A Bend in the Road Read Online Free PDF Page A

learned about Jonah’s mother, and though she was
sympathetic, she knew it wasn’t in anyone’s best interest—especially Jonah’s—to
simply let him slide, as his previous teachers had done. At the same time, she
couldn’t give Jonah all the attention he needed because of the other students
in her class. In the end, she decided to meet with Jonah’s father to talk to
him about what she knew, in hopes that they could find a way to work it out.
    She’d heard
about Miles Ryan.
    Not much, but
she knew that people for the most part both liked and respected him and that
more than anything, he seemed to care about his son. That was good.  Even in the little while she’d been
teaching, she’d met parents who didn’t seem to care about their children,
regarding them as more of a burden than a blessing, and she’d also met parents
who seemed to believe their child could do no wrong. Both were impossible to
deal with. Miles Ryan, people said, wasn’t that way.
    At the next
corner, Sarah finally slowed down, then waited for a couple of cars to pass.
Sarah crossed the street, waved to the man behind the counter at the pharmacy,
and grabbed the mail before making her way up the steps to her apartment. After
unlocking the door, she quickly scanned the mail and then set it on the table
by the door.
    In the kitchen,
she poured herself a glass of ice water and carried the glass to her bedroom.
She was undressing, tossing her clothes in the hamper and looking forward to a
cool shower, when she saw the blinking light on the answering machine. She hit
the play button and her mother’s voice came on, telling Sarah that she was
welcome to stop by later, if she had nothing else going on. As usual, her voice
sounded slightly anxious.
    On the night
table, next to the answering machine, was a picture of Sarah’s family: Maureen
and Larry in the middle, Sarah and Brian on either end. The machine clicked and
there was a second message, also from her mother: “Oh, I thought you’d be home
by now . . . ,” it began. “I hope everything’s all right.
    . . .”
    Should she go or not? Was she in the mood?
    Why not? she
finally decided. I’ve got nothing else to do anyway.
    • • •
    Miles Ryan made
his way down Madame Moore’s Lane, a narrow, winding road that ran along both
the Trent River and Brices Creek, from downtown New Bern to Pollocksville, a
small hamlet twelve miles to the south. Originally named for the woman who once
ran one of the most famous brothels in North Carolina, it rolled past the
former country home and burial plot of Richard Dobbs Spaight, a southern hero
who’d signed the Declaration of Independence. During the Civil War, Union
soldiers exhumed the body from the grave and posted his skull on an iron gate
as a warning to citizens not to resist the occupation. When he was a child,
that story had kept Miles from wanting to go anywhere near the place.  Despite its beauty and relative isolation,
the road he was following wasn’t for children. Heavy, fully loaded logging
trucks rumbled over it day and night, and drivers tended to underestimate the
curves. As a homeowner in one of the communities just off the lane, Miles had
been trying to lower the speed limit for years.
    No one, except
for Missy, had listened to him.
    This road always
made him think of her.
    Miles tapped out
another cigarette, lit it, then rolled down the window. As the warm air blew in
the car, simple snapshots of the life they’d lived together surfaced in his
mind; but as always, those images led inexorably to their final day together.
    Ironically,
he’d been gone most of the day, a Sunday. Miles had gone fishing with Charlie
Curtis. He’d left the house early that morning, and though both he and Charlie
came home with mahi-mahi that day, it wasn’t enough to appease his wife. Missy,
her face smudged with dirt, put her hands on her hips and glared at him the
moment he got home. She didn’t say anything at all, but then, she didn’t