemed like a wonderful young man, back to the
living room to make sure that Miles and Jonah didn’t feel as if she’d abandoned
them. Brian, dutifully, spent most of his time in the kitchen, washing and
drying the china that his mother had used for dinner.  A half hour before Miles had to head home to get dressed for
work, Miles, Sarah, and Jonah went for a walk, just as Miles had promised. They
headed toward the end of the block and into the wooded area that fronted the
development. Jonah grabbed Sarah’s hand and led her through the woods, laughing
as he did so, and it was while watching them weave their way among the trees
that it gradually dawned on Miles where all this might lead. While he knew he
loved Sarah, he’d been touched that she had chosen to share her family with
him. He liked the feeling of closeness, the holiday atmosphere, the casual way
her relatives had seemed to respond to him, and he was certain that he didn’t
want this to be an isolated invitation.

It was then
that he first thought of asking Sarah to marry him, and once the idea came to
him, he found it nearly impossible to dismiss. 
Up ahead, Sarah and Jonah were tossing stones in a small creek, one
after the next. Jonah then hopped over it, and Sarah followed.

“C’mon!” she
shouted. “We’re exploring!”

“Yeah, Dad, hurry
up!”

“I’m coming—you
don’t have to wait! I’ll catch up.”

He didn’t rush to
do so. Instead, he was lost in his thoughts as they continued to move farther
and farther away, eventually vanishing behind a thick grove.  Miles pushed his hands into his pockets.

Marriage.

It was still
early in their relationship, of course, and he had no intention of dropping to
his knees here and now to pop the question. At the same time, he suddenly knew that
there would come a moment when he would. She was right for him; of that he was
certain. And she was wonderful with Jonah. Jonah seemed to love her, and that,
too, was important, because if Jonah hadn’t liked her, he wouldn’t even be
considering what a future with Sarah might bring.  And with that, something inside clicked, a key fitting neatly
into a lock.  Though he wasn’t even
consciously aware of it, the question of “if” had become a question of “when.”

With this
decision, he unconsciously felt himself relax. He couldn’t see Sarah or Jonah
as he crossed over the creek, but he followed the direction he’d last seen them
going. A minute later he spotted them, and as he closed the distance between
them, he realized he hadn’t been this happy in years.

• • •

From
Thanksgiving Day through mid-December, Miles and Sarah grew even closer, both
as lovers and as friends, their relationship blossoming into something deeper
and more permanent.

Miles also
started dropping hints about their possible future together. Sarah wasn’t blind
to what he really meant by his words; in fact, she found herself adding to his
comments. Little things—when they were lying in bed, he might mention that he
thought the walls should be repainted; Sarah would respond that a pale yellow might
look cheery and they picked out the color together. Or Miles would mention that
the garden needed some color and she’d say that she’d always loved camellias,
and that’s what she’d plant if she lived here. That weekend, Miles planted five
of the bushes along the front of the house. 
The file stayed in the closet, and for the first time in a long time,
the present seemed more alive to Miles than the past. But what neither Sarah
nor Miles could know was that although they were ready to put the past behind them,
events would soon conspire to make that impossible.

Ihad another
sleepless night, and as much as I want to go back to bed, I realize I can’t.
Not until I tell you how it happened.

The accident
didn’t happen the way you probably imagine, or the way that Miles imagined. I
hadn’t, as he suspected, been drinking that night. Nor was I under the
influence of any drugs. I was completely sober.

What happened
with Missy that night was, quite simply, an accident.  I’ve gone over it a thousand times in my mind. In the fifteen
years since it happened, I’ve felt a sense of déjà vu at odd times—when
carrying boxes to a moving van a couple of years ago, for instance—and the
feeling still makes me stop whatever it is I’m doing, if only for a moment, and
I find myself drawn back in time, to the day that Missy Ryan died.

I’d been
working since early that morning, unloading boxes onto pallets for storage in a
local warehouse, and I was supposed to be off at six. But a late shipment of
plastic pipes came in right before closing time—my employer that day was the
supplier for most of the shops in the Carolinas—and the owner asked if I
wouldn’t mind staying for an extra hour or so. I didn’t mind; it meant
overtime, time and a half, a great way to pick up some much needed extra cash.
What I hadn’t counted on was how full the trailer was, or that I’d pretty much
end up doing most of the job alone.

