Little Boxes

LITTLE BOXES

Amanda Garretson

He sat on the picnic table, with his chin in his hand; his eyes and thoughts were elsewhere.  She looked at the eyes that were not looking at her.  They had shared their first intimate hours in this neglected garden; much had changed since then.  Both had chosen the dramatic detour that permanently altered their reputable lives.  The path led her to hesitant happiness.  Where had it taken him?  They had returned to bury a friend, but what they unearthed were answers to the tangled events that had sent them away. 

************
The kids and I were eating apple pancakes for dinner, in front of the TV, enjoying the placid predictability of the Star Trek plot and a mild sense of naughtiness while we waited for their father to call.  We all jumped when it rang; Jax and I fumbled with the remote before he grabbed the phone, pressed “talk,” and tossed it to his sister.  Lily turned, handing the phone to me without speaking, revealing her face for the first time since she’d been home from school.  She completed the turn that twisted her from the floor and toward her room, brushing wet ponytail strands off her hot face. 

“Natalie, are you there,” I heard Frank’s insistent voice from my lap.

“I’m here,” I said quickly, watching Lily leave.  “Can I call you back in a few minutes, Frank?”

“What’s going on?  Is everything okay?”

“Yes, yes.” I said impatiently.  “I just have to check on something.  I’ll call you back in a few minutes, okay?”  He agreed to dismiss me, and I hung up.

“What’s going on, Jax?” I asked as I followed my daughter.  He was two years
younger than Lily, and her opposite, but they shared an intuitive familiarity between them that made secret keeping difficult.

“She won’t tell me, I don’t think she even heard me asking,” he answered.
         

         The four of us left the anonymity of city life six years ago to find a simpler one, and we found it in Waverly, Indiana.  Our Post-civil war farmhouse was a short bike ride from the ball fields and fairgrounds where the kids spent most of their time, we knew our neighbors, had room to grow up, and we were safe here.


         I refrained from picking up her muddy soccer shoes when I entered Lily’s room.  She and Jax had been fishing at the Whitewater River campground the day before, the poles were still leaning on her dusty dresser, and I imagined the faint smell of scales and fins coming from her closet.  Lily was delivered, almost fifteen years ago, with an agenda, and she stuck to it with her father’s pragmatic tenacity.  Cute dresses and hairdos were not on the agenda but she was comfortable that way, which was fine with me.  An interest in boys was inevitable, even though she resisted the maturity that was closing in on her, but “boy crazy” would never define her.  I laid my hand on the back of her head, and heard her muffled voice say,
         
         “I think I’m pregnant, Mom.”
         

         I suppose I heard her, as hearing was the only one of my five senses left with some faint functionality.  The remaining four had slammed shut against a squall accumulating under huge bellied masses of black and purple.  Her quiet words boomed an impending thunder trumpeting an unforgettable storm.
         

         She told a rational story of crossing from the safety of innocent curiosity into the uncharted currents of adult choices from which there was no turning back.  She tried to put the puzzle pieces together herself, using my presence as her prompt, while I sorted through very different, smaller jig-saw pieces.  The serene image on the box had laughing children playing softball on a summer evening with parents in lawn chairs discussing PTA projects, and church picnics.  I felt the smooth round edges of each piece as they snapped into their proper places one after another.  A large glass shard had just replaced the next piece.  It had no converse connection to match it, and my effort to force–fit the jagged intruder made my desperate fingers bleed.  I held the shard tightly in my lap waiting for the pain to send the appropriate message to my brain, but all five senses were now boarded up, in a futile attempt to protect the pretty puzzle.
         

         She fell asleep with her damp cheek burning into my chest, where my soured past pounded, gurgling up from noisy dark places into my throat threatening a premature projectile.  I was planning to deal with my childhood stuff someday, but “now” always pressed its priority.
         

         I sat on the sofa looking at the phone.  Frank had called, but I didn’t want to talk to him, he would fly into action and I needed to think.  Zeda Bellingham was a flurry of flamboyant activity too but we had a way of turning our words into logical solutions when we got together.  She was my closest friend and mirror opposite.  Zeda’s very large, very dark-brown eyes, short wavy form, and gypsy spirit, were gifts from her Greek mother.  She vented her full store of vital energy, in an operatic voice, symphony violin, that flipped to a flying fiddle depending on her mood; and she could form and spit out an opinion before I could say my name.  The color she splashed everywhere paled my whimsical creativity.  It was late, but I knew she’d come.
           

         As usual, when Frank wasn’t home, she swirled in without knocking, rustling scarves, and skirts around her.  She sang:

         “Where are yoooouuuu?” in her operatic alto, as bottles clanged on the tile counter. 

She lit candles, and poured wine, as I watched her, once again trying to picture the overweight, dowdy child she claims she’d been. 
         
         “Being ugly makes you desperate for attention,” she’d said, “which makes you do stupid things.” 

Her confidence was my inspiration as I struggled between enjoying the attention my height provided and dreading the daily “Do you play basketball?” queries.  I planned to respond, “No, do you play little league?” someday, but knew I never would.

She perched on the couch facing me, holding one knee,
         
         “Start at the beginning,” she said, “and go ‘til the end.”  I did.
         

         Zeda flinched almost imperceptibly when I froze on the word “pregnancy,” but she responded before I exhaled. 
         
         “Go on,” she urged impatiently with a brush of her hand; as if sweeping away ten long years of a fatiguing fight with infertility.  “This isn’t about me,” she said. 

I continued until the frail tale ended.  There wasn’t much to it, just a skeleton with no flesh and blood, no teeth, and no grave.  The mantle clock ticked off silent seconds waiting for us to undo the unknown. 
         
         “Let’s plan your conversation with Frank first, she said softly, then, I want to get you in to see Mitch.”
         

         I met Zeda six years ago in the Waverly Washhouse Laundromat while we were both still glowing from big city lights and before furniture and order were delivered to our new homes.  She was throwing a fanciful assortment of costumes into a dozen washers, singing a melody that was as lively as her laundry.           
         
         “Clothes need as much respect and recognition as those who wear them,” she announced. 

She talked and I smiled as we folded clothes together, and I sat listening to her long after we’d finished washing and drying. 
         
         

         The pages of her big city past were vague, short stories of the mystery genre.  She’d been married and divorced, the latter driven mostly by futile efforts to conceive.  The battle for a baby continued in her new town, a quest that introduced her to Mitchell Shepherd, the best private adoption attorney in the Midwest.  She’d found a job and a friend in Mitch, and like a child’s allegiance to Santa Claus, believed in him completely.  I needed to place my family in trusted, experienced hands – whether his eyes twinkled, didn’t matter to me.
         

