A Bend in the Road (22 page)

Brian took a
long time before answering. “I guess that comes down to how you feel about him
and how far you think he’ll go.”

Sarah ran a
hand through her hair. “That’s just it. I love him. I know you didn’t get much
of a chance to talk to him, but he’s made me really happy these last couple of
months. And now . . . this whole thing scares me. I don’t want to be the one
who gets him fired, but at the same time, I’m really worried about what he’ll
do.”

Brian stood
without moving for a long moment, thinking. 
“You can’t let someone innocent go to prison, Sarah,” he said finally,
looking down at her.

“That’s not what
I’m afraid of.”

“What—you think
he’ll go after the guy?”

“If it comes to
that?” She remembered how Miles had looked at her, his eyes flashing with
frustrated rage. “I think he just might.”

“You can’t let
him do that.”

“So you think I
should call?”

Brian looked
grim.

“I don’t think
you have a choice.”

• • •

After leaving
Sarah’s house, Miles spent the next few hours trying to track down Sims. But
like Charlie, he had no luck.

He then thought
about visiting the Timson compound again, but he held off. Not because he ran
out of time, but because he remembered what had happened earlier that morning
in Charlie’s office.

He didn’t have
a gun with him anymore.

There was,
though, another one at his house.

• • •

Later that
afternoon, Charlie received two telephone calls. One was from Sims’s mother,
who asked Charlie why everyone was suddenly interested in her son. When asked
what she meant, Sims’s mother answered, “Miles Ryan came by today asking the same
questions you did.”

Charlie frowned
as he hung up the phone, angry that Miles had ignored everything they’d talked
about this morning.

The second call
was from Sarah Andrews.

After she said
good-bye, Charlie swiveled his chair toward the window and stared over the
parking lot, twirling a pencil.

A minute later,
with the pencil broken in half, he turned toward the door and tossed the
remains in the garbage.

“Madge?” he
bellowed.

She appeared in
the doorway.

“Get me Harris.
Now.”

She didn’t have
to be asked twice. A minute later, Harris was standing in front of the desk.

“I need you to
go out to the Timson place. Stay out of sight, but keep an eye on whoever goes
in and out of there. If anything looks out of the ordinary—and I meananything
—I want you to call. Not just me—I want you to put it out on the radio. I don’t
want any trouble out there tonight. None at all, you got me?” Harris swallowed
and nodded. He didn’t need to ask whom he was watching for.  After he left, Charlie reached for the phone
to call Brenda. He knew then that he, too, was going to be out late.

Nor could he
escape the feeling that the whole thing was on the verge of spinning out of
control.

After a year,
my nocturnal visits to their home ceased as suddenly as they’d started. So did
my visits to the school to see Jonah, and the site of the accident. The only
place I continued to visit with regularity after that was Missy’s grave, and it
became part of my weekly schedule, mentally penciled into its Thursday slot. I
never missed a day. Rain or shine, I went to the cemetery and traced the path
to her grave. I never looked to see if anyone was watching anymore. And always,
I brought flowers.

The end of the
other visits came as a surprise. Though you might think that the year would have
diminished the intensity of my obsession, that wasn’t the case at all. But just
as I’d been compelled to watch them for a year, the compulsion suddenly
reversed itself and I knew I had to let them live in peace, without me spying
on them.

The day it happened
was a day I’ll never forget.

It was the
first anniversary of Missy’s death. By then, after a year of creeping through
the darkness, I was almost invisible as I moved. I knew every twist and turn I
had to make, and the time it took to reach their home had dropped by half. I’d
become a professional voyeur: In addition to peering through their windows, I
had been bringing binoculars with me for months. There were times, you see,
when others were around, either on the roads or in their yards, and I hadn’t
been able to get close to the windows. Other times, Miles closed the living
room drapes, but because the itch was not satisfied by failure, I had to do
something. The binoculars solved my problem. Off to the side of their property,
close to the river, there is an ancient, giant oak. The branches are low and
thick, some run parallel to the ground, and that was where I sometimes made my
camp. I found that if I perched high enough, I could see right through the
kitchen window, my view unobstructed. I watched for hours, until Jonah went to
bed, and afterward, I watched Miles as he sat in the kitchen.  Over the year, he, like me, had changed.

