Chapter 5

In the car, the memories of the day Missy died came back to Miles in bits and pieces, just as they had earlier when he’d driven along Madame Moore’s Lane before his lunch with Charlie. Now, though, instead of running endlessly in the same loop, from his day spent fishing to the argument with Missy to all that followed, they were displaced by his thoughts of Jonah, and Sarah Andrews. With his mind occupied, he didn’t know how long they had driven in silence, but it was long enough to finally make Jonah nervous. As Jonah waited for his father to speak, his mind began focusing on the possible punishments his father might inflict, each of them worse than the last. He kept zipping and unzipping his backpack until Miles finally reached over and rested his hand on top of his son’s to stop him. Still, his father said nothing, and after finally gathering his courage, Jonah looked toward Miles with wide eyes that were nearly brimming with tears.

“Am I in trouble, Dad?”

“No.”

“You talked to Miss Andrews for a long time.”

“We had a lot to talk about.”

Jonah swallowed. “Did you talk about school?”

Miles nodded and Jonah looked toward his backpack again, feeling sick to his stomach and wishing he could keep his hands occupied again. “I’m inbig trouble,” he mumbled.

A few minutes later, sitting on a bench outside the Dairy Queen, Jonah was finishing an ice-cream cone, his father’s arm around him. They’d been talking for ten minutes, and at least as far as Jonah was concerned, it wasn’t half as bad as he’d thought it would be. His father hadn’t yelled, he hadn’t threatened him, and best of all, he hadn’t been grounded. Instead, Miles had simply asked Jonah about his previous teachers and what they had-and hadn’t-made him do;

Jonah explained honestly that once he’d fallen behind, he was too embarrassed to ask for help. They’d talked about the things Jonah was having trouble with-as Sarah had said, it was practically everything-and Jonah promised that he’d do his best from now on. Miles, too, said that he’d help Jonah and that if everything went well, he’d be caught up in no time. All in all, Jonah considered himself lucky.

What he didn’t realize was that his father wasn’t finished yet. “But because you’re so far behind,” Miles went on calmly, “you’re going to have to stay after school a few days a week, so Miss Andrews can help you out.” It took a moment for the words to register, and then Jonah looked up at his father.

“After school?”

Miles nodded. “She said you’d catch up faster that way.”

“I thought you said that you were going to help me.”

“I am, but I can’t do it every day. I have to work, so Miss Andrews said she’d help, too.”

“But after school?” he asked again, a note of pleading in his voice.

“Three days a week.”

“But… Dad…” He tossed the rest of the ice-cream cone into the garbage.

“I don’t want to stay after school.”

“I didn’t ask if you wanted to. And besides, you could have told me you were having trouble before. If you’d done that, you might have been able to avoid something like this.”

Jonah furrowed his brow. “But, Dad…”

“Listen, I know there’s a million things you’d rather do, but you’re gonna do this for a while. You don’t have a choice, and just think, it could be worse.” “Howww?” he asked, sort of singing the last syllable, the way he always did when he didn’t want to believe what Miles was telling him.

“Well, she could have wanted to work with you on the weekends, too. If that had happened, you wouldn’t have been able to play soccer.” Jonah leaned forward, resting his chin in his hands. “All right,” he finally said with a sigh, looking glum. “I’ll do it.”

Miles smiled, thinking, You didn’t have a choice.

“I appreciate that, champ.”

Later that night, Miles was leaning over Jonah’s bed, pulling up the covers. Jonah’s eyes were heavy, and Miles ran his hand through his son’s hair before kissing his cheek.

“It’s late. Get some sleep.”

He looked so small in his bed, so content. Miles made sure that Jonah’s night-light was on, then reached for the lamp by the bed. Jonah forced his eyes open, though one look said they wouldn’t stay that way for long. “Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for not being too mad at me today.”

Miles smiled. “You’re welcome.”

“And Dad?”

“Yeah?”

Jonah reached up to wipe his nose. Next to his pillow was a teddy bear Missy had given him when he’d turned three. He still slept with it every night. “I’m glad Miss Andrews wants to help me.”

“You are?” he asked, surprised.

“She’s nice.”

Miles turned out the light. “I thought so, too. Now get some sleep, okay?”

“Okay. And Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

Miles felt a tightness in his throat. “I love you, too, Jonah.”

Hours later, just before fourA.M., Jonah’s nightmares returned. Like the wail of someone plunging off a cliff, Jonah’s screaming immediately jolted Miles awake. He staggered half-blindly from his bedroom, nearly tripping over a toy in the process, and was still trying to focus when he scooped the still-sleeping boy into his arms. He began whispering to him as he carried him to the back porch. It was, he’d learned, the only thing that would ever calm him down. Within moments the sobbing dropped to a whimper, and Miles was thankful not only for the fact that his home sat on an acre of land, but that his nearest neighbor-Mrs. Knowlson-was hard of hearing.

In the hazy humid air, Miles rocked Jonah back and forth, continuing to whisper in his ear. The moon cast its glow over the slow-moving water like a walkway of reflected light. With low-slung oak trees and the whitewashed trunks of cypress trees lining the banks, the view was soothing, ageless in beauty. The draping veils of Spanish moss only added to the feeling that this part of the world hadn’t changed in the last thousand years.

By the time Jonah’s breathing had fallen into deep, regular patterns again, it was nearly fiveA.M. and Miles knew he wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep. Instead, after putting Jonah back in bed, he went in the kitchen and started a pot of coffee. Sitting at the table, he rubbed his eyes and his face, getting the blood flowing again, then looked up. Outside the window, the sky was beginning to glow silver on the horizon and splinters of daybreak filtered through the trees.

Miles found himself thinking about Sarah Andrews once more. He was attracted to her, that much was certain. He hadn’t reacted that strongly to a woman in what seemed like forever. He’d been attracted to Missy, of course, but that was fifteen years ago. A lifetime ago. And it wasn’t that he wasn’t attracted to Missy during the last few years of their marriage, because he was. It’s just that the attraction seemed different, somehow. The initial infatuation he’d felt when meeting Missy the first time-the desperate adolescent desire to learn everything he could about her-had been replaced with something deeper and more mature over the years. With Missy, there weren’t any surprises. He knew how she looked just after getting out of bed in the mornings, he’d seen the exhaustion etched in every feature after giving birth to Jonah. He knew her-her feelings, her fears, the things she liked and didn’t. But this attraction for Sarah felt…new, and it made him feel new as well, as if anything were possible. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed that feeling. But where would it go from here? That was the part he still wasn’t sure about. He couldn’t predict what, if anything, would happen with Sarah. He didn’t know anything about her; in the end, they might not be compatible at all. There were a thousand things that could doom a relationship, and he wasn’t blind to them. Still, he’d been attracted to her…