         Mitchell and his boys went to our church, where I knew his name well, but I had never met him.  Anyone who read the local news knew about Mitchell Shepherd’s contributions to our community.  His tireless efforts with unwed mothers, the crisis centers, and foster parent programs he’d started were renowned.  He represented controversial protesters, and pushed for the restoration of the town’s historic district to spur economic growth instead of pursuing the higher revenue of outskirt mega-stores.  The low interest renovation loans he’d promoted enabled the arts and small businesses to revive and flourish, while the political controversy behind their endorsement churned quietly beneath the downtown cobbled streets. 
         
         “I need to talk to Frank before I take any action, Zeda.” 
         
         “You need to hammer your thoughts down first,” she said. 

We couldn’t end a conversation without one of her artful assessments of my husband.
         
         “I wish you’d stand up to him, you’re bigger than he is.” 
         
         “Taller, Zeda, not bigger, there’s a difference.” 
         
         “Well, your feet are bigger,” she retorted.
         

         The McCormick, Granier, and Shepherd building was a modern architectural behemoth on the outskirts of town.  It was the den of Mitch’s opposition and an incongruous place for him to be.  I’d have to ask him why he worked for the firm that opposed him so directly, when I had a chance.  I stood in front of the revolving doors, putting on my confident face in the reflection, before pushing through them into the echoing marble lobby. 
         
         “Geez, I wish people looked at me like that,” Zeda said, stepping out from beside the security desk. 
         
         “I wish they did too,” I replied. 

Mitchell Shepherd stood and spilled his coffee when we walked in.  He shrugged and smiled, leaving the spreading puddle to drip.  I looked up, just a little, into his eyes; they did twinkle -  his whole face did. 
         
         “I’ve told Mitch what’s going on,” Zeda said as she mopped up the coffee and retreated.  “I’ll be back later,” she said, and closed the door behind her.


         His tie was loose, and I imagined it stayed that way.  His lightly salted beard hadn’t been trimmed and he looked like he’d rather be fishing or having coffee around a mountain campfire than sifting through the red tape and opposition of his profession.  He and his office were an unpretentious anomaly in the feigned panache of their surroundings, and I felt at home. 
         
         “That’s a cheerful troupe,” I said, looking at the prominent photo on the credenza behind him.  Two impy-eyed boys and a wife were smiling in the frame. 
         
         “My boys are amazing,” he replied, with his eyes fastened on them. 

He poured two mugs of coffee for us, without spilling, and settled down opposite me.
         
         
         I was with him for more than two hours, before seeing my watch and panicking.           
         
         “Carpool, gotta go!”  I grabbed my purse, flung the door open, and fled for the opening elevator as it “dinged” from around the corner, and collided with Virgil McCormick.  The impact did little to disturb his slick dark hair but his eyes flashed in quick anger, until he focused on me. 
         
         “No apologies necessary,” he said, reaching for my hand.  “I’m Virgil, senior partner here,” he said, “And you are?”  I removed my hand from his and introduced myself, as the elevator left without me.
         
         
         Frank was there when we got home from a silent carpool ride.  I halted with one foot on the garage floor, surprising myself by thinking of the grocery receipt I’d lost.  He’d have more to worry about tonight than balancing a budget, I thought.  I took a deep breath and followed the kids inside.  I sat on a stool at the counter where he was mixing egg and breadcrumbs into hamburger with his hands.  The sight of it made me queasy.           
         
         “Let’s go into your office, I have something to tell you,” I said, sounding meeker than I had practiced.
         
         
         He just stared at me while I waited to be struck by his blame. 
         
         “How is she,” he said.  I exhaled my relief before replying,
         
         “Confused, distressed, scared, and way too quiet, and I’ve been to see Mitchell Shepherd too,” I said, leaving out the obvious detail that he was Zeda’s boss.
         
         “When did she tell you?”  “Why didn’t you call me?”  “Why did you start into this without me?”  “What have you told Jax?” 

The questions kept coming and I tried to keep pace with answers that I didn’t have.  By the time we came back to the kitchen, he was simmered and anxious to question his daughter.
         
         
         We ate silently, waiting for Frank to open the discussion. 
                   
         “Lily, we’re going to get through this,” he started, before choosing the words that would explain to Jax what was about to happen to our family. 

He did a good job laying out the facts.  Jax cried, and reached for his sister’s hand, I cried for Jax, for Lily, and for the end of their childhood’s simplicity. 
         

         “Here’s what we’re going to do.”  Frank said. 

The plan was logical.  We’d take Lily to our doctor to get the facts, meet with the boy-father and his parents, talk to our pastor and the school principal about the tumult ahead, and get together with Mitchell Shepherd to discuss the adoption of Lily’s baby.  There it was, all wrapped in a practical package with contents, delivery date, and destination all plainly written in black and white.  Frank had laid out a clear solution in five minutes.  Lily and Jax looked lost, as Frank asked if they had finished their homework.
         

         “I’m going to bed,” Frank said as he let out a long breath. 
         
         “I need to call Greta,” I replied.  “I’ll be up in a few.”  He rolled his eyes and said,          
         “Right, I’ll see you in the morning.
         

         I wanted to flee to my stepmother’s hippie home, burrow under the quilts of the marshmallow mattress on the screen porch, and follow the moonlight off the end of the pier to watch the tidal marshes of the Coosaw River catch cattails on Lady’s Island in South Carolina.  I needed to talk to Greta but dreaded recounting the movie script story that was playing out in my home.  But this drama wasn’t fiction; artful fabrications presented on film draw tears that dry fast in the fresh air of reality.  This wasn’t going to end when the lights flicked on, and the click, click, clicking, of a spent spinning reel slowly stopped.
         

          “Greta?”  She’d been sleeping but didn’t say so.
         
         “What’s going on, Natalie?” 

I started crying for the first time.  After I explained what I could, she responded with a verbal combination of a hug and a kick in the pants,          
         
         “You’ve got some big hurdles in front of you,” she said, “you’ll need to take them one at a time.  Are you ready to risk trusting yourself, and stop fearing the respect you’ve earned?” 
         
         “Wow,” I said weakly, “are you telling me to grow up?” 
         