Though he still
studied the file, he did not do it as regularly as he once had.  As the months from the accident had increased,
his compulsion to find me decreased. It wasn’t that he cared any less, it had
more to do with the reality of what he faced. By then, I knew the case was at a
standstill; Miles, I suspected, realized this as well. On the anniversary,
after Jonah had gone to bed, he did bring out the file. He didn’t, however,
brood over it as he had before. Instead he flipped through the pages, this time
without a pencil or pen, and he made no marks at all, almost as if he were
turning the pages of a photo album, reliving memories. In time, he pushed it
aside, then vanished into the living room.

When I realized
he wasn’t coming back, I left the tree and crept around to the porch.

There, even
though he’d drawn the shades, I saw that the window had been left open to catch
the evening breeze. From my vantage point, I could glimpse slivers of the room
inside, enough to see Miles sitting on the couch. A cardboard box sat beside
him, and from the angle he faced, I knew he was watching television.  Pressing my ear close to the window’s
opening, I listened, but nothing I heard seemed to make much sense. There were
long periods where nothing seemed to be said; other sounds seemed distorted,
the voices jumbled. When I looked toward Miles again, trying to see what he was
watching, I saw his face and I knew. It was there, in his eyes, in the curve of
his mouth, in the way he was sitting. 
He was watching home videos.

With that,
recognition settled in, and when I closed my eyes, I began to recognize who was
speaking on the tape. I heard Miles, his voice rising and falling, I heard the
high-pitched squeal of a child. In the background, faint but noticeable, I
heard another voice. Her voice.

Missy’s.

It was
startling, foreign, and for a moment I felt as if I couldn’t breathe. In all
this time, after a year of watching Miles and Jonah, I thought I had come to
know them, but the sound I heard that night changed all that. I didn’t know
Miles, I didn’t know Jonah. There is observation and study, and there is knowledge,
and though I had one, I didn’t have the other and never would.  I listened, transfixed.

Her voice
trailed away. A moment later, I heard her laugh.  The sound made me jump inside, and my eyes were immediately drawn
to Miles. I wanted to see his reaction, though I knew what it would be. He
would be staring, lost in his memories, angry tears in his eyes.

But I was wrong.

He wasn’t crying.
Instead, with a tender look, he was smiling at the screen.

And with that, I
suddenly knew it was time to stop.

• • •

After that
visit, I honestly believed that I’d never return to their house to spy on them.
In the following year, I tried to get on with my life, and on the surface, I
succeeded. People around me remarked that I looked better, that I seemed like
my old self.

Part of me
believed that was so. With the compulsion gone, I thought I had put the
nightmare behind me. Not what I had done, not the fact that I had killed Missy,
but the obsessive guilt I had lived with for a year.  What I didn’t realize then was that the guilt and anguish never
really left me.  Instead they had simply
gone dormant, like a bear hibernating in the winter, feeding on its own tissue,
waiting for the season yet to come.

On Sunday
morning, a little after eight, Sarah heard someone knocking at her front door.
After hesitating, she finally got up to answer it. As she walked toward the
door, part of her hoped it was Miles.

Another part
hoped that it wasn’t.

Even as she
reached for the handle, she wasn’t sure what she was going to say. A lot
depended on Miles. Did he know that she’d called Charlie? And if so, was he
angry? Hurt? Would he understand she’d done it because she’d felt she didn’t
have a choice?

When she opened
the door, however, she smiled in relief.

“Hey, Brian,” she
said. “What are you doing here?”

“I need to talk
to you.”

“Sure . . . come
in.”

He followed her
inside and sat on the couch. Sarah sat next to him.

“So what’s up?”
she asked.

“You ended up
calling Miles’s boss, didn’t you?”

Sarah ran a hand
through her hair. “Yeah. Like you said, I didn’t have a choice.”

“Because you
think he’ll go after the guy he arrested,” Brian stated.

“I don’t know
what he’ll do, but I’m scared enough to try to head it off.”

He nodded
slightly. “Does he know that you called?”

“Miles? I don’t know.”

“Have you talked
to him?”

“No. Not since he
left yesterday. I tried calling him a couple of times, but he wasn’t home. I
kept getting the answering machine.”

He brought his
fingers to the bridge of his nose and squeezed.  “I have to know something,” he said. In the quiet of the room,
his voice seemed strangely amplified.

“What?” she
asked, puzzled.

“I need to know
if you really think that Miles would go too far.”

Sarah leaned
forward. She tried to get him to meet her eyes, but he looked away.

“I’m not a mind
reader. But yeah, I’m worried, I guess.”

“I think you
should tell Miles to just let it go.”

“Let what go?”