There were
supposed to be four guys working, but one had called in sick that day, another
couldn’t stay since his son was playing a baseball game and he didn’t want to
miss it. That left two of us to do the job, which still would have been okay.
But a few minutes after the trailer pulled in, the other guy turned his ankle,
and the next thing I knew, I was all by myself.  It was hot, too. The temperature outside was in the nineties, and
inside the warehouse it was even hotter, over a hundred degrees and humid. I’d
already put in eight hours, with another three hours to go. Trucks had been
pulling up all day, and because I didn’t work there regularly, most of my work
was the backbreaking type. The other three guys rotated turns using the
forklift, so they might get a break now and then. Not me. My job was to sort
the boxes and then haul them from the back of the trailer to where the door
slid up, loading everything on pallets so the forklift could move them into the
warehouse. But by the end of the day, since I was the only one there, I had to
do it all. By the time I finished up, I was bone-tired. I could barely move my
arms, I had spasms in my back, and since I’d missed dinner, I was starving,
too.  That’s why I decided to go to
Rhett’s Barbecue instead of heading straight home.  After a long, hard day, there’s nothing better in the world than
barbecue, and when I finally crawled into my car, I was thinking to myself that
in just a few minutes, I’d finally be able to relax.

My car back
then was a real beater, dented and banged up all over, a Pontiac Bonneville
that had a dozen years on the road already. I’d got it used the summer before
and paid only three hundred dollars for it. But even though it looked like
hell, it ran good and I’d never had a problem with it. The engine started up
whenever I turned the key, and I’d fixed the brakes myself when I first bought
it, which was all it really needed at the time.  So I got in my car just as the sun was finally going down. At
that time of night, the sun does funny things as it arcs downward in the west.
The sky is changing color almost by the minute, shadows are spreading across
the roads like long, ghostly fingers, and since there wasn’t so much as a cloud
in the sky, there were moments when the glare would slant sharply through the
window and I’d have to squint so I could see where I was going.

Just ahead of
me, another driver seemed to be having even more problems seeing than I was.
Whoever it was was speeding up and slowing down, hitting the brakes every time
the sunlight shifted, and more than once veering across the white line onto the
other side of the road. I kept reacting, hitting my own brakes, but finally I
got fed up and decided to put some distance between me and him.  The road was too narrow for passing, so
instead I slowed my car, hoping the person would pull farther away.

But whoever it
was did just the opposite. He slowed down, too, and when the distance had
closed between us again, I saw the brake lights blinking on and off like
Christmas lights, then suddenly staying red. I hit my own brakes hard, my tires
squealing as my car jerked to a stop. I doubt if I missed the car in front of
me by more than a foot.

That’s the
moment, I think, when fate intervened. Sometimes, I wish I’d hit the car, since
I would have had to stop and Missy Ryan would have made it home. But because I
missed—and because I’d had enough of the driver in front of me—I took the next
right, onto Camellia Road, even though it added a little extra time, time I now
wish I could have back. The road swung through an older part of town, where
oaks were full and lush, and the sun was dipping low enough that the glare was
finally gone. A few minutes later, the sky started darkening more quickly and I
turned on my headlights.

The road veered
left and right, and soon the houses began to spread out. The yards were bigger,
and fewer people seemed to be about. After a couple of minutes, I made another
turn, this time onto Madame Moore’s Lane. I knew this road well and comforted
myself with the knowledge that in a couple of miles, I’d find myself at
Rhett’s.

I remember
turning the radio on and fiddling with the dial, but I didn’t really take my
eyes off the road. Then I turned it off. My mind, I promise you, was on the
drive.

The road was
narrow and winding, but like I said, I knew this road like the back of my hand.
I automatically applied the car’s brakes as I entered a bend in the road. That
was when I saw her, and I’m pretty sure I slowed even more. I don’t know for
sure, though, since everything that happened next went so fast that I couldn’t
swear to anything.