         “You’re already growing into that long, body of yours, you just have to get comfortable in it,” she pushed on quietly. 
         
         “Wicked stepmother,” I pouted.
         
         “And you’re my lucky daughter?” she smiled into the phone, “now, get some sleep honey.” 

I heard Jax’s voice murmuring in Lily’s room on my way up to bed.  They must have been talking for hours.
         

         Frank’s discordant energy chafed as I strained to get out of bed.  I poured coffee and misplaced the cup, I forgot to eat, and stared blankly at my makeup and the unfamiliar face in the mirror waiting to be covered with it.  The normal nudge of guilt was my only motivation to continue through the following days.  The doctor delivered the ill-timed truth.  The boy-father was a mystified child, with the weight of the facts unable to penetrate his youth.  His parents were as helpless as he was; not defensive or denying, just at a loss to find the beginning strand of responsibility that would help them unravel their shroud of disbelief.  And it was strange that Zeda hadn’t called.


         Mitch phoned Saturday afternoon to let us know he was on his way over.  I made coffee, and waited for him.  Through the kitchen window, I watched the autumn wind blow his hat toward the door in front of him, playing “Catch me if you can.”  I opened the door for him, smiling as he blew in bringing along a few leaves and a faint smell of chimney smoke in the leather of his weathered jacket.  He fit the muted outdoor colors and clear air of autumn, and filled the inside of my kitchen with enough vitality to share with our beleaguered band.  He settled comfortably in his chair, surrounded by my family, and spoke directly to Lily as though the rest of us weren’t there.  Verbally pulling her into his lap, he managed to bridge the space between her child-self, and the premature adult, uncovering a place to balance her burden between the two.  That awareness freed her to remain the child she was, and not feel forced into adulthood before she was ready.  It would be waiting for her when she was, and he’d restored her chance to look forward to it.

         
         Jax was next.  As Mitch explored the validity of his perspective, my son’s worry waned.  His open honesty returned, and the small space filled with his child’s spirit of wonder and curiosity at the prospect of new life.  Excitement and anticipation replaced our gray and listless mood.  Frank hadn’t wrested the lead from Mitch, and waited for his turn to speak – which seemed to be last, because Mitch spoke to me next. 
         
         “Zeda spent the rest of the day in my office after you left, Natalie.”
         
         
         I had a vague sensation of what was coming, like the beginning of a migraine.           
         
         “How would you feel about Zeda adopting the baby?” he asked. 

Frank tensed, I sighed, Jax looked at his hands, Lily looked at Mitch, and Mitch looked at me.  I hadn’t gotten a grip on having the baby, let alone giving it away.  And why hadn’t Zeda come to me herself.  Okay, Greta, I thought.  Big hurdle, difficult jump, and I doubt my long stride can clear it without tumbling.
         

         “I’m getting a lot of grief from my senior partners over placing a baby with an employee,” Mitch confided as I walked him to the door.  “Virgil would love to have a reason to discredit me.” 
         
         “Have you thought about starting your own firm?”  I asked. 

We talked about his plans, his future, and his boys.  I just kept talking instead of getting his coat. 

         “Why hasn’t Zeda been able to adopt in all these years?”  I asked him.
         
         “I’ve never looked into it; she’s insisted that business and personal matters shouldn’t mix, until now.” 
         
         “Does applying as a single parent make it more difficult?”  I asked. 
         
         “A little, but not that much,” he answered.  “She did ask me to help her get a quit-claim deed on some property she still shared with her ex husband.  His name is Graham, and he seems like a nice guy.  I ventured close to the adoption topic when I spoke to him, and he broke the conversation like frozen china.” 
         
         
         I pulled his coat from the closet, brushing it across my face, as he turned his back for me to help him find the armholes in the slippery satin lining.  I grinned aloud, guiding his hands until the empty arms became thick with his body, filling the leather with his shape as it tucked him inside. 
         
         “Thank you ma’am,” he drawled, as I signaled that the job was done with a pat on his back. 
         
         “What else would you be doing on a fresh fall day?”  I asked. 
         
         “Oh,” he said, as if building anticipation for a bedtime story.  “Saturdays are pedals, pancakes, and planes days.”  I raised my eyebrows and he answered them.

         “The boys race their bikes ahead of me to Flappy Jack’s Pancake House outside of Wailington Park, with me behind them performing ‘God Bless America,’ at the top of my labored lungs in my beautiful baritone.  I laughed as I pictured it.  “And the planes?”  I asked. 
         
         “Waverly Airport lying on our backs watching huge floating shapes wander through the sky, and letting the planes fly over us close enough to reach up and touch their wheels.  They never get tired of it.” 

His voice stopped and I didn’t want it to.  Listening to him, there was no baby, no adoption, no infertility, and no puzzle picture to hold together.  He backed out of the door, and I followed pulling it close behind me.           
         
         “Thank you,” I said. 
         
         “I’ll see you soon, Natalie.”
         

         “How long have you known him?”  Frank asked when I walked back into the kitchen.  Since I was old enough to read fairy tales, I wanted to say.  I’d never known anyone like him - except in my room alone after my mother left, reading about forgotten princesses and hoping for the happy ending that I knew didn’t go further than the distant castle on the last page. 
         
         “Just two days ago,” I said, and helped him load the dishwasher. 
         

         The next few weeks were a flurry of adjusting, and the plans to place the baby with Zeda were moving along.  On our way to church one Sunday, I voiced my mental picture of Lily in the youth group in a few months. 
         
         “This is what Christianity is all about,” Frank said.  “Who’s going to throw the first stone?” 

But it was such a bizarre situation, and I smiled at the thought of pious Mrs. Bulifant trying to ignore Lily’s growing belly.  Frank continued his audible Christian ethic reverie, expecting no response to the familiar material.  Frank is a good teacher if he isn’t contradicted.  Debating Frank is like arm wrestling with Hercules.  There is no winning. 
         
         
         “It’s Sunday Frank, they’ve done their homework.” 
         
         “We’ll just do some quick problems,” he responded and called the kids to come inside for his peremptory homework drill. 

As usual, the tension mounted.  Lily just took her father’s impatience in stride and knew he’d get over it quickly, while Jax visibly deflated.  Frank’s stringent coaching reminded me of an old German piano teacher I’d had in fifth grade. 
         
