Epilogue

It’s nearly dawn now, and my story is almost over. It’s time, I think, to let you know the rest.

I’m thirty-one years old now. I’ve been married three years to a woman named Janice, whom I met in a bakery. She, like Sarah, is a teacher, though she teaches high school English. We live in California, where I attended medical school and did my residency. I’m an emergency room physician, out of school for a year now, and in the past three weeks, with the help of many others, I’ve saved the lives of six people. I’m not saying this to brag, I’m telling you this because I want you to know that I’ve done my best to honor Miles’s words to me in the cemetery.

I’ve also kept my word about telling no one.

It wasn’t for me that Miles made me promise silence, you see. My silence, I was convinced at the time, was for his own protection.

Believe it or not, letting me go that day was a crime. A sheriff who has absolute knowledge that someone has committed a crime must turn that person in. Though our crimes were far from equal, the law is clear on this point, and Miles broke the law.

At least that’s what I believed back then. After years of reflection, however, I came to realize that I’d been wrong.

I know now that he’d asked me because of Jonah.

If it had become widely known that I was the one driving the car, people in town

would have forever gossiped about Miles’s past. It would have become part of his

general description-“The most awful thing happened to him,” people would say-and

Jonah would have had to grow up with those words all around him. How would something like that affect a child? Who knows. I don’t, and Miles didn’t. But he wasn’t willing to take that chance.

Nor will I risk it even now. When I am finished, I plan to burn these pages in the fireplace. I just needed to get it out.

It’s still hard, though, for all of us. I talk to my sister infrequently on the phone, usually at odd hours, and I seldom visit. I use distance as an excuse-she lives across the country from my wife and me-but we both know the real reason I stay away. She does, though, sometimes come to see me. She is always alone when she does so.

As for what happened with Miles and Sarah, I’m sure you’ve figured it out…

It happened on Christmas Eve, six days after Miles and Sarah said good-bye on the porch. By then Sarah had finally, reluctantly, come to grips with the fact that it was over. She hadn’t heard from Miles, nor did she expect to. But that night, after getting home from visiting her parents, Sarah got out of her car, glanced up toward her apartment-and froze. She couldn’t believe what she saw. She closed her eyes, then opened them slowly, hoping and praying it was true.

It was.

Sarah couldn’t help but smile.

Like tiny stars, two candles were flickering in her windows.

And Miles and Jonah were waiting for her inside.