I was coming up
behind her, the gap between us closing. She was off to the side, on the grass
shoulder. I remember she was wearing a white shirt and blue shorts and not
going real fast, kind of gliding along in a relaxed sort of way.  In this neighborhood, the houses sat on half
an acre, and no one was outside.  She
knew I was coming up behind her—I saw her glance quickly to the side, maybe
enough to catch sight of me from the corner of her eye, and she moved another
half step farther from the road. Both my hands were on the wheel. I was paying
attention to everything I should have and thought I was being careful. And so
was she.

Neither of us,
however, saw the dog.

Almost as if
lying in wait for her, it charged out from a gap in a hedge when she was no
more than twenty feet from my car. A big black dog, and even though I was in my
car, I could hear its vicious snarl as it charged right at her. It must have
caught her off-guard because she suddenly reared back, away from the dog, and
took one step too many into the road.

My car, all
three thousand pounds of it, smashed into her in that instant.

Sims Addison,
at forty, looked something like a rat: a sharp nose, a forehead that sloped
backward, and a chin that seemed to have stopped growing before the rest of his
body did. He kept his hair slicked back over his head, with the help of a
wide-toothed comb he always carried with him.

Sims was also
an alcoholic.

He wasn’t,
however, the kind of alcoholic who drank every night. Sims was the kind of
alcoholic whose hands shook in the morning prior to taking his first drink of
the day, which he usually finished long before most people headed for work.
Although he was partial to bourbon, he seldom had enough money for anything
other than the cheapest wines, which he drank by the gallon. Where he got his
money he didn’t like to say, but then, aside from booze and the rent, he didn’t
need much.

If Sims had any
redeeming feature, it was that he had the knack of making himself invisible
and, as a result, had a way of learning things about people.  When he drank, he was neither loud nor
obnoxious, but his normal expression—eyes half-closed, mouth slack—gave him the
appearance of someone who was far drunker than he usually was. Because of that,
people said things in his presence. 
Things they should have kept to themselves.

Sims earned the
little money he did by calling in tips to the police.  Not all of them, though. Only the ones where he could stay
anonymous and still get the money. Only the ones where the police would keep
his secret, where he wouldn’t have to testify.

Criminals, he
knew, had a way of keeping grudges, and he wasn’t stupid enough to believe that
if they knew who’d turned them in, they’d just roll over and forget it.

Sims had spent
time in prison: once in his early twenties for petty theft and twice in his
thirties for possession of marijuana. The third time behind bars, however,
changed him. By then, his alcoholism was full-blown, and he spent the first
week suffering from the most severe case of withdrawal imaginable. He shook, he
vomited, and when he closed his eyes, he saw monsters. He nearly died, too,
though not from withdrawal. After a few days of listening to Sims scream and
moan, the other man in the cell beat him until he was unconscious, so he could
get some sleep. Sims spent three weeks in the infirmary and was released by a
parole board sympathetic to what he’d been through. Instead of finishing the
year he still had to serve, he was placed on probation and told to report to a
parole officer. He was warned, however, that if he drank or used drugs, his
sentence would be reinstated.

The possibility
of going through withdrawal, coupled with the beating, left Sims with a deathly
fear of going back to jail.

But for Sims it
wasn’t possible to face life sober. In the beginning, he was careful to drink
only in the privacy of his home. In time, however, he began to resent the
impingement on his freedom. He began meeting a few buddies for drinks again
while maintaining a low profile. In time, he began taking his luck for granted.
He began drinking on his way to see them, his bottle covered with the
traditional brown paper bag. Soon enough, he was drunk wherever he went, and
though there might have been a little warning signal in his brain, telling him
to be careful, he was too blasted out of his mind to listen to it.  Still, everything might have been okay, had
he not borrowed his mother’s car for a night out. He didn’t have a license, but
he nonetheless drove to meet some friends at a dingy bar, located on a gravel
road outside the town limits. There, he drank more than he should have and
sometime after twoA .M. staggered out to his car. He barely made it out of the
parking area without hitting any other cars, but somehow he managed to head in
the direction of home. A few miles later, he spotted the flashing red lights
behind him.

It was Miles
Ryan who stepped out of the car.

• • •

“Is that you,
Sims?” Miles called out, approaching slowly. Like most of the deputies, he knew
Sims on a first-name basis. Nonetheless, he had the flashlight out and was
shining it inside the car, scanning quickly for any sign of danger.  “Oh, hey, Deputy.” The words came out
slurred.