         “Nein, nein, nein,” she’d bark into my ear while rapping her rhythm stick very close to my fingers.  I froze.  It certainly didn’t bring forth lilting, spontaneous music with nimble, confident fingers.  I cringed now.  Jax’s head was bowed, and all three had red flushed faces.  My interfering just made him angrier, so I left the room.  Frank and I talked frequently about his erratic temper, usually after a ragged fight.  He’d acknowledge his need to use milder methods, I’d admit my obsession with protecting the kids from skinned knees, and all would be well – until the next time.
         
         
         Zeda and Lily chatted through a thousand baby details while we ate lunch at a downtown cafe.  Zeda, as animated as ever, was as much a child as Lily.  I watched my little girl, thinking that her perspective of what was happening to her seemed two-dimensional, as if it were going on outside of herself and she was a spectator at a significant performance, only partially grasping her part.  I supposed the intensity of the climax and its aftermath would crescendo soon enough.
         
         
         Lily went to the bathroom, and Zeda went over her list of things to finish before Mitch and his boys left to go camping that evening. 
         
         “They’re going to be out of touch for almost ten days,” she said. 

An attractive older couple was being seated two tables away from us and Zeda waved her napkin at them.  The man waved back smiling and I knew who he was before she said - his whole face twinkled with his eyes. 
         
         “I don’t know what Mitch would do without them,” she said. 
         
         “What about his wife?”  I asked. 
         
         “She’s never with them; I don’t know whose choice that is.” 

I was watching Mitch’s mother pour cream in her coffee. 
         
         “How does he drink his coffee?”  I asked,
         
         “Who?”  She looked at me distractedly, then stopped.  I took my eyes off his mother to meet Zeda’s.  She exhaled, took my hand, and asked:
         
         “What the hell are you doing, Natalie?” 

Tears started rolling and they wouldn’t stop.  I felt caught in a spinning roulette, discarding the hand I was dealt, choosing instead the danger of gambling my values and my voice away. 
         
         
         We dropped Zeda off, and I watched her light steps and yellow skirt close in on the revolving doors, as Virgil McCormick spun out of them.  He gave me a politician’s smile before walking by the car window without speaking.  I was pulling away from the curb when my cell phone rang. 
         
         “Natalie,” Mitch said, “Zeda’s adoption has been denied.” 

I looked back in time to see the swish of her yellow skirt before she was churned into the building.
         
         “Judge Ottgold received the review board’s recommendation and called Virgil with it,” he said angrily.  “Then, he had the audacity to remind me that the Judge wasn’t obligated to disclose the review board’s reasons for denial.” 
         
         “How did you end up in that place?”  I asked. 
         
         “He hasn’t always been this way, our differences used to work in our favor, balancing the firm, and attracting a broad pool of clients.”  “We served together on the board of the Wailington Children’s Home twenty years ago when the town was warring over an incident that happened there.” 

I interrupted him,
         
         “I didn’t know there was a children’s home around here.” 
         
         “It’s now Wailington Park, the one down State Road 41, about fifteen miles southeast of town.  The old building was in the middle of the land requisitioned for the park.  The children were causing trouble, an eighteen-year-old girl was caught having sex with a sixteen-year-old boy, and the scandal fueled the tear-it-down argument.  The town was divided, with Virgil pushing for its demise.” 
         
         “I go there a lot, Mitch, those beautiful old gardens look like they’ve been there forever.” 
         
         “They were designed by Oscar Wailington, a member of Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet,” he said, “and the kids from the Home maintained them.” 
         
         “What finally happened?” 
         
         “I was outvoted,” he said.  “All that’s left of the Home is that chimney. 
         
         “What happened to the children?”  I asked.
         
         “They were sifted through the system and disappeared.” 
         
         “And you’ve been working for lost children ever since, haven’t you?”  I said, not expecting an answer, and there was none. 

         “I’m leaving tonight, Natalie, and I have to check something before I tell her.  She’s going to need a friend tomorrow.”
         

         Zeda was icy calm.  I knelt on the floor of the baby nursery and held her while she rocked back and forth.  Lily was still in her first trimester, but every detail of this nursery was full-term finished, as if the baby was in the next room for a diaper change and would be back in Zeda’s arms in a minute.  The crib looked like a coffin. 
         
         “I was arrested on a drug charge when I was eighteen,” she said. 
         
         “Is that all?  Surely, that’s fairly common these days, that doesn’t make sense.” 
         
         “A lot of things aren’t making sense,” she said.  “I found an envelope with $50,000 in cash in Mitch’s front desk drawer today,” she said coolly. 
         
         “What are you talking about, Zeda?” 

The haunting press of the nursery was too thick to think. 

         “Let’s go in the other room,” I said, gathering her up and leading her to her sofa.

I poured us each a drink before sitting close beside her.  “Start at the beginning,” I said, “and go ‘til the end.” 
         
         “Adoptive parents come by all the time, bringing gifts, thank-you notes, pictures, you know.”
         
          “Yes, I said, impatiently.
         
         “Two families came by today and left notes, one even left flowers, on my desk while I wasn’t there.  One couple came before I got there this morning and the other came at lunchtime.” 
         
         “What about the money, Zeda?” 
         
         “When I went into Mitch’s top drawer for his billing book, I saw this fat envelope that looked like it had money in it.  If it were, I had to deposit it.  It was $50,000 in cash.           
         
         “Where did it come from?” 
         
         “I don’t know, and Mitch is camping somewhere with no cell coverage, so I took it to Virgil.” 
         
         
          “He’s being investigated,” Zeda said, in an empty voice.  The frantic protectiveness I expected was missing. 
         
         “There has to be a way to reach him, Zeda.” 

         “Well, at least, the Sheriff’s detective working on the case, is a good friend of his,” she said.  “Mitch placed a baby with Dick Lawrence’s daughter several years ago, and Dick thinks the world of Mitch.” 


         The sun went down in dying splendor, and the town in the distance vanished in shadows.  The peacefulness of the view passed me as I headed home from a long chilling walk.  The scene had no depth, just a painted curtain - a backdrop for the flat symbol of my house with its graying picket fence.  Mitch called before I reached our driveway.           
         
         “I’ve been arrested, Natalie.  I don’t know what’s going on.”  I wasn’t surprised that he called me instead of all the others he could have talked to.


         I dropped the carpool off and turned on the radio.  Ray Charles was crooning, “You Don’t Know Me.”  I turned it up and sang with him at the top of my lungs.  “You’ll never know the one who dreams of you at night…”  But I was sure he knew.  My revere was interrupted by an assumed tap on my shoulder,

         “I’m not listening God!”  I yelled over Ray.  “I’ve done the right things all my life.  Are you having fun watching me fail?  I trusted you!” 

