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Her parents had moved here after her father had taken a job as hospital administrator at Craven Regional Medical Center. Once Sarah’s divorce had been finalized, they’d begun to prod her to move down as well. Knowing how her mother was, she’d put it off for a year. Not that Sarah didn’t love her mother, it was just that her mother could sometimes be . . .draining, for lack of a better word. Still, for peace of mind she’d finally taken their advice, and so far, thankfully, she hadn’t regretted it. It was exactly what she needed, but as charming as this town was, there was no way she saw herself living here forever. New Bern, she’d learned almost right away, was not a town for singles. There weren’t many places to meet people, and the ones her own age that she had met were already married, with families of their own. As in many southern towns, there was still a social order that defined town life. With most people married, it was hard for a single woman to find a place to fit in, or even to start. Especially someone who was divorced and completely new to the area. It was, however, an ideal place to raise children, and sometimes as she walked, Sarah liked to imagine that things had turned out differently for her. As a young girl, she’d always assumed she would have the kind of life she wanted: marriage, children, a home in a neighborhood where families gathered in the yards on Friday evenings after work was finished for the week. That was the kind of life she’d had as a child, and it was the kind she wanted as an adult. But it hadn’t worked out that way. Things in life seldom did, she’d come to understand. For a while, though, she had believed anything was possible, especially when she’d met Michael. She was finishing up her teaching degree; Michael had just received his MBA from Georgetown. His family, one of the most prominent in Baltimore, had made their fortune in banking and were immensely wealthy and clannish, the type of family that sat on the boards of various corporations and instituted policies at country clubs that served to exclude those they regarded as inferior. Michael, however, seemed to reject his family’s values and was regarded as the ultimate catch. Heads would turn when he entered a room, and though he knew what was happening, his most endearing quality was that he pretended other people’s images of him didn’t matter at all. Pretended,of course, was the key word. Sarah, like every one of her friends, knew who he was when he showed up at a party, and she’d been surprised when he’d come up to say hello a little later in the evening. They’d hit it off right away. The short conversation had led to a longer one over coffee the following day, then eventually to dinner. Soon they were dating steadily and she’d fallen in love. After a year, Michael asked her to marry him.

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Jonah shrugged. “Fine, I guess.” This question too, was part of the routine. Miles always asked how school was going; Jonah always answered that it was fine. But earlier that morning, while getting Jonah’s backpack ready, Miles had found a note from Jonah’s teacher, asking him if it was possible to meet today. Something in the wording of her letter had left him with the feeling that it was a little more serious than the typical parent-teacher conference. “You doing okay in class?” Jonah shrugged. “Uh-huh.” “Do you like your teacher?” Jonah nodded in between bites. “Uh-huh,” he answered again. Miles waited to see if Jonah would add anything more, but he didn’t. Miles leaned a little closer. “Then why didn’t you tell me about the note your teacher sent home?” “What note?” he asked innocently. “The note in your backpack—the one your teacher wanted me to read.” Jonah shrugged again, his shoulders popping up and down like the waffles in the toaster. “I guess I just forgot.” “How could you forget something like that?” “I don’t know.” “Do you know why she wants to see me?” “No . . .” Jonah hesitated, and Miles knew immediately that he wasn’t telling the truth. “Son, are you in trouble at school?” At this, Jonah blinked and looked up. His father didn’t call him “son” unless he’d done something wrong. “No, Dad. I don’t ever act up. I promise.” “Then what is it?” “I don’t know.” “Think about it.” Jonah squirmed in his seat, knowing he’d reached the limit of his father’s patience. “Well, I guess I might be having a little trouble with some of the work.” “I thought you said school was going okay.” “Schoolis going okay. Miss Andrews is really nice and all, and I like it there.” He paused. “It’s just that sometimes I don’t understand everything that’s going on in class.” “That’s why you go to school. So you can learn.” “I know,” he answered, “but she’s not like Mrs. Hayes was last year. The work she assigns ishard. I just can’t do some of it.” Jonah looked scared and embarrassed at exactly the same time. Miles reached out and put his hand on his son’s shoulder. “Why didn’t you tell me you were having trouble?” It took a long time for Jonah to answer. “Because,” he said finally, “I didn’t want you to be mad at me.” • • • After breakfast, after making sure Jonah was ready to go, Miles helped him with his backpack and led him to the front door. Jonah hadn’t said much since breakfast. Squatting down, Miles kissed him on the cheek. “Don’t worry about this afternoon. It’s gonna be all right, okay?” “Okay,” Jonah mumbled. “And don’t forget that I’ll be picking you up, so don’t get on the bus.” “Okay,” he said again. “I love you, champ.” “I love you, too, Dad.” Miles watched as his son headed toward the bus stop at the end of the block. Missy, he knew, wouldn’t have been surprised by what had happened this morning, as he had been. Missy would have already known that Jonah was having trouble at school. Missy had taken care of things like this. Missy had taken care of everything. The night before she was to meet with Miles Ryan, Sarah Andrews was walking through the historic district in New Bern, doing her best to keep a steady pace. Though she wanted to get the most from her workout—she’d been an avid walker for the past five years—since she’d moved here, she’d found it hard to do. Every time she went out, she found something new to interest her, something that would make her stop and stare. New Bern, founded in 1710, was situated on the banks of the Neuse and Trent Rivers in eastern North Carolina. As the second oldest town in the state, it had once served as the capital and been home to the Tryon Palace, residence of the colonial governor. Destroyed by fire in 1798, the palace had been restored in 1954, complete with some of the most breathtaking and exquisite gardens in the South. Throughout the grounds, tulips and azaleas bloomed each spring, and chrysanthemums blossomed in the fall. Sarah had taken a tour when she’d first arrived. Though the gardens were between seasons, she’d nonetheless left the palace wanting to live within walking distance so she could pass its gates each day. She’d moved into a quaint apartment on Middle Street a few blocks away, in the heart of downtown. The apartment was up the stairs and three doors away from the pharmacy where in 1898 Caleb Bradham had first marketed Brad’s drink, which the world came to know as Pepsi-Cola. Around the corner was the Episcopal church, a stately brick structure shaded with towering magnolias, whose doors first opened in 1718. When she left her apartment to take her walk, Sarah passed both sites as she made her way to Front Street, where many of the old mansions had stood gracefully for the past two hundred years. What she really admired, however, was the fact that most of the homes had been painstakingly restored over the past fifty years, one house at a time. Unlike Williamsburg, Virginia, which was restored largely through a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, New Bern had appealed to its citizens and they had responded. The sense of community had lured her parents here four years earlier; she’d known nothing about New Bern until she’d moved to town last June. As she walked, she reflected on how different New Bern was from Baltimore, Maryland, where she’d been born and raised, where she’d lived until just a few months earlier. Though Baltimore had its own rich history, it was a city first and foremost. New Bern, on the other hand, was a small southern town, relatively isolated and largely uninterested in keeping up with the ever quickening pace of life elsewhere. Here, people would wave as she passed them on the street, and any question she asked usually solicited a long, slow-paced answer, generally peppered with references to people or events that she’d never heard of before, as if everything and everyone were somehow connected. Usually it was nice, other times it drove her batty.