“Have you been
drinking?” Miles asked.

“No . . . no.
Not at all.” Sims eyed him unsteadily. “Just visiting with some friends.”

“You sure about
that? Not even a beer?”

“No, sir.”

“Maybe a glass of
wine with dinner or something?”

“No, sir. Not
me.”

“You were
swerving all over the road.”

“Just tired.” As
if to make his point, he brought one hand to his mouth and yawned. Miles could
smell the booze on his breath as he exhaled. 
“Aw, come on . . . not even one little drink? All night long?”

“No, sir.”

“I need to see
your license and registration.”

“Well . . . um .
. . I don’t exactly have my license with me. Must have left it at home.”

Miles stepped
back from the car, keeping his flashlight pointed at Sims. “I need you to step
out of the car.”

Sims looked
surprised that Miles didn’t believe him. “For what?”

“Just step out,
please.”

“You’re not going
to arrest me, are you?”

“C’mon, don’t
make this any harder than you have to.” Sims seemed to debate what to do,
though even for Sims, he was more drunk than usual. Instead of moving, he
stared through the front windshield until Miles finally opened the door.

“C’mon.”

Though Miles
held a hand out, Sims simply shook his head, as if trying to tell Miles that he
was fine, that he could do this on his own. 
Getting out, though, proved more difficult than Sims anticipated.
Instead of finding himself eye to eye with Miles Ryan, where he could plead for
mercy, Sims found himself on the ground and passed out almost immediately.

• • •

Sims woke
shivering the following morning, completely lost in his surroundings.  All he knew was that he was behind bars, and
the realization sent his mind spinning with a paralyzing fear. In bits and
pieces, parts of the evening came back to him slowly. He remembered heading to
the bar and drinking with friends .  . .
after that, everything was fairly foggy until he saw images of flashing lights.
From the deep recesses of his mind, he also dragged out the fact that Miles
Ryan had brought him in.

Sims, though,
had more important things on his mind than what had happened the night before,
and his thoughts centered primarily on the best way to avoid going back to
jail. The very thought brought beads of perspiration to his forehead and upper
lip.

He couldn’t go
back. No way. He’d die there. He knew it with an absolute certainty.

But he was
going back. Fear cleared his mind further, and for the next few minutes, all he
could think about were the things he simply couldn’t face again.  Jail.

Beatings.

Nightmares.

Shaking and
vomiting.

Death.

He stood shakily
from the bed and used the wall for balance. He staggered over to the bars,
looking down the corridor. Three of the other cells were occupied, but no one
seemed to know if Deputy Ryan was around. When he asked, he was told to shut up
twice; the third person didn’t answer at all.

This is your
life for the next two years.

He wasn’t naive
enough to believe that they’d let him off, nor was he under any illusions that
the public defender would do any good at all. His probation had been quite
clear on the fact that any violation would result in mandatory reincarceration,
and because of his previous record and the fact that he was driving, there
wasn’t any way this would slide. Not a chance. Pleading for mercy wouldn’t
work, pleading for forgiveness would be like spitting in the wind. He’d rot
away in prison until his case came up, and then, when he lost, they’d throw
away the key.

He brought his
hand up to wipe his forehead and knew then he had to do something. Anything to
avoid the fate that certainly awaited him. 
His mind began to click faster, hobbled and broken, but faster
nonetheless. His only hope, the only thing that could help him, was to turn
back the clock somehow and undo the arrest from the night before.

How the hell,
though, was he going to do that?

You have
information,a little voice answered.

• • •

Miles had just
stepped out of the shower when he heard the phone ringing.  Earlier, he’d made Jonah breakfast and seen
him off to school, but instead of picking up around the house, he’d crawled
back into bed, hoping to get another couple of hours of sleep. Though he hadn’t
gotten much, he’d been able to doze for a little while. He would work from noon
to eight, and he was looking forward to a relaxing evening after that. Jonah
would be gone—he was going to the movies with Mark—and Sarah had offered to
come by so they could spend some time together.

The phone call
would change all that.

Miles grabbed a
towel and fastened it around his waist, answering the phone just before the
recorder picked up. Charlie was on the other end. After exchanging
pleasantries, Charlie got right to the point.