Greta’s voice replaced Ray’s:          
         
         “The only person you trust is you, Natalie.  Let go!” 
         
         “But I can’t change who I am,” I yelled at the radio. 

My thoughts were blowing like the scattered leaves on my lawn when I turned in to the driveway.  Mitch pulled in behind me, and I turned the radio off. 

         “Come in,” I said, fumbling for my keys.  I was shivering as a cold November wind whipped my hair around my eyes.  He held my purse open so I could dig through it, but the keys were still in my hand.  We laughed, and I felt calmer than I had in a long time.  There was nothing to be calm about, but we left the turmoil outside in the wind.  Inside, it was warm, with the lingering smell of bacon, a fresh pot of coffee, and Mitchell Shepherd in the room.  He sat down heavily while I poured our coffee.  He’d been arraigned earlier that morning.


         “When we got home from camping last night,” he began, “Dick Lawrence came to the door and poured out this whole incredible thing.”
         
         “I thought you’d be able to explain it immediately.”  I said. 
         
         “I have no idea where that money came from!  They’ve examined the lobby security tapes, which shows two of my families getting off the elevator on my floor.  It looks like one of them paid me for their baby.” 
         
         “No cameras in your office?” 
         
         “Nope.” 
         
         “And they denied it?” I asked rhetorically.
         
         “Of course,” he replied, “they wouldn’t have done it, but they surely wouldn’t say so if they had.  When Zeda found the money in my desk, and gave it to Virgil, he called the Bar Association and the prosecutor’s office.”                                                            
         
         “Why?” 
         
         “To protect himself,” he continued angrily. 
         
         “Would he take that kind of risk?  Go that far?” 
         
         “I don’t know,” he answered, “but I need to figure it out before I’m tried for this.  And Natalie, someone else is going to have to handle Lily’s adoption.”


         We spent most of the day talking through every scenario, until it was almost time for the kids to get home. 
         
         “You aren’t driving carpool today?”  He asked as we walked slowly to the door.           
         
         “Not this week,” I answered turning to get his coat from the closet.  I felt his silent hands cover my shoulders, and I knew exactly how the rim of his mouth turned, how the landscape of his jaw grew, like a harvested farmer’s field, covered in stubble, joining a freshly plowed one.  I knew his eyes still twinkled in their blue and pensive calm, I knew him, and I wanted him.  I turned around with my eyes closed.  He hesitated, waiting for me to look at him, but I kept my eyes boarded shut, instead of sharing those few seconds with him before he kissed me.  If I’d opened my eyes, if I’d looked at what I was doing, if I’d turned and run, would life be different now?


         Fickle headlines lynched Mitch in ugly bold letters.  Frank stayed on the phone for hours trying to find out what was happening.  I looked for my expired Xanax, couldn’t find them, and still spent most of the next week in bed, with my phone turned off.  Lily came in chatting about the looks she was getting in gym class and showing me how the snap on the waist of her jeans wouldn’t close.  Jax sat on the floor by the bed to do his homework.  I slept.  I had drifted into a moral no-man’s-land with no return recourse, and moving deeper into the heart of the war.  I was a prisoner of the hollow promise of “happily ever after,” crumbling my values for a fantasy.  A week later, I started seeing Mitch as often as possible. 



         We met at Wailington Park, in one of the old politician’s secret gardens.  Many times that winter, the soft vapor of fog misted us inside its pale gray walls, so all we could see was the lone chimney of the razed Children’s Home standing black and sharp against the back of our small world.  We huddled on a picnic table, walked when we could, or sat in my minivan against the outside cold.  His trial was set for May, just before the baby was due, which, although unspoken, was when we’d open our eyes to the consequences of what we were doing.


         Virgil appeared to be supporting him and supplied an income while Mitch was away from work.  Zeda left McCormick, Granier, and Shepherd for a private firm in one of the downtown storefronts (its renovation funded by Mitch’s “Main Street Project”).  She had stopped calling, and I missed our friendship, but the comfort of its familiarity was covered in loss and guilt.  The investigation and the unknown stretched on and on, intensifying with each dead end.  Mitch was sinking in the injustice of the mystery and it became more and more difficult to encourage him to keep fighting. 


         Christmas came and went, winter slugged on.  My kids needed me, I wasn’t there.  I drove the carpool, I went to church, but I still wasn’t there.  Frank knew something was wrong but didn’t say much. 
         
         “When are you going to let go, Natalie?”  Greta said into the phone. 
         
         “I can stop seeing him, but I’ll never be able to let him go,” I said with a distant flatness.  “It’s like an addiction, like a genie granting every wish I’ve ever made.”
         
         “I’m not talking about letting him go,” she said. 
         
         “I know what I have to do, Greta, I just have to gather the strength to go through with it.” 
         
         “You’re stronger than you think,” she replied.

I knew that the life I had chosen was crashing to a halt, that innocent victims would be trapped in the wreckage if I didn’t take a dramatic detour. 

         
         Spring was laboring to breathe new life into winter’s dead wood as I pulled into the Park to meet Mitch once again.  When I looked at him, there was no guilt, no confusion, no hurt, no past, no future, no baby, no Frank - just us.  We sat in his front seat holding each other like teenagers.  He drew a long, weary breath and it stuck in his throat on its way out, dampening my hair. 
         
         “Don’t do this,” he whispered. 
                   
         “This is we, not me, Mitch.”  I kept going without looking at him.  “You need the values you’ve walked away from to get through this.  All you have to lean on now is self-condemning guilt, and you’d be completely ruined if we were caught.” 
         
         “Ha,” he scoffed, “What about alone?” 
         
         “We’ve been alone before, Mitch.” 
         
         “Yes, but we didn’t know it,” he said to the steering wheel.  As I stepped out of his car to leave, a blast of frigid leftover winter air stunned me, and the haunting chimney of the ruined children’s home followed me as I left him.


         Frank came home in the middle of that afternoon.  I was in the laundry room, staring at dirty clothes, and turned to see him standing quietly in the doorway.  He wasn’t crying but he had been.  The air in the small space felt wet like it was about to rain and it pressed me to the wall, as I waited for what I knew was coming. 
         
         “What’s wrong?”  I asked. 
         