“The guy he
arrested . . . he should just let him go.”

Sarah stared at
him in bafflement. He finally turned to her, his eyes pleading.

“You’ve got to
get him to understand that, okay? Talk to him, okay?”

“I’ve tried to do
that. I told you.”

“You’ve got to
try harder.”

Sarah sat back
and frowned. “What’s going on?”

“I’m just asking
what you think Miles will do.”

“But why? Why’s
this so important to you?”

“What would
happen to Jonah?”

She blinked.
“Jonah?”

“Miles would
think about him, wouldn’t he? Before he did anything?”

Sarah shook her
head slowly.

“I mean, you
don’t think he would risk going to jail, do you?” She reached for his hands and
took them forcefully. “Now wait, okay? Stop with the questions for a minute.
What’s going on?”

• • •

This was, I
remember, my moment of truth, the reason I had come to her house. It was
finally time to confess what I had done.

Why, then, did
I not just come out and say it? Why had I asked so many questions? Was I
looking for a way out, another reason to keep it buried? The part of me that
had lied for two years may have wanted that, but I honestly think the better
part of me wanted to protect my sister. 
I had to make sure I didn’t have a choice.

I knew my words
would hurt her. My sister was in love with Miles. I had seen them at
Thanksgiving, I had seen the way they looked at each other, the comfortable way
they related when they were close, the tender kiss she’d given him before he
left. She loved Miles, and Miles loved her—she’d told me as much.  And Jonah loved them both.

The night
before, I finally realized that I could keep the secret no longer. If Sarah
really thought Miles might take matters into his own hands, I knew that by
keeping silent, I was running the risk that more lives would be ruined. Missy
had died because of me; I couldn’t live with another needless tragedy.  But to save myself, to save an innocent man,
to save Miles Ryan from himself, I also knew I would have to sacrifice my
sister.

She, who had
been through so much already, would have to look Miles in the eye, knowing that
her own brother had killed his wife—and face the risk of losing him as a
result. For how could he ever look at her the same way?  Was it fair to sacrifice her? She was an
innocent bystander; with my words, she would be irrevocably trapped between her
love for Miles Ryan and her love for me. But as much as I didn’t want to, I
knew I had no choice.  “I know,” I
finally said hoarsely, “who was driving the car that night.”

She stared back,
almost as if she didn’t understand my words.

“You do?” she
asked.

I nodded.

It was then, in the
long silence that preceded her question, that she began to understand the
reason I had come. She knew what I was trying to tell her. She slumped forward,
like a balloon being slowly deflated. I, for my part, never looked away.

“It was me,
Sarah,” I whispered. “I was the one.”

At his words,
Sarah reared back, as if seeing her brother for the first time.

“I didn’t mean
for it to happen. I’m so, so sorry. . . .”

After trailing
off, unable to continue, Brian started to cry.

Not the quiet,
repressed sounds of sadness, but the anguished cries of a child.  His shoulders shook violently, as if in
spasm. Until that moment, Brian had never cried for what he had done, and now
that he had started, he wasn’t sure that he would ever stop.

In the midst of
his grief, Sarah put her arms around him, and her touch made his crime seem
even worse than the terrible thing it was, for he knew then that his sister
still loved him in spite of it. She said nothing at all as he cried, but her
hand began gently moving up and down his back. Brian leaned into her, holding
her tightly, somehow believing that if he let go, everything would change
between them.

But even then,
he knew it had.

He wasn’t sure
how long he cried, but when he finally stopped, he began to tell his sister how
it happened.

He did not lie.

He did not,
however, tell her about the visits.

During his entire
confession, Brian never met her eyes. He didn’t want to see her pity or her
horror; he didn’t want to see the way she really saw him.  But at the end of his story, he finally
steeled himself to meet her gaze.

He saw neither
love nor forgiveness on her face.

What he saw was
fear.

• • •

Brian stayed
with Sarah most of the morning. She had many questions; in the process of
answering them, Brian told her everything once more. Some questions,
though—like why he hadn’t gone to the police—had no meaningful answer, except
for the obvious: that he was in shock, he was frightened, that too much time
eventually passed.

Like Brian,
Sarah justified his decision, and like Brian, she questioned it.  They went back and forth, time and time
again, but in the end, when she finally grew silent, Brian knew it was time for
him to leave.

On his way out
the door, he glanced back over his shoulder. 
On the couch, hunched over like someone twice her age, his sister was
quietly crying, her face buried in her hands.