“You better head
on in now,” he said.

“Why? What’s up?”

“You brought Sims
Addison in last night, didn’t you?”

“Yea, I did.”

“I can’t find the
report.”

“Oh . . . about
that. Another call came in and I had to rush back out again. I was coming in
early anyway to finish it up. Is there a problem?” “I’m not sure yet. How soon
can you be here?”

Miles wasn’t
sure what to make of that, nor did he really understand the tone Charlie was
using.

“I just got out
of the shower. Half an hour, maybe?”

“When you get in,
make sure you come and talk to me. I’ll be waiting.”

“Can’t you at
least tell me what the rush is all about?”

There was a long
pause on the other end.

“Just get here as
quick as you can. We’ll talk then.”

• • •

“So what’s all this
about?” Miles asked. As soon as he’d arrived, Charlie had pulled him into the
office and closed the door behind him. 
“Tell me about last night.”

“With Sims
Addison, you mean?”

“Start from the
beginning.”

“Um . . . it was
a little after midnight, and I was parked down the road from Beckers—you know,
the bar out near Vanceboro?”

Charlie nodded,
crossing his arms.

“Just waiting
around. It had been quiet, and I knew that the place was closing.  A little after two in the morning, I saw
someone leave the bar and I followed the car on a hunch, and it was a good
thing I did. The car was weaving all over the road, so I pulled him over to
give him a sobriety test. That’s when I found out it was Sims Addison. I could
smell the booze on his breath as soon as I got close to the window. When I
asked him to get out of the car, he fell. He passed out, so I put him in the
back of the car and brought him here. By then, he’d revived enough so that I
didn’t have to carry him to the cell, but I had to support him. I was going to
do the paperwork, but I got another call and had to go out immediately. I
didn’t get back until after my shift was over, and since I’m filling in for
Tommie today, I figured I’d do the paperwork before my shift started.”

Charlie said
nothing, but his eyes never left Miles. “Anything else?” “No. Is this about him
being hurt or something? Like I said, I didn’t touch him—he fell. He was
blasted, Charlie. Absolutely hammered—” “No, it’s not about that.”

“Then what is
it?”

“Let me make
certain first—he didn’t say anything to you at all last night.” Miles thought
for a moment. “Not really. He knew who I was, so he called me by name. . . .”
He trailed off, trying to recall if there was anything else.  “Was he acting strange?”

“It didn’t seem
like it . . . just sort of out of it, you know?”

“Huh . . . ,”
Charlie mumbled, and he seemed lost in thought again.

“C’mon, Charlie,
tell me what’s going on.”

Charlie sighed.
“He says he wants to talk to you.”

Miles waited,
knowing there was more coming.

“Only to you. He says
he has information.”

Miles knew Sims’s
history as well. “And?”

“He won’t talk to
me. But he says that it’s a matter of life and death.”

• • •

Miles stared at
Sims through the bars, thinking the man looked almost on the verge of death.
Like other chronic alcoholics, his skin was a sickly yellow. His hands were
shaking, and sweat poured from his forehead. Sitting on the cot, he’d been
absently scratching at his arms for hours, and Miles could see the red trails,
tinged with blood, like streaks of lipstick applied by a child.  Miles pulled up a chair and sat forward, his
elbows propped on his knees.

“You wanted to
talk to me?”

Sims turned at
the sound of his voice. He hadn’t noticed that Miles had arrived, and it seemed
to take a moment for him to focus. He wiped his upper lip and nodded.

“Deputy.”

Miles leaned
forward. “What do you have to say, Sims? You’ve got my boss pretty nervous
upstairs. He said you told him that you have information for me.” “Why’d you
bring me in last night?” Sims asked. “I didn’t hurt nobody.”

“You were drunk,
Sims. And you were driving. That’s a crime.”

“Then why haven’t
you charged me yet?”

Miles debated his
answer, trying to figure out where Sims was going with all this.

“I didn’t have the
time,” he said honestly. “But according to the laws of this state, it doesn’t
matter if I did it last night or not. And if that’s what you wanted to talk to
me about, then I’ve things to do.”

Miles made a show
of standing from his chair and took a step down the corridor.

“Wait,” Sims
said.

Miles stopped and
turned. “Yes?”