         “Why, Natalie?”  He asked simply.  “Why?”  He wouldn’t stop, and each time sliced deeper into my spreading wound, a hurt that I knew was not as deep as his was.


         “Mitch’s wife called me, hysterical,” he said.  Bearing the weight of what I was doing was nothing like the compression of exposure, guilt, fear, and regret that was crushing me now. 
         
         “Tell me what’s happening?” he begged.  “Say something logical!”  I backed out of the laundry room. 
         
         “I DON’T KNOW!”  I screamed. 

Without regard for his confusion, I grabbed my keys and left the door gaping as I ran. 


         I drove blindly for hours, wavering between staying and trying to heal the marriage, or bolting on colt legs, hoping to train a steady stride without running wild.  Guileless eyes stared at me as I drove.  They didn’t deserve this; the swamp I’d been swimming in for months was a tidal wave to Frank and it would drown my children.  I hoped the God I was losing faith in would help me stand on my choice.  Frank was ominously calm when I walked in.
         
         “I’d like to work through this, if you think there’s any way you can eventually forgive me, Frank.” 

         “I’ve scheduled a meeting with Pastor Byron and the Board of Deacons, so we can decide how to handle it,” he said. 
         
         “Why,” I stammered, “this isn’t an inquisition, it’s adultery, marriages, private lives!”  My voice had risen to a throat knotted screech. 
         
         “They are our church family, we go through the tough stuff together,” he said.  “And Mitchell Shepherd needs to be exposed for the fraud that he is,” he said bitterly.  “And by the way, while you were out with your precious pastime this morning, I got a call from the school principal, Jax was found in the gym equipment storage room with your Xanax.


         Lily’s daughter was born two months later, temporarily replacing the dull shadows in our home with the sharp climax of having and losing a child.  We didn’t hear from Zeda for the rest of the pregnancy, and the baby went to a middle-aged couple whom Mitch had been working with.  They weren’t at the hospital, but our new attorney delivered the tiny girl to them, in Indianapolis, an hour after she was born.  My heart both sang and bled for Lily through childbirth, fixing on my granddaughter’s beautiful small face when she slipped from her temporary home.  Lily chose not to meet her, and I’m glad.  I’ll remember enough for both of us.  And so, after the lifetime of only months, Lily’s baby disappeared from our lives in an instant. 


         I called Mitch on the morning of his trial.  I just wanted him hear my voice.  His wife was bitter, retreating deeper into exile from the family and seldom speaking to him.  His search for resolution had worn to a vengeance-tainted quest for restitution, a war he was fighting alone.  Later that morning, he was convicted, heavily fined, and fired. 


         Frank spent a lot of time with the kids, holding his umbrage beneath his ethics, while I took the blame for every violation of them, whether or not it was given to me.  All the years of hiding from the bad girl inside me, keeping her hidden behind an intense desire to be a better person, showed up blacker against the whiteness of Frank’s goodness. 
         
         “You keep acting the part,” Greta said.  “When are you going to stop?”


         I stared back at a year of losses: a baby, an acquittal, reputations, faith, and marriages.  -  We had all grown up in different directions, that year after Lily’s baby was born. 


         I watched the sun’s predawn patina on its distant ledge, and considered it a prelude to a new summer day. 
         
         “The kids and I are going to see Greta,” I announced to Frank. 

No one objected, Frank or kids, and the three of us were packed and driving before the sun had started to make good on its promise.  We opened the windows to the August wind and let it whip us mercilessly while we sang off key to an old Bob Seeger CD.  – “Today’s music ain’t got the same soul – just gimme that old time Rock-n-Roll!” 


         That morning’s Indiana sun was bobbing on a southern horizon like a giant jewel hopping through the words of a sing-along, when our tires crackled on the seashell drive that wound to Greta’s house before falling into the marshy shallows of St. Helena’s Sound.


         I woke between fresh, clean sheets, feeling puppet strings being snipped, and my wooden limbs turning pink and pulsing.  Maybe I’m becoming a real girl, I thought, indulging in a Geppetto to Greta comparison.  I’d make real choices and live in a real home.  The view from Greta’s window made my Indiana house look like rental property that I’d never owned.  When I left it, I’d hurdled the low picket fence with my long stride, but looking back from here, I saw it as a tall wall.

         
         We’d been at Greta’s almost a week before I called Mitch, and heard his voice for the first time in many months.  His mood ran deeper than the ruin of his reputation.  He was floundering in wrecked emotions, feeling guilty for the affair, angry at being wrongly accused, and still unable to unravel what had happened.  He hated me and loved me from one day to the next.  His financial and emotional footing was slipping away, leaving him hanging with only a lifetime of good goals. 
         
         “One bit of blue sky from this,” he said.  “The $50,000 had to be donated to charity, and Virgil had no part in the decision.  Dick Lawrence contrived to get it sent to the crisis centers.”


         Greta heard the end of my conversation with Mitch. 
         
         “You’ve broken through a lot of barriers this year,” she said. 
         
         “I’ve done it all wrong,” I answered.  “I know what God says about marriage and adultery.  I try to convince myself that Mitch is an obsession, a symptom of a deeper problem.  But it’s as if my movie screen was blank all my life, without me knowing it, and when Mitch walked in, the projector switched on, surrounding me with living color and symphony sound.  It would be different if I still thought the blank screen was the feature show.  I’m willing to walk away from the movie, but I’ll never be able to turn it off.  Mitch has melted into the gaping hole in me, filling it with 3-D animation, a plot, and a purpose.  Greta, why did God let this happen?  He knew I didn’t have the power to resist it.  No matter what I do now, Mitch will always be in my marriage.”


         “Well, sometimes angels put clothes on,” she said.  “But Mitch isn’t the one filling that hole inside you.  God is.  He knows you don’t have the power, that’s the point.”
         
          “You’re the angel.”  I muffled into my pillow.  She laughed aloud,
         
         “So are you,” she answered, “find your wings!”  She settled beside me on the comforter and put her arm around me. 
         
         “Did God use ‘bad’ people, in that Bible of yours, to get ‘good’ things done?”  She went on answering her own question, “He spent His time with people a lot worse than you, leaving the principled, and the pious to their judging Him as they chose.  You’re reproving yourself with Pharisee standards, Natalie, mistaking judgment for discernment.” 
         
         “But right and wrong don’t change.”  I said. 
         
         “No,” she answered, “but how big is your wrong, and how much worse than any other?  It’s a tiny drop in the eternal ocean of a big God’s love.” 
         
         “You make it sound so easy,” I said.  But what would I have left if I didn’t keep trying?” 
         
         “The problem is, trying to do it yourself, Natalie.”


         Frank called for the first time a week after we’d left him. 
         
         “When are you coming home?” he asked. 
         
         “I don’t know, feels like I am home,” I laughed.  I was joking, I suppose, but he wasn’t as refreshed as I was, and my answer fell on cracked, dry ground.  I sobered quickly and pulled my next sentence out of some hidden cache, because it surprised both of us. 

         “I don’t think I’m coming home,” I said.  “This feels pretty good.” 
         
         “Well, let’s just get a divorce then, Natalie.”  I was pretty sure it was a “this is what’s going to happen if you don’t do what I want” response, but I jumped on the bomb just as quickly as it dropped. 
         
         “Okay,” I said.  Three months later, we were divorced. 


         Lily went back to Indiana to finish high school, and Jax stayed with me.  I worked with Greta, buying outdated furniture from those who want to buy new, doing little to regenerate the pieces - other than putting them in a new context, an ultramodern showroom - and selling them to those who want nouveau.  The showroom was the bottom floor of an old warehouse, with an apartment above with large cool rooms that were airy and pleasant against midsummer heat.  Its multilevel verandas were half the size of my Indiana yard, and twice as interesting.  Jax and I watched TV in our new home when we chose to. 


         Jax rolled in and out of trouble, but he worked at showing his shadows to the sun.  The dark places where his fears lived had little control over him in daylight.  Lily planned ahead, hardly looking around at what she’d left behind.  Frank seemed happy staying where he was, and I was happy for him.  I couldn’t blame him for the box I’d climbed into by myself, and couldn’t do a thing about his.  He married six months after we divorced. 


         Mitch and I talked periodically.  He pronounced himself through with trying to meet the needs of the forgetful, choosing instead a higher yielding investment – his sons.  He spoke less of getting back what was stolen from him, and of what he deserved, and what he didn’t.  I told him how my instincts and my reason were joining forces, and how good it felt to let go of their destination. 
         
         “You make it sound so easy,” he said. 
                   
         “It was time,” I answered.  “We each have our alarm clock, Mitch.” 
         
         “Any regrets?” 
         
         “Very few,” I answered.


         Watching Jax face the lost boy inside him, motivated me to look for my scared little demons.  They weren’t hard to find, and one by one, with supernatural help, I accepted some and let go of others.  Without their weight, hurdles were easier to clear, and the finish line in the distance motivated me to keep jumping.  But I was in no hurry to get there; the scenery along the way was too nice to rush.  I still tripped on a few, especially if I tried to jump someone else’s.  But I could spot them while they jumped their own. 
         
         
         In the middle of the afternoon, almost a year after I’d moved to Beaufort, Frank called me at work. 
         
         “I thought you’d want to know that Zeda died last night.”  He said. 
         
         “What?”  I stammered. 
         
         “She was found on the railroad tracks early this morning.”  I was silent, so he continued.  “Seems she was a fraud and a criminal too,” he said.  I wanted to hang up, but I just listened to his words, tucking them away to pull out later when they weren’t coming from him. 
         
         “Mrs. Bulifant worked at the Children’s Home years ago.  She recognized Zeda, which isn’t even her real name, as the eighteen-year-old who was caught having sex with a sixteen-year-old kid.  She’s the reason the whole place was shut down.  Are you still there, Natalie?” 
         
         “Yes.” 
         
         “I just thought you should know.”  He continued.  “I’ve gotta go, I’m late for a funeral.”  I stared at an empty table on the showroom floor, its age was irrelevant, its value redeemed only by a new home. 
         
         “Who else died?”  I asked.
         
         “Someone who’ll be honored more than Zeda,” he said.  “Virgil McCormick died of a heart attack Saturday.”


         I looked at the dead phone in my hand and tried to stay the guilt of forgetting how an endlessly empty womb can spread lies to the heart, demanding that motherhood and mortality be equal. The toughened skin on my heart was still porous, and tears for Zeda leaked through every perforation.  Mitch called five minutes later. 
         
         “Did you know who she was?”  I asked. 
         
         “I had no idea,” he answered.  “Her name was Tina Perkins; she was a quiet, overweight girl who got slicked by a kid on a dare.  She was caught and told that pleading guilty would get rid of the charge.” 
         
         “Who represented her?”  I asked. 
         
         “Our firm did, but neither Virgil nor I had anything to do with it.”

I had many questions, but no energy to ask them. 
         
         “What are the arrangements?”  I asked. 
         
         “I’m trying to find her ex husband before making any plans, but I’m going to take care of whatever we decide to do.  Are you coming home, Natalie?”
         
         “I am home,” I replied.

          I packed my élan vital and started back to my dated past, the next day.


         I made it a two-day trip, driving alone instead of flying.  The open road pulled and lulled, promised, and proved that it just kept going, whatever detour or shortcut I chose, the road paved the way, pushing on.  I couldn’t get enough of it.  Jax was in Waverly for the summer and had only been gone for two weeks, but I hadn’t seen Lily in three months, and I was anxious to get my arms around her.  It was dusk when I pulled my dusty car into the little motel fifteen miles southeast of town on state road 41.  In my rearview mirror, I saw the jaded sign that said Wailington Park. 


         I left the car without checking in and walked across the crumbling pavement to the park’s foyer of split rails and jasmine.  I wandered for two miles in the haze of twilight, until I found our secret garden.  He didn’t know if or when I was coming, but I wanted to find him waiting for me on our picnic table.  I sat beside my memory of Mitch, enjoying the comfort of knowing he was close and that I’d see him soon.  I didn’t get up to leave before darkness closed in, hiding the path and scaring me a little.  I didn’t have a flashlight but my eyes adjusted to the moonlight. 
         
         “It gets dark fast out here,” he said.  I didn’t ask, I didn’t talk, I just put my face against his neck and let warm arms take me wherever they wished. 


         “Virgil didn’t die of a heart attack,” Mitch said, sitting on the edge of the bed watching me unpack.  “It looks as if he might have been poisoned, and his wife is being investigated.” 
         
         “My,” I said.  “I moved here to get away from crime and intrigue; it’s hard to keep up with the pace of it around here!” 

         “Did you reach Zeda’s husband?”  I asked.           
         
         “Yes, and he’ll be here Saturday for the service.” 
         
         “Service?”  I asked. 
         
         “She’s been cremated and I’ve scheduled a small ceremony.” 
         
         “Not at our old church?”  I asked, interrupting him. 
         
         “No,” he said.  “Definitely not.”


         “Jax and Lily are on their way over, we’re going out for dinner,” I told him.  “I suppose you’ll be home with your wife later tonight?” 
         
         “Yes, but it’s okay to call, with the boys in college, she never leaves her room.”           
         
         “Just call me when you can tomorrow,” I answered him as he opened the door to leave.


         I held my children ‘til they screamed for air.  I’m sure Jax had grown in the two weeks since I’d seen him.  And, Lily’s ponytail was gone, replaced by a simple cut that fit her.  We ate and stayed up watching TV in the room until we fell asleep.  Your father is going to kill me for keeping you out this late, I almost said, but realized I didn’t need to.

         I went for a long walk Friday morning and it was almost lunchtime before Mitch called. 
         “I just got a phone call from Graham Bellingham, sit down,” he said, “this will take a while.”

         “Zeda mailed him a letter before she died and he got it this morning.  It said that he deserved to know what she’d kept hidden from him during their marriage, and from people she’d cared about all her life, you and me included.” 
         
         “Did she plant the money?”  I asked. 
         
         “Well, Virgil figured out who she was when Judge Ottgold called him with the review board results.” 
                   
         “Virgil saw the first adoptive family come to my office the morning the money was found, the morning after I left to go camping.  He also knew the second family had come in while Zeda was at lunch.  I guess he saw the perfect opportunity to get rid of me, and discredit my work.  He planted the money, knowing I was out of touch for several days, that Zeda would find it, and that both visitors were videotaped coming up to my office.  When Zeda came to him, he told her that he’d been concerned about me accepting money under the table for a long time. 
         
         ‘You’ve worked for a lower salary because he accepts low fees for his work,’ he told her, and he’s had plenty of money all along.” 
         
         “She wouldn’t have distrusted you that easily, Mitch.” 
         
         “But, Virgil also told her that he knew who she was, and that I had been the one behind the push to prosecute her twenty years ago.” 
         
         “But she knew Virgil was also on the board, she’d have suspected him before you,” I said. 
         
         “He didn’t tell her that he was on the board, and I guess she never looked.” 


         “Here’s the really sad part,” he continued.  “She was pregnant when she was arrested.  The scandal had the school in deep trouble already without a baby complicating it further, so they offered her $10,000 to abort the baby, along with the promise of a clean record if she pleaded guilty.”  I exhaled, afraid I wouldn’t find the air to breathe back in.           
         
         “The abortion wasn’t handled well; she lost the baby and her fertility.” 
         
         “And, in her mind, all her losses were your fault,” I finished for him.


         “And Virgil,” I asked.  “Was there anything about him, can it be proved that he placed the money, or that she had anything to do with his death?” 
         
         “I’ve been working on that since I talked to Graham,” he said.  “She didn’t confess anything, but ended her letter with two things.” 
         
         “What?” 
         
         “She wants her ashes strewn where her life really ended twenty years ago – in Wailington Park, in a secret garden she had tended for years.” 
         
         “Oh, Mitch,” 
         
         “I know,” he said. 
         
         “What else?”  I hesitated asking. 
         
         “She wrote, ‘The guilty have paid.’”  He said. 
         
         “That’s all?”  I asked. 
         
         “Yes, and Dick is going through her apartment now.” 


         He sat on our picnic table with his chin in his dirty hand.  He stared at the chimney in the distance, and I watched him.  I put my rake down and took his other dirty hand in mine. 
                   
         “She was dealt a rotten hand, and her bluff was deadly.”  I said quietly. 
         
         “Would she have folded if we’d have been there?” he asked. 
         
         “Would we have had an affair if we’d learned all these lessons earlier in our lives?  Would Lily have gotten pregnant, if I’d made different choices all along?  Would we have married the people we did?  It doesn’t matter, Mitch.  We can’t change it.  But we don’t ever have to make the same mistakes again, and it took what it took to get where we are – and where we are is all we have to work with.” 
         
         “Yeah.”  He said. 


         His phone rang, and he listened for a long time.  I could tell from his scraps of responses that Dick had found evidence of Virgil McCormick having died at the hands of a girl who had been dead inside for most of her life. 
         
         “And the money?”  I asked when he’d hung up. 
         
         “Virgil’s wife found a $50,000 gap in an IRA tax receipt that fits the time frame.”  He replied.  We sat still, waiting for history to catch up with our thoughts.           
         
         “You’ll get your credibility back,” I said quietly. 
         
         “Yeah.”  He said again.


         Cars lined the trail beside the secret garden.  Symphony members, Mays Chorus friends, bluegrass musicians, and adoptive parents, were some of the colorful assortment of people who came to honor Zeda Bellingham.  Her ex husband introduced himself to us.           
         “I’m Graham,” he said, holding my hand.  “She mentioned you the few times we communicated over the last few years,” he said. 
         
         “How much of her story did you know?”  I asked him. 
         
         “I knew about a criminal record that she was trying to get expunged, and I knew there was a part of her that was unstable, that was the part that came between us, but the best part of her was unforgettable.” 
 

         Dick Lawrence walked toward us pulling a package out of his pocket. 
         
         “This is everything you’ll need to clear your name,” he said.  “Where are you going to start?” 
         
         “By not even worrying about it,” Mitch said.  “It’s just a part of the past.”


         Mitch climbed half-way up a Hickory tree that hung between the garden and the grounds where the home had been, and sprinkled Zeda’s ashes across the secret garden, and the old Home grounds.  She would grow in this fertile ground where new life and untimely death continued, unstoppable, despite the small power of people. 


         I stretched in my comfortable skin and searched the near clear distance for approaching danger.  But the setting sun sat on the road ahead, glowing rose on everything between us, and all obstacles shone like Christmas lights around a thousand tiny toys.  Looking around, I took note of all there was to appreciate, going slowly enough to enjoy it all.  I remembered to watch the road now and then, but crashing or making a wrong turn didn’t concern me.  I’d given up the wheel, turned it over to someone who knows a lot more about navigating than I do, and obstacles are His specialty.  The car slowed and I looked out of the window, on the passenger’s side, at a dusty broken sign by the side of the road.  I read the faded words as we drove by, “Happily Ever After,” it said.  Well, we must be on the right road, I said to Mitch, as his twinkling eyes enjoyed the view from the backseat.